Teach yourself C in 21 days

What Hacker News says

1. spapas82Nov 2022
   For me it was the book "Teach yourself C++ in 21 days" by Jesse Liberty. I know it has a funny title however this book allowed me to finally understand Object Oriented Programming.
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2. spapas82Nov 2017
   I totally recommend Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days by Jesse Liberty (I found it here http://101.lv/learn/C++/). It's a great book to learn not only the basics of C++ (which, since it is a rather old book may be not very good for this and you should probably learn C++ by using a more recent book) but, more importantly, the basics of OOP, i.e encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism/late binding. The animal examples are excellent and I actually use them even today when I want to explain to somebody these concepts.
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3. programminggeekMar 2013
   I am less concerned with tracks and more concerned with pacing. The problem with lumping everybody together is that nobody learns at the same pace. So, the pace is slowed to the minimum required to keep everyone moving forward. That is the effect of wanting no child left behind. In effect, progress for all is slowed by all to allow for progress of a few.

   If we allowed for a system where all students could learn at their own pace, test scores would go up simply for the fact that everyone would be allowed and encouraged to go further, faster. Also, many students could potentially learn more before they graduate or even have bachelor's level knowledge before the age they "go off to college".

   I was an "honors kid" and it was a little depressing to spend months every year re-learning what we learned the previous year and slowly creeping forward on the material the rest of the year. So, I taught myself the things I cared about at home and in my free time - I would read books like "Teach Yourself C in 21 Days" for fun. At one point I wanted to build my own operating system, so I was teaching myself Assembly... for fun.

   Obviously I'm a computer nerd, but people are nerdy about all kinds of things. Let the music kids go as far as they can in music, let the athletes go as far as they can with athletics. Let the writers write and the business people learn business. If schools nurture and encourage individualized learning, students will learn to excel in the areas that they care about.

   I was nerdy enough to do it on my own, most people aren't. School as I experienced it is basically broken.

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4. petercooperNov 2008
   This is "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" published by Sams and, I assume (apologies if wrong) is pirated in this instance. I own this book. It's pretty good. Uncool that piracy might be being supported here though..

   Reviews and such here: http://www.amazon.com/Sams-Teach-Yourself-Days-5th/dp/067232... (not an affiliate link)

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5. DavidPiperJul 2026
   When I was 11, I pulled a book off the shelf at the nearby library called "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days". I remember thinking the title was clearly nonsense, but if I could even learn a fraction of it, that would be pretty cool. We didn't have a computer at home yet, so I wrote out the exercises by hand.

   I think I got about a third of the way through. I knew (debatably) what inheritance was, that a Dog is an Animal, etc.

   School, university, and 10 years of career later across multiple stacks and companies, there's still a heap I don't know, but you can drop me in a lot of codebases and I'll figure it out.

   > So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days.

   True, but it DID change my life.

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6. micheljansenJan 2024
   This brings back memories! Back when I wanted to get into programming, I had no idea where to start. I found a book about C++ at the library and it was one of the only programming languages I had heard about before (little did I know!). I believe it was "Teach yourself C++ in 21 days" or something like that. It came with a copy of DJGPP on CD-ROM.

   Looking back it's amazing how much easier it is to learn stuff nowadays. The internet is truly a blessing.

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