21st Century C
O'Reilly
12 people recommended it in 7 threads, 2014–2022.
1 commenter pushed back on it — worth reading the threads.
What people on Hacker News said
Amazing! Finally a practical book about C. The modern tool-set available, the notable language features of C99 and C11, and a few in-depth projects to pull it all together. Great book.
The first half is the development environment, which is great, since there's some new stuff since I left, and lots of stuff I've forgotten or never knew.
In my opinion the book is mostly targeted at people that have had some C experience in the past (probably long ago in school) and have since moved on to newer languages.
Just a FYI for anyone looking to get it - make sure you get the latest edition (currently 2nd edition) as the first had a lot of issues which they fixed in the 2nd edition thanks to good feedback.
Besides the treatment of modern standard C, I like that it treats the C development and distribution environment as a first class subject.
I liked comment about manual memory management ("This memory model is why Jesus weeps when he has to code in C") and on page 151 in features table "Jesus weeps", made me smile.
One of the greatest non-free books, IMO, is 21st Century C and I cannot recommend it enough.
Where it comes up
- Learn C Programming with Open-Source Books 2017 · 6 recommendations
- Ask HN: Best book to learn C in 2022? 2022 · 1 recommendation
- Good books for deep hacks 2017 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Books you read in 2016? 2016 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: Books you read in 2015? 2015 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What are the latest and greatest books on your favorite language? 2015 · 1 recommendation
- Ask HN: What's the best programming book you've read recently? 2014 · 1 recommendation