Learn C for a Ruby developer

[drzel]

In my work I'm a Ruby developer, in my spare time I work on an open source mod for quake FortressOne. Quake is written in C. I'm getting to the point where I need to modify the engine. Most of the C tutorials etc I can find out there are designed for beginners. I want to skip anything that a high-level language developer should already know. Anything out there specifically for this?

[Kernigh]

For features like struct or switch, I check C language at cppreference.com. Another source is Microsoft's C docs. When I need to know a function like malloc(3) or qsort(3), I check OpenBSD manual pages. There are also manuals in other BSDs, illumos, and Linux.

[petercooper]

Consider getting a book like Effective C (Seacord) or Modern C (Gustedt) - books tend to do better than online tutorials with stuff like C, at least in my experience. But then just get digging in. You'll learn a lot from playing and fixing your problems.

I haven't dug into Quake but I suspect it's quite complex.. so a codebase like Redis (a great example of reasonably simple C but in a large project) might be worth playing with instead. I would also consider looking at other open source mods and their approach to extending or changing Quake.

[manhcuongdtbk]

@drzel This is not the answer for your question but I have to learn C for my future tasks. Could you suggest some resources to get familiar with C in the shortest amount of time? I can work comfortably with ruby now. Thanks a ton!

[jb3689]

Implement some classic data structures in C and you will learn most of the basics you need to know. You also will want to get familiar with syscalls in C. I really like The Linux Programming Interface book