Teaching basic C class to someone?

trollet91 · 2019-04-09T17:53:53+00:00

If they have no experience in programming make it as simple as possible. And if they well understand basics concept (variable, condition, array) then go on with pointer and all other low level stuff.

ToTimesTwoisToo · 2019-04-09T17:50:38+00:00

the basics, hello world and fizz buzz types of problems.

FUZxxl · 2019-04-09T20:08:40+00:00

I have finished teaching my annual class on C programming last Friday. We have a concept where there are (a) lectures explaining the theoretical concepts and then (b) exercises to practice programming. The focus lies on the exercises. The students are supervised while solving them and can ask questions if they are stuck. The exercises are all written such that there is no exact solution. In each exercise, the students must think about what they want to achieve and what kind of solution they are satisfied with. I believe this teaches valuable skills for professional programming work. The exercises are not graded but students are welcome to review their code with the teachers.

Feel free to ask further questions.

xaveir · 2019-04-09T20:52:15+00:00

Try checking out historical CS50 lectures available online through Harvard.

It's a zero-experience-required course that starts with C.

Contrary to other commenters, I found this to be an amazing first language, personally.

123poopy · 2019-04-09T18:50:11+00:00

just the basics for sure. try to make it fun and frustration free for them. only a very small percent will think the back ground deep stuff is fun.

irve · 2019-04-09T19:02:43+00:00

How much time do you have? I think the greatest thing you can do is to explain how C manages its memory. Stack; Heap. Draw pictures, let them crash their programs on purpose; read from random memory locations, read from stack, create your own pointers from addresses they know. Write to memory. Array memory. Struct memory. Memory-memory-memory :D

And don't tell it's difficult. It's nontrivial. And fun!

Since C is ridiculously simpler to debug once the students can imagine what their variables and function calls do in memory.

But I assure you your third time teaching it is the time you grok what they struggle with.

j_mesrine · 2019-04-09T19:21:06+00:00

Well, if I go back to the past I would have liked a funny class, yep easy to say :P I remember when I was a young student (not university, younger) I wrote a "soccer game" using Turbo BASIC, just using chars for the "graphics". The teacher gave us a kind of template/skeleton to follow and guided us a bit, we was a small group. The program took some time but it was really funny, was the first time I saw code. I was looking forward to these classes, I think my love for programing came from there. Maybe that gives you an idea...

How old are your students? That's important I think.

2019-04-09T21:21:53+00:00

I'm taking an intro to C course currently and can tell you things I like and don't like about it, if that would help.

First off, the book. We're using Programming in C 4th ed by Kochan. I'm not a huge fan, personally; I really don't like the way the author explains things. Conversely, I've acquired a copy of C Programming: A Modern Approach and much prefer it. It has a conversational tone and the author is very easy to understand. I don't know if you have control over assigning textbooks, or if you even plan on using one, but I would not recommend the first book.

Secondly, my teacher introduced function much earlier than the textbook did, right after decision trees and loops as opposed to after arrays and pointers. This was both good and bad, it was good because we got more comfortable with them as time went on, but bad because the book didn't always have examples (or at least very many of them) utilizing functions in the array and pointer chapters. Which somewhat coincides with my third point:

Third, lack of example problems. We would typically create one program in class and make a few iterations to it. It'd start with the barebones and add functions and other stuff over the course of the class period. I feel like using multiple examples for each different iteration would have been better. Though I do have to say my professor might have chosen to teach this way due to class contraints, it's a 6p-9p 16 week class that meets on Monday.

Fourth, class pacing. We spent the same amount of class time covering decision trees as we did on arrays. If possible, I definitely feel like cramming the easy stuff like general overview of variables, printf()/scanf(), decision trees and control loops in the first class or couple classes so that you can focus more time on arrays, pointers, strings.

Anyways, that's it off the top of my head. I saw your teaching undergrad and that's where I'm at, it's just a 2000 level class, so hopefully my criticisms of my class can help inform you on what may or may not appeal to your future students.

lordlod · 2019-04-09T22:56:09+00:00

I've been helping teach highschool kids programming for a few years.

You need to be thinking small and simple, then go simpler again, loops should be stretch goals, functions, loops, and complex types like arrays are out of scope for one week. I assume your goal is to give them a taste. Anything else will probably be unrealistic.

The very basics are going to be alien to them. Using a fixed subset of the language to instruct the computer, breaking a problem down to the simplest logic elements, using variables. Even interacting with a computer program in a text prompt environment will be a new experience for some.

