I am contemplating a aquisition of a C tutorial so that I might start
bossing my PC around, instead of the other way 'round. While in the book
store with my mom, I saw a rather thick book called "Learn C in 21 days"

 My question is: What else do I need to do this? (In terms of software/
hardware)
 I did learn radio theory in a little more than 3 yrs, so I can focus my
energies on this, But do I need to go to school as well? 

 I am truly lost on this subject, and before wasting precious money on a
book that I cannot use, I am seeking the advice of you, the more wiser
contingent of the micros conf (shameless attempt at flattery)

16 responses total.

There's a guy in the UK who's been passing around a C tutorial.  I also
believe there's one on Victor Volkman's BBS (the name escapes me right
now).  You might want to check there first.  Also check Jemmie's BBS to
see if there's something there.

Do you know any other languages?

 No. I know some basic, and Spanish ;) 

  You might think about trying to learn pascal, first--its a lot nicer
language to learn, and with a copy of Turbo Pascal, you can do pretty much
anything you could do with C....

 Do I need to buy software as well as a book? I am in the dark about all
this stuff.

Re #4 - No, no, he should learn C.  That way, he can use it on Grex,
too, and get the most out of his membership.  >8)

Come to think of it, we have a Pascal compiler online too...

Jim, I'd recommend calling the HAL 9000 BBS, 663-4173.  They have
several tutorial programs for DOS machines, most of which I highly
recommend.

C is more powerful than Pascal but some of the fundamental concepts of C
can be difficult to grasp if you do not know another language fairly well.
I knew BASIC, Pascal, Fortran and some assembly before I learned C, and 
now I am what is known as a "C Bigot" as depise other languages because C
gets the job done better. Pascal may be a better language to learn first,
however. For me, learning Pascal also made me appreciate some of the
weaknesses of Pascal which C cures and it made me appreciate the power of C.

  Is it possible to find a compliler, cheap? 

 I downloaded something called Adventures in C which looks to be pretty
good, but they want you to have a compiler, and I don't know where to
get one. I don't want to use Grex's per se, rather, I'd like to have this
on my machine so I don't tie up my mom's phone.

suggestions?

If you have a 386 or 486 machine, you can use djgpp (the port of the
GNU C compiler).  I have it running on my 486.  It's free and relatively
easy to set up (though it takes up a fair amount of space).  Since it's
a port of Unix compiler, there are no bells and whistles, no GUI, etc.
  I also found a C compiler on the net called PCC12C.ZIP, though from
what little I remember of it, I didn't care for it much (mostly since
I already had gcc running).  Can't even remember if it was freeware or
shareware. 
  Djgpp is available on barnacle.erc.clarkson.edu (128.153.28.12) in
/pub/msdos/djgpp/.

  I bought this thing from Jurassic Park Computers (we sell only dinosaurs)
;) Is there anything for the XT? or is that something that's Not Possible (tm)

I think one of the commercial C compiler companies released an earlier
version of their product as shareware.  Call HAL 9000 (663-4173) and
poke around.

That pcc12c.zip that I mentioned in :9 is the "Personal C Compiler"
and is shareware ($30).  It is based on the DeSmet C compiler and
is compatible with DeSmet C v2.51.  It says it runs on 8088/8086
computers with at least 256K RAM.  You are limited to 64K of code +
64K of data.  Other than that, I don't know much about it, or how
DeSmet C performs relative to other compilers.

DeSmet C is actually pretty good.  At Northern Tel, they used it for 
some in-house projects.  Got get 'em, Jim.

Re #12 - I have used the PCC compiler, and would highly recommend
*against* using it.  It can't handle all standard C declarations,
and I find it just plain annoying.  The PCC compiler is what convinced
me to do all of my C programming on Grex.  >8)

That was the other option I was going to suggest.  If you use the C
compiler here, you get to learn some Unix as well.  :)

You'll also get to use a full ANSI C compiler (GCC) on Grex.  Most of
the PD and free compilers for DOS are fairly old, and thus are not ANSI C.

BTW, for others who have a 386 or 486, I *highly* recommend DJGPP.
This is a full 32-bit port of GCC 2.4.1 to MS-DOS.  It requires a 386
or 486 because it runs under a DOS extender, as well as running your
programs under a DOS extender.  It eliminates many of the limitations
of programming under DOS ("malloc(50*1024*1024)" works just fine, for
instance).  You can also use it with the Emacs 19.19 32-bit port to
DOS, for a programming environment that's very Unix-like.

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