C is a general-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level programming language that is one of the most popular and influential languages. It was designed to be compiled using a straightforward compiler, to provide low-level access to memory, to provide language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, and to require minimal run-time support. Many programming languages owe a considerable debt to C. It has become something of the lingua franca in the programming world.
C is fairly simple to understand. It allows the programmer to organize programs in a clear, easy, logical way. It is a very flexible, practical and compact language combined with an easy to read syntax. Code written in C runs quickly, with easy access to the low level facilities in the computer. Compiler directives make it possible to produce a single version of a program compiled for different architectures.
Here’s our recommended tutorials to learn C. If you’re looking for free C programming books, check here.
1. learn-c.org
learn-c.org is a free interactive C tutorial.
The vision is to teach coding within the browser using short and effective exercises. By running actual code directly from the web browser, students are able to try out coding without installing and executing it locally, which can be hard and redundant for the purpose of learning how to code. This creates a more efficient learning process, because students focus on learning instead of setting up coding environments.
2. C Programming Tutorial by Guru99
This online course teaches you basic to advance level concept of C Programming to make you pro in C language. This is an absolute beginner guide to C Programming.
3. A Tutorial on pointers and arrays in C by Ted Jensen
This document is intended to introduce pointers to beginning programmers in the C programming language.
4. C for Python programmers by Carl Burch
This document is directed at people who have learned programming in Python and who wish to learn about C. C’s “influence on Python is considerable,” in the words of Python’s inventor, Guido van Rossum (“An Introduction to Python for UNIX/C Programmers,” 1993). So learning Python is a good first step toward learning C.
5. C Programming Boot Camp by Paul Gribble
This tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
6. Everything you need to know about pointers in C by Peter Hosey
This document comes with a companion example program. This tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
7. C Programming Tutorials by thenewboston
This is an excellent set of video tutorials.
8. Pointers and Memory by Nick Parlante
This document explains how pointers and memory work and how to use them—from the basic concepts through all the major programming techniques. For each topic there is a combination of discussion, sample C code, and drawings.
9. Aalto C by MOOC
This course will teach you the basics of the C programming language. There are no special prerequisites, but some previous programming experience will be helpful.
10. Learn c in Y minutes by Adam Bard
C is the lowest-level language most programmers will ever use, but it more than makes up for it with raw speed. Just be aware of its manual memory management and C will take you as far as you need to go.
All tutorials in this series:
| Free Programming Tutorials | |
|---|---|
| Java | General-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, high-level language |
| C | General-purpose, procedural, portable, high-level language |
| Python | General-purpose, structured, powerful language |
| C++ | General-purpose, portable, free-form, multi-paradigm language |
| C# | Combines the power and flexibility of C++ with the simplicity of Visual Basic |
| JavaScript | Interpreted, prototype-based, scripting language |
| PHP | PHP has been at the helm of the web for many years |
| Ruby | General purpose, scripting, structured, flexible, fully object-oriented language |
| Assembly | As close to writing machine code without writing in pure hexadecimal |
| Swift | Powerful and intuitive general-purpose programming language |
| Groovy | Powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language |
| Go | