Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself C in 24 Hours (Teach Yourself in 24 Hours)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Not knowing anything about C I read this book and learned a tremendous amount. I am now following it with the O'Reilly Practical C Programming and after reading these 2 and doing all of the exercises, I find I am totally confident to tell any interviewer "Yes, I AM a C programmer".

People get too hung up on the "24 hours" or "21 days" in the titles. Someone who is serious about learning will recognize that these are really "24 lessons" or "21 lessons". The point is that this book (and others in the series) are designed to be self-taught tutorials, each chapter building on the previous one.

Readers of these reviews must be aware that many who make a strike against these types of books are either not truly committed to their studies, or already have programming experience and have become 'reviewing snobs', forgetting what it is like to start out with little or no programming experience. I whole heartedly recommend this book, as well as many others from the Teach Yourself series.

24 hours..hmmm, not sure thats very accurate. Maybe to someone familiar with C programming, but if you are a complete 'newbie' to C, you really need to learn the _basics_ before buying this book.

There are mixed reviews, but you have to consider what you really want from this book.

If you have practiced a bit of C and want to widen your core skills, this is the book for you.

I found this book better to use as a reference, rather than a learning source.

Not knowing anything about C I read this book and learned a tremendous amount. I am now following it with the O'Reilly Practical C Programming and fter reading these 2 and doing all of the exercises, I find I am totally confident to tell any nterviewer "Yes, I AM a C programmer".

People get too hung up on the "24 hours" or "21 days" in the titles. Someone who is serious about learning will recognize that these are really "24 lessons" or "21 lessons". The point is that this book (and others in the series) are designed to be self-taught tutorials, each chapter building on the previous one.

Readers of these reviews must be aware that many who make a strike against these types of books are either not truly committed to their studies, or already have programming experience and have become 'reviewing snobs', forgetting what it is like to start out with little or no programming experience. I whole heartedly recommend this book, as well as many others from the Teach Yourself series.

It is a well-written book about the standard C (i.e., ANSI C.) The basic concepts and standard C functions are clearly covered in the 24 chapters of the book. I teach C/C++ and Java at school. This book has been selected into the reference book list to my students who normally learn C first, and then move to C++, Java, or Windows development with some specific software tools. It is true that learning C is harder than learning Basic. But the sample programs and exercises enclosed in the book help the reader to come up the learning-curve quickly. As for compilers, I personally like Visual C++. (Don't be fooled by the name of "Visual C++". These days, most commercial C compilers are bundled into C++ compiler packages, such as Visual C++, and Borland C++.)

I have purchased this book with only the desire to learn the C language. What I got was a way to get lured into someone else's schemes of making either a quick buck or a quick fame (neither of which should work in this fashion). It does not serve SAMS reputation at all to have its name behind the undigested book material publishing. FIRST OF ALL, UNLIKE all the other reviews I have read or seen about Tony Zhang's book "SAMS Teach Yourself C in 24 hours" (ISBN# 0672310686) I have CONCRETE points of fault I found with this book and the logic behind it. Before deciding to pour out this criticism of this book I have tried every which way possible to reach either Mr.Zhang or MacMillan technical support by e-mail, regular mail and phone. Needless to say they all were UNRESPONSIVE. Zhang's e-mail is invalid, SAMS e-mail did not reply. I wanted to discuss with the author the glaring problems I encountered while going step-by-step through the his material. SAMS tech support (number is NOT toll-free and is another number you get after you call 317-581-4669) was INSULTING. No recorded voice remains after the call and ONE only assumes he or she is on hold because the line offers no sound to indicate that someone will be with you).

Point#1: ALLOCATING MEMORY TEXT AND EXAMPLES. On page 260 (ch.17) author states an incorrect statement: "Because the malloc() function returns a VOID pointer, its type is automatically converted to the type of the pointer on the left side of an assignment operator." IT IS FALSE. It does not work with all the compilers (at least none of those I tested it with which are the included TC and the Visual C++ 4.2) and consequently it should have been phrased with the universally valid approach as the book by K&R "C Programming Language" shows on page 167 Section 7.8. Instead of Zhang's invalid or unexecutable code in his examples that follow such as the line 14 in listing 17.1, K&R show an example of the same function THAT DOES WORK because they use the casting operator:INT *IP; IP = (INT*) CALLOC(N, SIZEOF(INT)); THE KEY IS TO USE (INT*) TO CAST THE RETURN TYPE OF THE MALLOC().

