I taught myself C/C++ when I was around 13. I already knew most of the concepts through my experience with Pascal, including pointers, which are harder to use t

I taught myself C/C++ when I was around 13. I already knew most of the concepts through my experience with Pascal, including pointers, which are harder to use than to understand. What I did have trouble with was Windows as I just couldn't figure out the API. What solved it for me was one of those old 'Game Developers' series of beginner's books. It gave detailed instructions on for a 'hello world' Windows application. After that, it was pretty easy to get the hang of it. I don't use C much anymore (haven't since Highschool.) When I do, it's with GCC and I and the environment is still the hardest part. Moral of the story being that C is pretty easy. I learned it with some very basic references. The hard part, supposedly, is pointers, and those are much harder to use than to understand. Basically, everything is done through them, without the usual abstractions that you would get with say, Java. You mainly just have to make sure you always have the right number of asterisks and ampersands. One book I can suggest is Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens, (revised version) which gives a very through introduction to UNIX from a C perspective. C is interesting in that it is almost a different language depending on which system you write it on and you'll spend more time learning system calls and UNIX paradigms than C syntax and pointers.