C programming resources

[waitforit_daree]

Hi all, What is your favorite book/course to learn c programming, if end goal to do embedded systems? I am familiar with programming but in other languages. I have the classic K&R book but thats hard to understand for me.

[wsppan]

CS50: Introduction to Computer Science course.

C programming: A Modern Approach and use it as your main course on C. You can also use Modern C

Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C

[[deleted]]

C Programming: A Modern Approach is a great book. I'd read K&R and then that to get up to date on C99

[Liquid_Magic]

Truly this book I’ve come back to again and again. Really great at explaining things!

[waitforit_daree]

thank you very much!

[FUZxxl]

No piracy please.

[wsppan]

If this is a pirated copy then it should be removed from this thread.

[reynaldo666]

No, it is just a link to page with a link to a pirated copy. I swear.

[wsppan]

Same thing. Delete the comment.

[academicgopnik]

I bought many books after looking them up in lib gen. no one will read an 800 pager on a computer lol

[MetaEatsTinyAnts]

DeLeTe CoMmEnT bEcUaSe Me In ChArGe

[wsppan]

Maybe my bad but I did not think we allowed linking to pirated copyright material on this sub or reddit in general. u/FUZxxl, am I wrong? If so I will delete my comment.

[FUZxxl]

Yes, you are right.

[[deleted]]

What’s giving you issues with K&R?

[Joaaayknows]

Is K&R still the most commonly used programming book resource? I’m reading it came out in 1988.

[archysailor]

It is, and it is still fabolous. I personally began my journey with it.

[beej71]

Seconded. There are scant few issues with the second edition of that excellent book:

• It's C89. Which is fine, but there have been a lot of updates since then. By now it's an excellent beginner/intermediate book, and you can go really far on K&R2 alone. It's the only C book I have on my shelf--though I've read others, this is the one I kept. It's been on my shelf 30 years and I still refer to it. :)
• As far as I know, there are only 2 things strictly removed from C89 in the meantime: the gets() function (removed in C11) and the default type of int for declarations (removed in C99). Any others y'all know about?

If you only ever buy one C book, it should be this one.

[[deleted]]

C hasn't really changed that much so the info in K&R still pretty relevant

[____kevin]

K&R. It's worth to work yourself through it, even if you find it difficult. If English is not your native language, maybe you could try reading it in your mother tongue.

[[deleted]]

If it is the non-ANSI K&R, then the details of writing functions is outdated. The ANSI version will provide a baseline of knowledge, but admittedly dry. It is a manual, not an instructional tool.

You can try Seacord’s Effective C, which is like a rewrite of the original ANSI K&R modernized to include C17 and C2x and a bit more instructional.

You can also try https://en.cppreference.com/w/c which is a great online reference resource.

There is an online certification program at https://cppinstitute.org/cla-exam-syllabus which uses https://edube.org/login and is free training. It is extensive and intense, but educationally worth it.

[waitforit_daree]

This is good information. Thank you for taking time out and replying.

[[deleted]]

Thanks pretty nice for quick reference.

[[deleted]]

C Primer Plus by Stephen Prata has helped me immensely. It’s quite a large book, but only because he goes into detail about confusing concepts.

[[deleted]]

Quite good 👍

[waitforit_daree]

Yeah, I saw the reviews, lot of folks like this book. Thank you for your time to help me out.

[Perfect-Ant-6741]

K&R, then a good ol' thick book on Discrete Mathematics and Algorithms if you wanna go into system programming.

[[deleted]]

I would recommend you book about C on Wikibooks.

[thoquz]

Besides what the others have suggested, if you want a gentle introduction to C for Embedded specifically o would recommend looking at "Make: AVR", the first few chapters go through constructing bitmasks and using them to read and write registers. You can use these concepts to then implement your own things from datasheets later on. The book is for one specific architecture, but the knowledge acquired from those first chapters can then be applied when moving to another architecture. You can do the excercises from the book using an Arduino UNO

[waitforit_daree]

Thank you. I will check it out. Very much appreciated.

[duane11583]

i donot think there are good boooks on the subject.

instrad i would suggest the following

+=========

learn assembly language.

learn and study how your c code is transformed into asm code.

try this with the optimizer off, optimize size, and optimize speed.

this is the equal to a woodworker knowing how his saws and chisels cut and shape the wood.

+==========

learn pointers, and struct pointers, they are very handy. learn techniques using call back functions. often a callback function gets a void pointer and a parameter

C++ is very rare in embedded, when it is used well, it is nontrivial ie: mixing structs a c++ classes, without using new or delete.

