C: For Beginners
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For some reason, in order to invent a programming language (such as C), you have to have a crazy beard; a goatee won't cut it, and neither will a giant handlebar mustache. Although, giant handlebar mustaches do allow you to teach college students to program (or be a cop, or a news anchor, or a member of the Village People).
And perhaps beard size/craziness determines the power of your language as well. I don't know. What I do know, is that Dennis Ritchie, the inventor of C and co-inventor of Unix (alongside his buddy Ken Thompson, who strangely enough invented the B language, from which many of C's features came), has one of the weirdest beards imaginable. By the way, it isn't lost on me that the ratio of programmers to crazy beards in India is quite low.
The development of C took place at AT&T's Bell Labs (the same people who brought you the laser, Unix, the transistor, and this device that lets you make julienne fries) between the years 1969 and 1973. Since then, it has given birth to and influenced a number of other programming languages, including C++, D, Objective-C, Java, C#, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, and more.
Now that we have learned a little about the history of C and the importance of having a Santa Claus-like beard, or at least a beard big enough to do a beard-over with, we can start learning how to code in C. Before we do so however, I have to make several assumptions:
You have either a text editor, such as Notepad, and a compiler that you know how to operate or
You have an IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
If you are using an IDE, that you know your way around it (you know how to compile programs etc.).
You have a check for $10,000 with my name on it you will mail as soon as you finish reading this tutorial.
And at least a little beard stubble. Otherwise you don't stand a chance.
For the purposes of this tutorial we will be using Notepad and will be focusing strictly on coding. If you need help with compilers, there are many sites on the web that can help you.
Let's get started...
Next: Insert Obligatory First Program Here >>
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