C Programming [Paperback]

Larry Ullman (Author), Marc Liyanage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0321287630 | ISBN-13: 978-0321287632 | Edition: 1

It's no secret: When it comes to learning a programming language, Larry Ullman is the man you want at your side! As the best-selling author of guides to PHP, MySQL, and more, he's proved that programming doesn't have to be painful, especially when it comes to a language that is at its core both simple and small. We're talking, of course, about C, and if you want to learn it fast (not to mention well), this book provides the key. Joined by co-author and fellow programmer Marc Liyanage, this author team tackles both programming fundamentals and the ABCs of C itself through a series of task-based lessons that use step-by-step instructions and a plethora of visual aids to make C if not instantly accessible, then almost. This book uses friendly, straightforward language to explain every aspect of this fundamental technology: from basic syntax and data types to working with numbers, characters, loops, and arrays; creating functions; using the C preprocessor; file input and output; and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Developer Larry Ullman is the director of digital media technology for DMC Insights, a consulting firm that specializes in information technology. He is also the author of several best-selling programming guides, including PHP for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide and PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide. Marc Liyenage is a senior software engineer who's been using the C programming language for over 15 years, first on early home computers and PCs, and in the past 10 years on various UNIX/Linux systems, doing commercial Web application work and large-scale Internet/ISP systems design and implementation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (October 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321287630
• ISBN-13: 978-0321287632
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lacks problems for the reader to tackle, November 6, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: C Programming (Paperback)

C is still with us. Despite the attention lavished on more recent languages, like Java and C#, knowledge of C is a de facto requirement in many programming jobs. Whether you are in a unix or Microsoft environment. Now C has scarcely changed in 20 years. But the difference between this book and C texts then is the visual programming environment. The authors talk up this aspect, to aid your programming. The book discusses using a text editor or IDE to write the code. But this book is written for the beginner. All the code examples are short. None over 100 lines, as far as I can tell. So the power of an IDE is really not needed. What would be useful is a text editor that can colour highlight keywords. Like vim, which is an enhanced version of vi.

In other words, if you want to use this book, you don't need to run out and get some fancy IDE. The real power of those arises when you want to develop large code bases.

The authors write clearly, and do supply good examples. But sadly, the book lacks problem sets. I do realise that this is true of most computer books. But for many of those, they discuss subjects that may be hard to design useful problems, because of the sheer complexity of the systems under consideration. But for a beginning book in C, it is possible and preferable to supply many problems. And also easy to do so. Essentially, simple parsing and numerical analysis problems.

The best way for the reader to learn the language is to have problems to tackle. Learn by doing. All the discussion in the book about analysing the examples is fine. But not enough. I also went to the companion URL given in the book. No problem sets there, either. Perhaps this can be rectified?

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid content, bad format, November 17, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: C Programming (Paperback)

This is a case where some good content was obscured by inappropriate style and formatting. The format of the visual quick start guide series is two have two columns on what is already a fairly thin page. One column is explanation for the screenshot on the other side. That works great for learning about Powerpoint but isn't so great for basic C, which is mainly text. The screenshots just waste space and the code in the explanation side has to be so compressed that it is very tough to follow.

As an alternative you should try O'Reilly's Practical C, or Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A bit of a disappointment, December 23, 2005

By 

Relentless "skepticalbeliever" (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C Programming (Paperback)

I own two other books by Larry Ullman and am nothing but pleased with them; however, this one was rather disappointing. The coverage is overly simplistic, shallow and lacks substance. The authors also "stroke out" in the pointers section --which is a bastion of C programming. I suppose it's "fine" as a dumbed-down introductory text, but for anyone with even a little programming background this book is useless or even laughable. Definitely not one of his better ones.