C Programming Language (2nd Edition)

Brian W. Kernighan

01st April 1988

C Programming Language (2nd Edition)

Brian W. Kernighan

C Programming Language (2nd Edition)

Learning C

15th June 2010

This is the perfect book for anyone wishing to learn C. Written by he creators of C, it covers all the features of the language systematically with many examples and programming exercises. This book is well organized and succinct enabling it to function as a good reference manual for the C programming language.

The C Book

01st June 2010

Everything to be said about this book was already said by many. Then, why do I bother to add one more? Because this book deserves five *****, not ****1/2.

I picked up this book in fall 1989 from a Software Etc store. That was the luckiest moment in my career. I was just assigned with my first C programming project with no opportunity to be trained. So, I decided to train myself. After browsing a few available C books, I chose this book. It looked professionally written, and the concise volume attracted me (I did not have much time to learn). I began reading that night and, within an hour of reading, I was fascinated. I already had 8 years of experience in mainframe programming languages: FORTRAN, PL/I, and mainly Assembler. But, since I had no computer science major and no PC or Unix programming experience, it was my first encounter with C. The concise, mathematical-formula like C language format shocked me. I kept on reading for several hours each night, skipping a few hard-to-read chapters, such as Unix System Interface, Reference Manual, and Standard Library. So, I only needed to read about 170 pages out of 270 pages. It took me about 6 or 7 days.

Yes, the book does not even teach how to compile. It didn't matter. Our mainframe C compiler was yet to be installed and my first PC was built years later. So, I had nothing to do other than lying down on my sofa and reading pages after pages, highlighting some interesting phrases. That helped absorbing the entire contents in short time with no interruption. How to compile was learned several weeks later when we finally had a C compiler available. By that time, I already had a good knowledge on C and was even able to give advices to others who were luckily sent to an expensive C training class but still unable to understand.

This is one magical book - a technical book that is 270-page short and is still perfect for a life time companion, a book that fits well with every skill levels: beginner, intermediate, and expert. The chapters I skipped as a beginner became meaningful later and the concise Standard Library in Appendix B has been referenced over and over. Today, my colleagues call me a C guru sometimes. I'm not entitled to it at all, but I consider myself a sort of C expert. This is the only C book that I still references whenever I have a doubt.

The authors of this book are also the creators of the C language and the Unix operating system. There was a rumor in the Internet that the creators admitted Unix, C Hoax that they created them out of parody to be as complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual user's frustration level and set the computer science progress back 20 or more years. Hoax or not, I would like to excuse them, for they created such an exemplary book like this. This book must be an important reason for their success.

Yes, the price tag may be relatively high for the book of this size. It cost me $35 twenty years ago. It could be equivalent of about $80 today. Its current list price is $60, and Amazon offers it $39 today, nearly the same price as 20 years ago. What a bargain! Besides, who can complain about the price when one tiny book can make a guru out of you for the rest of your life? You could even trade a programmer's soul for it.

Alas! I wish I had the same luck with the C++ language. It took me as many YEARS, rather than DAYS, and numerous books before I reached a comfortable level in C++ language and OOP. I highly respect Stroustrups' book, The C++ Programming Language, but it is 900 pages long, packed with overwhelming number of features. It was beyond my concentration limit to finish the C++ book in one period, and, while I was learning new, I was also losing what I learned before - it was never close to my experience with The C Programming Language.

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