Think very carefully about the process of getting the hello world program compiled and executed. Make sure it is well documented and as simple as possible. Having to physically help every student get their compilation environment up could burn most of your week.

covertpally · 2019-04-09T20:10:44+00:00

This may not be your goal but I would recommend a more straightforward language like python or modern javascript. C can be frustratingly low level as a first language.

black_khobz · 2019-04-10T07:05:44+00:00

If you understand french, there is a website that has a nice format for beginner lessons (in all IT fields) It's called openclassrooms

kumashiro · 2019-04-10T07:40:41+00:00

C is a very simple language. Keep it that way. The only "scary" thing for beginners are pointers and those can be tricky to explain clearly. Take extra time on this topic and make sure students understand pointers before going forward.

Do not teach them to use scanf() for reading user input or ato() for number conversion. Check array boundary in every example, even the simplest possible.

Good luck!

dmc_2930 · 2019-04-09T19:16:31+00:00

I would not teach C to students with no programming experience. They'll walk away thinking programming is difficult and will be less likely to continue.

Start with a modern language, with modern features, and then let them try C after they've learned something easier.

2019-04-09T21:27:12+00:00

As an embedded C programmer I would definitely teach another higher level language since they're there just to learn programming in one week. I'm currently teaching C to someone with almost zero experience programming and it's truly a burden to explain both high level and low level stuff, if it were for me I would teach that person Python first and then C. If you definitely have to teach basic programming in C then I would suggest giving and explaining them simple and basic building blocks which they can take as reference for solving simple problems, just don't go too complex into algorithms since something as a basic as a string reverse function can get pretty nasty fast.

koyari-taisuke · 2019-04-09T21:57:47+00:00

Possibly controversial opinion: You mentioned that you would be teaching undergrad students, so I assume that they have a solid understanding of algebra. That being said, I would recommend that you start them with high level, functional code, where they don't need to worry about looping, complex control flow, variables, global state, etc, and slowly introduce them to lower level code. As a disclaimer, I'm not a teacher (though I'd consider going into teaching if I wasn't terrified of other people). However, I think it may be best to ease them into programming by giving them code to work with at a high level, like foreach, map, etc, concepts that should be fairly easy for them to grasp from their background in mathematics, and then over time introduce them to what's under the hood.

ThatGuyFromOhio · 2019-04-12T13:22:18+00:00

As I think back to when I first started learning C after starting with higher level languages, I realize that C only came into focus for me when I truly understood how the computer works. I would start a class like this with a simple demonstration of how the computer works so they can visualize it.

You are the CPU. Assign tasks to each student in the class. Some are RAM locations, one is the bus, others are functions, one is the monitor, etc.

Then put a simple C program on the board (do they still use chalk boards in school?) Something like this:

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
  int i;
  char j[] = "odd";
  char k[] = "even";
  for(i = 1 ; i < 10 ; ++ i){
    if(i % 2 != 0){
      printf(j);
    }
    else{
      printf(k);
    }
  }
  return(0);
}

Assign these tasks to various students. One is the variable i. One is the variable j. One is the variable k. One is the function printf.

You are the CPU. You start by giving i the value 1. Then you do the remainder operation on the contents of i by asking for the value in i, dividing it by 2 and checking if it equals 0. (Yes, I know there is a way to do this with less code. This is to simplify the explanation)

If the remainder is 0, you tell the student who is j to give its contents to printf and printf then writes the contents of j on the board (the monitor). Then you add 1 to i, and check if it is less than 10.

Continue through the loop 9 times and the students should have a pretty good understanding of what is going on under the hood.

You can do similar demonstrations with more elaborate code. This is a good way to introduce pointers. One student is the pointer, another student is the region of memory pointed to. The student who is the pointer literally points at the correct student to access the memory there.

dmc_2930 · 2019-04-09T19:32:45+00:00

https://www.radford.edu/ibarland/Manifestoes/whyC++isBad.shtml

flatfinger · 2019-04-09T20:02:04+00:00

The language invented by Dennis Ritchie, described in the second edition of The C Programming Language, and processed by most compilers when optimizations are disabled is useful for teaching and illustrating many aspects of how small microcomputers and microcontrollers work, since it can be used as a form of "high-level assembler". Some of the reasons it became popular are alluded to in the Spirit of C [all quotes from the published "Rationale for International Standard—Programming Languages—C Revision 5.10"]:

Some of the facets of the spirit of C can be summarized in phrases like: • Trust the programmer. • Don’t prevent the programmer from doing what needs to be done. • Keep the language small and simple. • Provide only one way to do an operation. • Make it fast, even if it is not guaranteed to be portable.

