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So I'm not a programmer by trade or hobby, I'm a hardware hacking and sysadmin type. I've dabbled with programming over the years just to try to get my feet wet

So I'm not a programmer by trade or hobby, I'm a hardware hacking and sysadmin type. I've dabbled with programming over the years just to try to get my feet wet, with "simple"/"easy" languages like Python, Lua, PHP, etc. I never really got into it and never really grasped the fundamentals beyond basic program flow (something I had already learned with Visual Basic in college 20 years ago). I saw this on HN a couple of hours ago and figured I'd give it a whirl out of boredom and something to do while dinner was in the oven. I've never touched C before, and while I understand its historical significance and the fact that it's a very low-level language, I was always told to never start with C because I'd never understand it. Now, I'm not claiming that I understand it to the point I can start writing my own programs, but I will say that the way the author presented this tutorial has built a confidence in me that if I keep pushing at it, I can actually learn to code in C over time. I got through the first chapter and I already have a fundamental understanding of how to manipulate characters and input/output on the command line. Thinking back to my dabbling with bash scripts in the past, I now more fully grasp what I was just guessing at with those. Granted, it helps that I did start with an understanding of variables, conditional statements, and other basic programming building blocks, but I am no longer intimidated by learning C and I am eager to finish this tutorial. If I still have that eagerness once it's over I'm going to continue learning C, as one of my favorite OSes (OpenBSD) is written in it and I'd love to understand more about how it works under the hood.

zikzak 6y ago
While I learned a little BASIC as a kid, my first programming language was C, in my 20s. I learned it using the Kernighan & Ritchie book. I can't even remember where I got a C compiler from. Probably a DOS freeware ftp server over dial up. I eventually got Linux installed (probably from a cd-rom included with a very thick book I bought in person at a book store) so I could use gcc. If I can learn it under those conditions, you can totally do it! You've got Stack overflow! I think all you need to really learn programming is a motivation. I was generating rendering instructions for some animation program at the time (ray tracing) and so it seemed like the best thing to do to get the job done. I feel in love.
ChefboyOG 6y ago
Seeing this comment made my morning. As someone who spent way too many years avoiding "hard" subjects that I'd "never understand," who now works in some of the headier waters of computation, I wish more people had this experience of being introduced to a "hard" subject in a way that clicked for them, so they could similarly realize how approachable it is/how capable they are Best of luck, and keep it up!

zikzak 6y ago

While I learned a little BASIC as a kid, my first programming language was C, in my 20s. I learned it using the Kernighan & Ritchie book. I can't even remember where I got a C compiler from. Probably a DOS freeware ftp server over dial up. I eventually got Linux installed (probably from a cd-rom included with a very thick book I bought in person at a book store) so I could use gcc. If I can learn it under those conditions, you can totally do it! You've got Stack overflow! I think all you need to really learn programming is a motivation. I was generating rendering instructions for some animation program at the time (ray tracing) and so it seemed like the best thing to do to get the job done. I feel in love.

ChefboyOG 6y ago

Seeing this comment made my morning. As someone who spent way too many years avoiding "hard" subjects that I'd "never understand," who now works in some of the headier waters of computation, I wish more people had this experience of being introduced to a "hard" subject in a way that clicked for them, so they could similarly realize how approachable it is/how capable they are Best of luck, and keep it up!