Contrary to Zhang, compiler cannot assign INT to a void type, so it needs a (int*) type casting. Zhang should be more informed and read some of the classics of programming like K&R.

I am personally offended and insulted by the treatment I received from SAMS and the deliberate lack of response from Mr.Zhang. I only wanted to contact them because I thought I was doing something incorrect and needed clarification, or if I were right I wanted them to recognize the error so that they do not repeat the same error in the future. They seal-off the reading public.

There are other problems--but this malloc() problem that repeats with the other memory allocation function basically invalidates the whole Chapter 17 in his book and misleads the beginner programmers by taking them on the wrong track.

Point#2: There are quite a few other examples after chapter 16 that DO NOT WORK AS PRESENTED IN THE BOOK. I.E. listing 18.3 (because of inherent error form ch.16), listing 18.5, listing 19.4 ("floating point formats not linked-abnormal termination-). Some examples in the book are useless with the provided TC compiler but work OK with Visual C++ (4.2). So Mr.Zhang should have done his examples on TC lite rather than on Visual C++ which is not fully compatible with the one his readers are set to use. Example: listing 9.7 is a case in point. It is UNFAIR to them.

Some other review raised the point about Appendices (in PDF format you need Adobe Acrobat to read). I called MCMillan customer service and was told to use Appendices of the book loaded onto the accompanying CD WHICH IS WHERE THE SOLUTIONS ARE. Saving on paper for publishing is what it is.

Answer to exercise 5 in ch.19 given in the solution Appendix is wrong because it is based on listing 19.7 referred to above. There are also some missing function declarations that make examples unexecutable.

Overall, the book is good if one wants to learn how to incorporate ancient wisdom with modern computers (each chapter has a gorgeous selection of proverbs). Overall I feel I did not waste my money simply because the way the book is presented forced me to struggle harder to get to the bottom of problems. It feels good to know that you can troubleshoot on your own the material done by a "masters degree in physics and a [busybody] on solid-state lasers, programming, etc" such as Tony Zhang is stated to be.

But had I known this ahead I would still not have bought it. It is not worth the money it costs to me. A good introductory book on C is a book like "Programming in C" by Stephen Kochan 2/88 (ISBN# 067248420x). It is HASSLE-FREE!

Although the book is certainly not supposed to be a 24-hour book (it took me way more than that), it is VERY well writen. Each section follows easily from the previous one, and all problems emphasize on the structure of the given examples. One negative thing: The Appendices were missing. I had to call the publishers to send them to me via email, as an attachment. In general, if you are just starting C this will help you as nothing else. But it is good for referencing too, I find.

I'm learning C programming by reading Tony's book. And I found the book is not bad at all. In fact, the book starts with some easy materials, and step by step, leads the reader to relatively deep area in C. Of course, the title of the book is a little bit tricky. Don't expect you can learn C in 24 hours. Also, you need to have an ANSI C compliant compiler to compile those sample programs in the book. The enclosed Borland TC compiler is an old version that is not 100% ANSI C compliant. To be fair, I think the book is a clearly-written, well-organized book for a serious beginner.

I got this book thinking that I could learn c in 24 hours. Instead I got drastically frustrated with it, learned very little, and wound up getting a good book like Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder in 21 days. Tony should have explained how pointers and references are used in the real world.

I brought this book to learn c not maths!!! I was very disappointed with his pointers section. And the bitwise operators section is very vague. And to anyone that's setting out with programming don't learn c it's hard and not as powerful. Learn visual basic, visual c++ or JAVA. This bok only covers the basics too so you won't be able to make complex programs and it also doesnt have anything on writing windows programs in c so if you want windows programs dont buy this book!!!

-KaMiKaRz

Only two words, "Very Good" to learn