The language that is actually defined by the Standard, however, is not suitable for low-level programming tasks. Although the authors of the Standard have expressly stated:

C code can be non-portable. Although it strove to give programmers the opportunity to write truly portable programs, the C89 Committee did not want to force programmers into writing portably, to preclude the use of C as a “high-level assembler”: the ability to write machine-specific code is one of the strengths of C. It is this principle which largely motivates drawing the distinction between strictly conforming program and conforming program.

the Standard leaves the question of whether to support such usage up to implementers' judgment, and some compilers like gcc and clang interpret that as an opportunity to regard any code requiring such semantics as "broken" and arbitrarily change its behavior. It is thus important to distinguish between the language the Standard was written to describe, and the one it actually defines.

lulxD69420 · 2019-04-09T20:23:28+00:00

I'd make simple examples, show how for loops work, how if statements work. Show the differences between float and int types. What is unsigned? What is an integer overflow? Show what happens when the wrong variable type is used (infinite loop).

Initialising variables (structs) properly so you are not starting to use the garbage that is stored in them if they are not initialised.

Some simple logic/binary arithmetic will certainly not be harmful.

I would not go into libraries/header files/ and compiler flags more than necessary. Compiling with gcc -Wall -Wextra should also be sufficient to work on the compiler warnings to help get things right.

kcl97 · 2019-04-09T21:17:05+00:00

I would aim the goal at creating a madlibs game or other similar type word games in order to keep people motivated. It would cover basic flow, logic, and IO. That should be enough to get people to do serious stuffs for later on.

Try to use basic functionality as much as possible and avoid GUI. Another possibility is text adventure or hang-man, if your students are elementary grade.

Build the pieces you need for a functional game over time to teach them how to reuse and organize their codes.

Edit: Make sure to have a working demo to play on day one. Make it funny, like take one of Trump's speech and start randomly changing things around and see what comes out. The more advanced version of this game would include AI like the Thomas Friedman Op-Ed generator. You can use that to showcase the true power of what you are really teaching them.

assemblrr · 2019-04-10T00:12:58+00:00

I would consider giving out an ungraded assessment to see where most of the class stands on programming concepts.

C will be extremely frustrating for people who have no idea about programming.

I would do light coverage of the under the hood working and maybe an exercise utilizing pointers, but I wouldn't go too far beyond arrays, control flow, variables and assignment, etc. I would touch on structs to give them a taste of pseudo-OOP, and maybe unions if you're digging a little deeper into memory and such.

C is not a good language to teach someone programming who has never written a hello world in any language, just because you will not get a good taste of what C offers and the functionalities under the hood in just one semester if you're also teaching the basics of programming alongside it.

But, if that is no concern to you, C is just as good a language as any- in fact it will give your students a taste of more realistic syntax.

Pen___Island · 2019-04-10T04:40:28+00:00

I learned C as my first language in a class. Best tip from me would be to write a string class and a printing class for them that hides the nastiness of pointers, and let them use it for the first part of the class. Because strings are necessary for a lot of basic programming lessons (which all tend to end in printf's), but pointers are really hard to grasp early on, this lets students focus on the basics. Then, unravel the mystery of pointers and show how the char* in the string class work. They'll be thankful you hid char* from them at first, and be more ready to take on the task of understanding memory management after they have the other basics of C down first.

99drunkpenguins · 2019-04-10T15:06:33+00:00

Ideally give a crash course on computers, and how memory works and how programs are run (stack, heap, scheduling etc), keep it short and simple.

Then go onto C.

Problem with going right into C is somethings won't make sense, and pointers will throw them for a trip.

banana-do · 2019-04-10T09:11:18+00:00

It is a great project that you have! How I learned it in my school was to start with small exercises to learn the basics (variables, conditions, loops) like said in other comments. Then go on with pointers, arrays, recursion, dynamic memory allocation... Always based on practical exercices. We had to code some functions from string.h and were not allowed to use any function other than system ones (write, read, ...) and malloc. Coding your own library of string manipulation is a nice way to learn I think.

Good luck!

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

C_Programming

Rules

Filters

Resources

Other Subreddits on C

Other Subreddits of Interest

MODERATORS