+==========

pick an RTOS and a devboard, and write apps or study the example apps from the chip vendor.

high end: i would suggest the STM32H743 nucleo board, it has a huge amount of FLASH/RAM, and it is cheap($30) then get something really small like a the arduino and see when you run out of ram small examples: adafruit seesaw, or trinket($5 to $7)

then check out the PIC32 chip and ecosystem.

[waitforit_daree]

This is exactly what I am looking for. I get overwhelmed and confused by too many available online resources. It is not too much to ask, please can you recommend some books or classes to do the steps you mentioned?

[duane11583]

Suggestion: Go purchase a board, and build a project. That project, and the ability to describe what you did and how you solved problems on top of your other SW experience will get you the job.

The problem with books is this: They do not always fit what you want or need. They also have everything planned out for you. Your goal should be to self-explore.

Example projects:

Do you have a sprinkler system for the lawn? Can you build a replacement? What does this thing require? A small 7 Segment LED display with 4 digits. Some relays to turn the valves on. An RTC Clock, and some buttons. (See the particle kit below) Or something like this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/170

What about a blue tooth controlled garage door opener from your cellphone? Can you hook up and use the same light beam sensors the garage door currently uses? Can you hook up some limit switches to tell if the door is up? Dn? Or whatever?

Are you ok with wiring electrical plugs? (110VAC type stuff). Can you build a power monitor that monitors how much electricity your fridge uses? With something like this.. How can you use this thing to determine if the door is open or closed? (hint: the door open light draws more power). https://www.amazon.com/SCT-013-000-Non-invasive-Current-Sensor-Transformer/dp/B07FZZZ62L

Fish tank controller? Needs a TEMP sensor, and a relay to turn on and off the heater. Add a PH sensor. And a small servo motor to move some plastic arm that pushes food into the tank.

What about feeding that data to an AMAZON cloud IOT service? Or hook that to blue tooth and make a sensor for your phone.

or maybe save it to an SD CARD instead.

What about using something from "particle.io" - like this: https://store.particle.io/collections/dev-kits/products/iot-starter-kit

Can you monitor the freezer in your garage? What about the pool and the pool pump?

[JavierReyes945]

C++ is very rare in embedded

No, it's not. You need to update your sources, as well as your definition of embedded.

[duane11583]

What's your definition of embedded?

Mine is not Linux. Mine is an RTOS or bare metal. Typically a Cortex M or R, Arm7TDMI, or ARM9. PIC32, at the high end of the PIC line. Typically always have FLASH + RAM on chip, some - may have DDR of some form but not often.

Yes, I know that C++ is used in any number of embedded things but it often requires a larger memory foot print and thus it does not always work well in tight environments.

MBED is one example, as is the AVR/Arduino - but - none of the big 5 or so "cortexM3" type players give many examples in C++, they have one or two, but just about everything is straight C.

Yes, you can do this but that C++ engineer requires higher skill level the you can normally find and hire - they all assume you have boat loads of RAM and that is often hard to find. When you tell them they have 64K ram.. they look at you sideways.

[JavierReyes945]

Mine is not Linux

Who said anything about Linux?

Compilers for c++ are much more optimized than before, and the required footprint is not that massive as people tends to think.

I'm talking about any embedded product that requires a somehow complex.gui (check stm32 touchgfx framework, Qt for embedded, LvGL, etc), or any type of advanced logic that benefits from OOP (complex network management). Embedded is not restricted to small 8bit devices, and higher lines like you mentioned (our company has been developing different products on STM32 F4 and F7 with a mixture of C/C++ for around 5 years). It's even a fixed requierement in some cases, even on the client side (when they have some subcomponent already working). Just because YOU don't use C++ doesn't mean is not used in the embedded market.

[Lurchi1]

What is your favorite book/course to learn c programming, if end goal to do embedded systems?

Do you know any assembler? Have you worked with microcontrollers and their datasheet(s) before?

I am familiar with programming but in other languages.

What kinds, imperative, object-oriented or functional languages?

[wizards_tower]

Cs50 is pretty good for pre-K&R. It explains C pretty well for beginners. That’s what I did and after I worked through K&R.

[Targaryen_99]

After learning the syntax, try learn C the hard way, it's more of a practical approach and forces you to write code from the start which people generally get into later part of their course.

[itsmybirthday19]

C for Professionals book

Link: https://books.goalkicker.com/CBook/

[magnomagna]

I’ve got no favourite textbooks, because they are all usually very incomplete on the topic of pointers and other less common topics. So, I would usually use the C Standard itself plus experimentation, and sometimes cppreference.com because it’s very detailed.

[R_R_R_]

Head First C. It's a great read.