#C Beginner
5 messages in this thread
{Help-
I'm struggling to learn just the basics of C. It seems I've been
doing nothing but spinning my wheels. Do people really go out and spend
hundreds on a compiler BEFORE they even know the language? If not, how do
they learn? I've read a few C books and I've absorbed about as much as I
can without actually doing any programming.
I downloaded ZC thinking that maybe this would be a smoother way to
go. After pulling out my hair and soliciting help on this message base MANY
times, I could not produce a single executable program of the simplest
possible form.
I TRIED to download PDC; unsuccessfully MANY times from a local
BBS. For whatever reason I was not able to obtain the file in any form that
would extract. Maybe PDC would have been the answer, maybe I'll never
know.
Then, as I was losing hope, I caught wind of DICE by Matt Dillon.
After searching around a bit, I was able to find and secure the archive.
After unpacking the file, with some help(thanks Jim), I found myself
looking at a mountain of files. This monster was over 200 files huge! ZC
was just a speck compared to this.
What now? If only the docs read as easily as any of the C books
I've been reading! I know Matt caters more to the more experienced user.
And that's certainly his perogative. Isn't there anybody out there who can
help me get going? Surely there's someone who's been this road before. I
don't want to write awe-inspiring masterpieces (yet), I just want the most
meager start.
Thnx
Steve
The longest journey begins with a single step, grasshopper.
C is made up of lotsa files. There's no real way around it. Learning the
language means learning why you use #include to patch different header
files into your main file. A tiny-C that didn't need a bunch of header
files wouldn't teach you anything more than the rudiments of syntax.
Have you written your first C program using DICE yet? This is the one that
goes
#include <stdio>
main() { printf("Hello, World!\n") ; }
What make DICE so very good for a beginner is that the library sources are
included. Don't give up hope!
Yes, people do pay big bucks for a compiler before they know the language.
C is not an easy language to learn, but hang in there. One suggestion, try
calling the LBBS (Lattice Bulletin Board Service) at 1708-916-1200. Just
about any question you might want to ask can (and will) be answered by
people who have gone through the same thing you are now. For now, just keep
downloading and looking at how other people go about doing what you want to
do. Ask Questions ! There is no such thing as a dumb question!
Good Luck,
Tom
P.S. Leave me a message on LBBS if you have any specific questions. Direct
it to Tom Dolan in the Amiga Section.
exit
You might try looking for NorthC it is on Fred Fish Disk #340. It comes
with BLINK (Linker) and A68K Assembler, plus all of the include files along
with extensive documentation that can be read with a click on the
workbench. It all fits on a single floppy disk. I use the MEMACS on the
Extras disk for creating my source (which it recommends, but any text
editor will do). There are plenty of examples to get started with.
NorthC (an upgrade to zc) is also on CI$ in LIB 1, along with the latest
release of PDC (supposedly Lattice compatible), and DICE (Matt Dillon's C
Compiler). A plethora of public domain Cs.
BobS
"Stupidity is a capital crime …"