Bashing My Head Against The Wall

I'd say i have an "OK" grasp of C. I got my start on my Mac, but have since tried a few things on the PC. The basics (integers, longs, etc) are no problem. Its how to get the last 1/4th or so of the language into my grey matter that's tough.

For those of you that program in C/C++, how did you get your start? What really helped you learn the language? Did you struggle alot, or were you born to code? I've borrowed quite a few books from friends, but none of them have gotten that bulb above my head to light up.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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I apologize for the above ramblings.

Epox 8KHA
1.4ghz TBird (default clock)
VisionTek GeForce 3
WinXP Pro
256 Megs 2100 DDR

I'm graduating in May with a BS in Computer Science. Got my start programming with my first class in C++ Spring semester of my freshman year. I can't remember the name of hte book we used, but it was really helpful. Between my summer job and whatnot that summer I spent a lot of time just programming for the hell of it. When I got to the second part of the course it was a cake walk.
Since that class I'm moved on to Visual Basic and Perl. Have some experience wiht Cobal. But that was just a class I has to knock out of the way. It's not even a requirement now at the university that I attend. Another help was starting my junior year I got a job in the Programming Assistant Lab. We help students writing their programs. Mainly C/C++, but it did help. I guess what it comes down to, is that you have to put time and effort into it to get something out of it.

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Windows System
Pentium III 1.0/133 | iWill VX133 Motherboard | 640mb PC133 Ram | 32 Meg ATI Radeon DDR | SB Live 5.1 X-Gamer | Promise Ultra IDE 66 | Intel 10/100mb NIC | 40 Gig Western Digital | 30 Gig Western Digital | Creative Labs 52X CD | Creative Labs 8x4x32 CDRW | Iomega 100 MB Zip | Antec KS280 350 PSU | 19 inch Envision EN980 | OS Win2k Pro

Linux System
Compaq Presario 5340 | AMD K6-2 400 | 256MB Ram | Voodoo3 2000 PCI | Sound Blaster 128 PCI | Linksys LNE 100 TX Nic

Since video card and sound card were intergrated Comcrap stuff, had to buy PCI. At least I had 3 slots ...

The book I learned with was Deitel and Deitel How to program C.

The thing that I learned with was homework programs. It is one thing to read a book and, it is another to write the programs....I felt like my professors knew what to ask us to make in order to learn. By writing the programs, we ran into certain problems. By finding out how to get around the problems, we learned.

And to answer your question...I was not born to program https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/.../2005/06/6.gif I spent a lot of time in labs writing programs...frustrated as all heck when things didn't work.


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Why Yes! I am a proud member of the SF Linux Hippy Club.

I think programmers are a certain breed of people. Very logical thinkers, perfectionists, etc... I know I love when a problem comes up and I am banging my head against the wall trying to figure it out, because when I finally do figure it out, I really feel like I accomplished something. You can read all the books in the world but if you never sit down and code, none of it will sink in. It takes many many hours/projects before that light bulb goes off in your head and you are able to quickly figure out minor problems because you see them so often. Practice makes perfect...

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My Rig

Milhouse: "Remember when your dog ate my goldfish and you lied to me and said I never had a goldfish? Then why did I have the bowl Bart? Why did I have the bowl?"

If you want to really learn C, THE book to get is "The C Programming Language" (ANSI C version) by Kernighan & Ritchie. And make sure you understand EVERYTHING in it fully, whatever it takes. Once you understand that book, C will become an extremely straightforward language. Of course, you'll still need to do more stuff to learn how to actually make something useful, unless you just want to make Unix command-line tools. https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/.../2005/06/5.gif

My one and only book on C programming was "Programming in C" by Stephen Kochen. It is a very methodical, slow-paced book that really helped. I have had only one programming class, self-study FORTRAN in my first term of my freshman year at college. It used punchcards and was close to useless. I have had to learn everything on my own. Since I was a math wiz I decided to get into computer graphics so all of my early projects were related to that. I made a fractal generator and then a spirograph program that were really fun. To me, the key is to dream up fun projects that you like and dive in. Just make sure that they are within your capabilities so that you don't get too frustrated and bag it.

FWIW, here are a couple of screen shots from those old programs. The page is for an old benchmark program that I wrote. It's really boring and doesn't do any graphics so don't bother with it unless you really want to.

Lastly, my favorite site for getting sample code and asking questions is http://www.codeproject.com. I have a collection of links to programming and related sites here.

Best of Luck !

It has been so long that I cannot even remember what book it was... C/C++ are difficult languages to understand without knowledge of the underlying concepts and structures that you are working with.

I always tell people that if they never learned to design procedural and/or object-oriented programs, they need to learn that before they jump into programming a language that is based on these concepts. You have to be able to manipulate the structures in your mind to be able to identify the best solution without attacking it using a brute-force method (which always makes poor-quality hack code)... Of course, I think of them in a completely abstract manner, but that doesn't seem to be an average gift/skill for many programmers.

The rest of the thread has gone toward this, therefore:
I am a natural hacker -- my personality traits and gifts are perfectly suited to computer programming.

In fact, I am so naturally inclined to it that I started programming (because I wanted to -- my parents still cannot understand the concept of HTML) when I was 6 years old..

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[This message has been edited by e_dawg (edited December 23, 2001).]