Comments on: Dipping into C

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 18:54:52 +0000

There are some really nice little tricks you can do with multidimensional arrays using pointers to grab slices or even pointer math to index through them in new an interesting ways. Especially interesting when you get the math wrong and write over something important.

By: Sharon J. Cichelli

Sharon J. Cichelli — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 21:53:36 +0000

@Nolan I agree; I can feel it happening already. Exhilarating! Thanks for the book recommendation.

@Frank My metaphor is a bit stretched? ;-)

@Zvolkov :) Now I am looking forward to it.

By: Zvolkov

Zvolkov — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 19:56:09 +0000

Wait until you learn how the arguments are passed on the stack and how virtual methods actually work.

By: Frank Quednau

Frank Quednau — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 12:43:56 +0000

Yeah, just don’t forget it can be quite difficult to make a peanut-butter sandwich with a samurai sword.

scnr

By: Nolan Egly

Nolan Egly — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 04:35:43 +0000

Have fun learning C! You will definitely grow as a developer and have a better understanding of what’s happening “under the hood” even if you never use it on a professional project.

I highly recommend “The C Programming Language” by K&R. It’s short, and gives a great tour of the language.

By: Sharon J. Cichelli

Sharon J. Cichelli — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:33:44 +0000

@Louis :)

@Chris Thanks for the encouragement and the “what’s next” suggestions.

By: Chris Patterson

Chris Patterson — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:56:51 +0000

Good for you!

C (and ultimately C++, if you can ignore all the template stuff that made the language overly complex and yet easier at the same time) are still the basis of most languages, since the base libraries are implemented in C/C++. Understanding how the language works with the operating system really clears up some “WTF” moments when trying to figure out why memory leaks in .NET.

If you’re in the mood for some real pain, learn COM next, since a lot of .NET delegates down to COM under the hood.

By: Louis Salin

Louis Salin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:51:26 +0000

You got the pointers right, as far as I can tell.

Wait until you get pointers of pointers, which could happen if you had an array of pointers. :)