[Techtalk] C programming study group

[Alison Chaiken]

Deborah suggests:
> After you master the basics, I look at kernel sources to see how the
> language is really used.

Most C programs are not Linux kernel and the Linux kernel has many of
its own idioms.       I wouldn't recommend kernel code study to
someone who isn't specifically interested in modifying the kernel.
I have always studied the busybox sources, as we all understand what
the functions ("applets") in busybox (e.g "tail" and "date") do, but
the code is far simpler and less macro-infested than glibc.

I wholeheartedly endorse Bethany's comments about memory management.
 Probably the book to which she refers is the same one by Reese that I
recommended.

If I were starting on such a program of study, I would create a
project at github and learn to use git.    Mastering git is as big a
project as learning to write C, but any participant in a modern
project is going to be familiar with SCM, and git is far and away the
most popular.     The study group can then share code and perform code
review via the repo, as real project teams do.    The group will learn
a variety of useful skills incidentally that way.

Having said that, here's my repo:

https://github.com/chaiken/

There's nothing clever about this code, but a scan will illustrate
what I'm talking about.    I've pushed a copy of a few of my solutions
to van der Linden problems to the util-scripts repo.

-- Alison

-- 
Alison Chaiken
(650) 279-5600  (cell)             {she-devel.com, exerciseforthereader.org}
Some work of noble note may yet be done.