32 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
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title: "Book Review: \"C Programming: A Modern Approach\" by K.N. King"
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date: 2023-12-16T16:21:04-05:00
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toc: false
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images:
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tags:
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- Reading
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- Computer Science
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- Programming
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---
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**Note**: This isn't going to be a very long or comprehensive review of this book, but I figured it might make sense to post some of my thoughts on it regardless.
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"C Programming: A Modern Approach" by K.N. King made quite a nice read. Very insightful in some aspects, but a few bits were a tad cryptic ("few" might be an over-exaggeration, it was mostly just the bitmasking section). It felt a lot more accelerated than K&R's famous "C Programming Language" text, which I definitely enjoyed. It was also significantly more affordable and available than K&R's book, which is certainly a major win for those reading this for school-related reasons.
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The syntax of C isn't too hard to grasp if you've programmed before, but the many developer patterns (King refers to them as "C idioms") and niche edge-cases that cause undefined behavior can be quite a monster to tackle as a learner. Luckily, King does a good job of informing the reader by dedicating countless pages to inform the student of these situations and how to handle them in the Q&A sections at the end of each chapter. I find this to be a quite refreshing improvement compared to K&R.
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I'd likely recomend King's book to anyone wishing to learn C, especially if you plan to take a Systems course in the future, or need to read a bit of C code for your work. I probably wouldn't recomend it to someone without programming experience, but then again I wouldn't recomend C for new programmers in general.
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#### Pros
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* Usually straight to the point, doesn't get on tangents
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* Affordable compared to other C texts
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* Contains basic information about languages like C++ in relation to C
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#### Cons
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* Lower level knowledge is required/useful after Ch. 10
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* Lacks additional material about advanced concepts like theading and optimization
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#### Coming Soon...
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My next writings will likely be something related to the [book](https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Perspective-3rd/dp/013409266X) I'm currently reading, or the history/legacy of UNIX and UNIX-like systems. |