Effective C: An Introduction to Professional C Programming

Bottom line: Buy this book if you're doing work with C. You'll be a better programmer, more deeply understand C, and write better more secure code if you follow this advice.This book is close to a modern K&R (though I still love K&R). You'll get excellent writing, a complete treatment of C and the Standard Library with all the expected code snippets and examples, and tons of priceless knowledge about the behavior of C and its toolchain.Using this book we can have fewer insecure C programs and enjoy C for many years to come! C does not constrain the programmer and lets you interact with the machine and do what needs to be done. But this power comes at a price -- the programmer must understand this power and learn to use it well and safely. This book will get you there.A very well done book by a world class C expert. At $45-$50 it's not cheap but worth every single penny. I predict this will become as well loved and worn as my K&R book.

I'm a professional programmer. I bought this book to refresh myself on the C language. I spent 3 years coding in C but haven't coded pure C since 1989. I coded in C++ from 1989 to 2005. I've spent the last 17 years in various high-level back-end technologies. I'm interested in doing some embedded programming using microcontrollers, so I wanted to refresh myself in C.I'm halfway through this book and it has been a great refresher for me.I agree with other reviewers. This book is targeted at people who already know how to code and are familiar with low-level and systems programming concepts. This is not a book for people who are new to programming.Side-note: I'm planning to check out Zig once I've gotten comfortable with C for microcontrollers.

The author does a magnificent job. The book is easy to read, and dense with important detail. Even if you are a programming expert, you will learn something from this book. Highly recommended to developers regardless of background.

Not an introduction to C or computer science. I watched the Harvard CS50 course on YouTube as a complete beginner, and then reading this made more sense. This appears to be great for advancing style, correctness, and understanding modern security; but beware, if you have no C knowledge prior, this will likely overwhelm or leave you supplementing along the way.

The use of Just (and Only) the Right Words puts Effective C well ahead of its peers. Where the Standard is wanting a more complete glossary and textbooks certify ommissive grey lies, Effective C shines on by precisely distinguishing the members of sets of words like {variable, identifier, object} and {duration, lifetime, linkage}; scattering concise, one-liner definitions throughout the text; initializing them just-in-time like i in a for loop.

This book was delivered in good condition and ahead of schedulel.

Great book. Lots of useful information.Nicely done.

I'm a professional software engineer and I decided I'd like to spend some time in C - so I picked up this book to hit the ground running. The introduction points out that the book is directed towards anybody wanting to learn C without "dumbing it down." However, after reading this book, I would not recommend it to newcomers. I'm also not sure that I would even recommend it to people in my position. I found the book would go back and forth on whether or not it was directed towards newcomers or expert programmers. Sometimes the details absolutely justified a full explanation and didn't receive one. Other times, something so simple would be explained in exhaustive detail. This inconsistency in the direction of the book was very frustrating. There are a number of missing details from the book that I would have expected. Most importantly, the author references the C standard often but does not provide an explanation on how to get your hands on the standard (you can get a free draft version online, google it)! The author also does not explain on how to read any sort of reference or documentation for C, which is critical for every C programmer. Other missing details include a discussion on printf and its conversion specifiers (there are examples of printf throughout the book, but the conversion specifiers are not explained), and there are mentions of pthreads and thread.h but no dedicated time to discussing threading in C and how to accomplish it (a crucial detail for today's modern multi-core processors). I also find exercises to be extremely helpful in practicing the language, but exercises are not included at the end of every chapter. The only detail I really appreciated about this book was the discussion on security issues, but those are far and few in-between and would have struggled to fill a 10-page chapter on their own. I will keep the book on my shelf, but if you're getting started in C I would recommend getting your hands on K&R (the blue book) and reading that cover to cover instead.