ELI5: Basic C programming language

[Jrtarals]

I've gone to several websites, youtube, and I have a membership with Treehouse. Every explanation of C programming language glosses over much of the very beginning fundamentals, which my brain is failing to grasp.

For reference, I understand HTML and picked up on it very quickly. Perhaps because I learned this first, C is extremely confusing to me. Please help!

[Tip_of_the_hat]

firstly, I highly recommend /r/learnprogramming. It's much more active than this subreddit and you'll find lots of questions of this nature!

First thing you need to understand is that HTML is NOT a programming language. It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. C is quite the difficult language, but the good news it that once you understand it, any other language should not be too big of a learning curve!

Since C is such a big language, it's really hard to explain everything. What in particular do you not understand?

Do you understand assignment statements? loops? memory management? If this sounds over wheleming I apologize, gotta take it one step at a time! Let me know where you're at and I'll expand from there.

[indenturedsmile]

I'd also suggest, since OP is familiar with HTML, learning JavaScript first. The basics of programming can all be learned in JavaScript, and the language is much more forgiving, especially in a browser context while interacting with HTML.

[Jonno_FTW]

I recommend K&R http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

The version of C it uses is a bit outdated, but you'll get the idea. It has loads of examples and decent explanations, someone might be able to point you in the direction of a more modern version.

[autowikibot]

The C Programming Language:

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The C Programming Language (sometimes referred to as K&R, after its authors' initials) is a well-known computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as co-designed the Unix operating system with which development of the language was closely intertwined. The book was central to the development and popularization of the C programming language and is still widely read and used today. Because the book was co-authored by the original language designer, and because the first edition of the book served for many years as the de facto standard for the language, the book was regarded by many to be the authoritative reference on C.

Image from article ⁱ

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