pete@othello.dartmouth.edu (Pete Schmitt) (11/15/89)
I will be teaching C at a small local college this winter and would like some recomendations for a good teaching text for the C programming language.
das@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (David Smallberg) (11/19/89)
In article <16945@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> pete@othello.dartmouth.edu (Pete Schmitt) writes: >I will be teaching C at a small local college this winter and >would like some recomendations for a good teaching text for the >C programming language. I've had great success with Miller, Larry and Quilici, Alex, The Turbo C Survival Guide (Wiley) adapted from their earlier Programming in C (Wiley) Unlike a lot of books, which delay pointers for as long as possible, these books early on get into pointers and their intimate relationship with arrays. I've noticed that people given an early presentation of pointers are comfortable with pointers much sooner than those who don't learn them until later. K&R is a fine book for people who have a solid programmer's background -- i.e., who know something about programming language implementation, data structures, etc. K&R tend to state a fact once, assuming the reader has the background to catch it and understand its implications. From what I've seen when I've taught C, most people in academia and industry don't have that background in enough depth to appreciate K&R when they first learn C; only later do they decide they like the book. -- David Smallberg, das@cs.ucla.edu, ...!{uunet,ucbvax,rutgers}!cs.ucla.edu!das