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I don't agree with this sentiment. People learn different ways. I personally learn through trial and error, and explanations of things that I haven't been able

• jasonjei 7y ago
  I like the K&R book, but I think what really taught me the most about C was actually writing programs in C. And playing around with particularly interesting features like function pointers and OS library interaction such as dynamic memory allocation.
• WoodenChair 7y ago
  > I don't agree with this sentiment. People learn different ways. I personally learn through trial and error, and explanations of things that I haven't been able to "touch" yet don't help me at all. Learning through trial and error can be okay for custom problems that don't have well defined solutions. For simple problems, it's highly inefficient. Extreme example: if I want to print something to the console in C, I can use trial and error for a half-hour to try to understand the nuances of how to use printf(), or I can read for a few minutes a few pages in a book or an (good) online tutorial. Not only will I learn faster, I will also learn best practices. My experience has been that people who are really against learning through books/tutorials tend to have short attention spans. Which is okay—books don't work for you. But for people who do have the ability to sit and read, it can be much more efficient than struggling through trial-and-error. Somebody has already solved your problems, and they can tell you in a few pages how you can solve them too.