Recommendation for a text

From	John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Recommendation for a text
Date	2012-03-05 05:21 -0800
Organization	http://groups.google.com
Message-ID	<17597176.384.1330953683846.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynca15> (permalink)

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Greetings,

I teach math and computer science (though mostly math) at a small liberal arts college. Because of our smallness we don't have a huge course offering. To compensate, we have a grab-bag "special topics course" where we cover different topics each semester based on student's and/or professor's interests.

Next fall I will be running a special topics course with the title "Modern C Programming". The motivation for the course is that currently our CS students are exposed to C++, Java and a smattering of other languages (e.g. Lisp in an elective AI course) but no C per se. While in principle they learn some C naturally in the course of learning C++ they really don't learn all that much about things like pointers, malloc, and the safe handling of C-style strings and they definitely don't learn anything about C99. The proposed class is intended to give a serious introduction to C to students who have a working knowledge of either C++ or Java. This will allow me to blow through the basic syntax of expressions, loops, etc. in a couple of weeks and to spend the bulk of the semester on aspects of C which are different from Java and even C++.

My question is - what would a good text be? My first tentative choice was King's "C programming: a modern approach", but I have also been looking at Kochan's book "Programming in C". More recently I have been toying with the idea of using K&R. On the one hand that seems on the face of it like a poor choice for a course called *Modern* C programming. On the other hand - it *is* a classic and seems to hit the right level of difficulty (a course for students who already know at least one programming language). My main question is - does the merits of K&R outweigh the disadvantages of the lack of coverage of C99? I could of course supplement K&R by e.g. O'Reilly's "C Pocket Reference" which covers the C99 material. Where I'm at right now is that my heart says to go with K&R but my head says go with King (or Kochan). The bookstore wants a decision on my part sooner rather than later.

Also - I am open to ideas about projects for the students to work on. One idea that I had was to concentrate on the Mandelbrot Set. Towards the beginning of the semester they could have a program which just prints to the command line e.g. with '*' for points in the set. Later on they could write it to a portable bit map text file. Even later they could write it to a .bmp file in which they have to get the header and the byte-alignment correct. Finally, I could have them rewrite it in C99 with e.g. the complex-number type and variable-length arrays so they don't have to hard-wire in the size of the bitmap. This topic of course reflects my interest as a mathematician. I have less ideas when it comes to straight computer-science applications (although Jacob Navia's idea about a hex-dump utility for pedagogical purposes caught my eye).

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

-John Coleman

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Recommendation for a text John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu> - 2012-03-05 05:21 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2012-03-05 15:27 +0100
    Re: Recommendation for a text Kleuske <kleuske@nowhere.net> - 2012-03-05 20:09 +0000
      Re: Recommendation for a text John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu> - 2012-03-05 12:29 -0800
      Re: Recommendation for a text ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-03-07 06:19 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu> - 2012-03-05 12:37 -0800
      Re: Recommendation for a text "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-03-05 21:33 +0000
  Re: Recommendation for a text John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu> - 2012-03-05 06:52 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-06 10:50 +1300
      Re: Recommendation for a text jgharston <jgh@arcade.demon.co.uk> - 2012-03-06 09:43 -0800
        Re: Recommendation for a text China Blue Water Navy <chine.bleu@yahoo.com> - 2012-03-06 10:58 -0800
        Re: Recommendation for a text nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com - 2012-03-07 01:38 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com - 2012-03-06 04:28 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-03-05 17:37 +0000
    Re: Recommendation for a text Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-03-05 18:15 +0000
    Re: Recommendation for a text Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-03-05 20:15 +0100
    Re: Recommendation for a text Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-06 10:55 +1300
  Re: Recommendation for a text Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2012-03-05 09:38 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2012-03-05 09:43 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text John Coleman <jcoleman@franciscan.edu> - 2012-03-05 12:41 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text ImpalerCore <jadill33@gmail.com> - 2012-03-05 14:09 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text Hans Vlems <hvlems@freenet.de> - 2012-03-05 15:07 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2012-03-07 22:27 +0000
      Re: Recommendation for a text JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2012-03-08 04:06 +0000
        Re: Recommendation for a text Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201203.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-03-08 13:09 +0100
        Re: Recommendation for a text Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2012-03-10 08:23 +0000
  Re: Recommendation for a text Gene <gene.ressler@gmail.com> - 2012-03-05 18:53 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2012-03-06 04:45 +0000
  Re: Recommendation for a text Luca Forlizzi <luca.forlizzi@gmail.com> - 2012-03-06 00:11 -0800
    Re: Recommendation for a text "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-03-13 13:09 +0100
      Re: Recommendation for a text "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-03-13 13:20 +0100
  Re: Recommendation for a text jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2012-03-06 15:29 +0000
  Re: Recommendation for a text Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2012-03-06 19:44 +0000
  Re: Recommendation for a text "Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> - 2012-03-06 14:03 -0600
  Re: Recommendation for a text jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2012-03-06 20:07 +0000
    Re: Recommendation for a text Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2012-03-06 15:53 -0800
      Re: Recommendation for a text Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2012-03-07 05:39 +0000
        Re: Recommendation for a text Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> - 2012-03-07 09:54 -0800
      Re: Recommendation for a text Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-07 20:33 +1300
        Re: Recommendation for a text Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201203.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> - 2012-03-07 10:29 +0100
          Re: Recommendation for a text Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2012-03-07 11:12 -0800
  Re: Recommendation for a text Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2012-03-07 12:24 -0800

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