I am taking an intro class on progamming in C, and I am completely lost.

Ambivalent

Hello all,

This semester I decided to take an intro programming class as an elective as I have always been somewhat interested in learning how to program, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to go about that. However, I have encountered a huge roadblock: I seem to understand the basics. I understand the syntax on a basic level (I think), but anything more complicated seems to go right over my head. One of the problems (again, I think) is that there just isn`t any practical work made available for me to practice with. For example, this week we went over manually tracing a program, program looping and the various statements. This is fairly straightforward, but other than an example for each-nothing else was provided. The only work provided by the instructor is the weekly assignments, which are graded. It`s frustrating.

Anyways, I`ve decided to take matters in to my own hands, and should be starting a weekly tutoring session on campus, which should help to some extent, but they are only a hour long and one day a week. Furthermore, I am worried it wont be good enough to keep my head underwater.

So my question is: Is there some kind of resource available online? or somewhere I could be directed to get myself on the right track?

thanks in advance....

Prime

Programming is more like a hands on skill then most people realise.

Get stuck into writing your own code asap. start small. a command line that does various maths until told to exit or the like. That should expose you to variables, loops, user keyboard input and functions.

Gdiguy

C is kind of rough as a first programming language, if you haven't ever had exposure to any programming before - it's a much lower-level language than something like Perl or Python, so you have a lot more stuff to worry about (memory allocation, etc) that higher languages don't have. Which in some ways is great - you learn a lot more about what's actually happening under the hood, and once you understand C going to almost any language will be easy... but if you're struggling with the general idea of programming as a language (which it really is, it's effectively trying to learn another language), having the additional pain of dealing with C can be even worse.

To me, the key with programming is to remember that at the core it's not a living thing, it's literally following a list of commands that you provide. Which means there's always a logic to what's happening - even when it seems like what's happening makes no sense, there's always a perfectly logical reason for what the output you're getting is, and so if you break down what you're doing into as small steps as possible and check the input and output at every step, you eventually can always figure out what is happening.

Tutorials are a great idea - the great thing about learning a language like C is that there's nearly infinite books, websites, etc that have tutorials, and they're all going to be based on the same language, so you can try a few and find one that you like and go from there.

jjae2123

Also, check out the programming thread: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/193143/programming-thread-sanitising-coffee-input-before-it-hits-the-back-end#latest

Coinage

Harvard's intro course is also in C, their videos might be useful.

Inquisitor77

It looks like if you do a Google search for stuff like "programming in c homework problems", there are several resources available that provide both the problems and their solutions. Many of them look like teacher-provided materials, which should hopefully be a good sign.

I would be surprised if the on-campus tutoring didn't have their own library of materials they could loan out to you as well.