A simple guide to learn C programming.
It's better to be able to write programs you would like to, instead of mastering every small details of the language on your first day.
1. Watch a C Tutorial Playlist on YouTube
Pick up any beginner-friendly C tutorial playlist - ideally which is short and simple. Don’t stress too much over finding the “perfect” channel. At this stage, your goal isn't to master every detail but to simply start writing and running C programs.
Focus on practical understanding.
-
Don’t worry about:
- Depth of concepts
- Minor mistakes or bad practices in the videos
- etc
Most YouTube tutorials are surface-level and may even have some flaws — but they’re visual and fast, which helps you quickly gain the ability to write code and see results. That early momentum is valuable.
Note: Don't go for extremely long courses thinking they will give you more knowledge. You will end up being overwhelmed and its much better to spend that much time on a quality book rather than a course/ playlist.
2. As you go through the playlist:
Try out the examples shown, change certain things and try to figure out the reasons for the output you get.
Ask google or Chatgpt for things you don't understand.
Focus on: To get this type of behavior I must do this or tweak this. Then try to figure out the reasons yourself. You’ll be surprised how much you learn just by debugging and tweaking code.
By the end of the playlist, you’ll likely be able to code simple things in C and have much more confidence.
You now have the ability to build and understand simple to intermediate programs even without understanding the why of everything. This is a valuable skill in programming :)
3. Build Small Projects
Have fun! Google simple projects and try to implement them. This helps reinforce what you’ve learned and shows you how to put things together.
Probably you can even build and understand more complex projects. However their is much more you can learn to get ahead of the crowd.
4.: Level Up with Books
You now have a good practical knowledge of the language. You may now focus more on the theory side of the language which is basically under the hood details, answers to why certain things behave the way they behave, etc. Books are great for this.
This stackoverflow post contains a good list of C books: The Definitive C Book Guide and List.
As you read more and more you will be able to take better and complex projects that you may have wished to develop.
5. Keep practicing and exploring
As you continue building projects or reading more advanced material, you'll naturally begin to understand what else you need to learn, where to find it, and which areas of computer science would help you. Your journey from here will vary based on what you want to build. Just learning C programming isn’t enough — for example, graphics programming may require knowledge of rendering techniques and math, while network programming will involve understanding computer networking. These are areas beyond just the C language, and exploring them will broaden your skills.
Why Not Start With a Book?
Good books are very lengthy! You would have to read lots and lots of pages and theories before you can actually start writing something useful beyond "Hello World". Also things can get overwhelming very fast due to the amount of information books have. This is often demotivating, exhaustive and you get a feeling of reaching nowhere. Also not fun at all.
The steps I told is basically a breath first approach of learning which I personally follow. You cover the breath first then dive deeper.
Note: To absolutely know the nuts and bolts of C or any programming language down to the machine level, you would require knowledge of other computer science topics such as compiler design, assembly languages, etc. Which is why I don't recommend depth first approach as you would get stuck in a rabbit hole and end up getting overwhelmed.
Source (my blog website): https://blog.insanelogs.xyz/wp-admin/post.php?post=40&action=edit
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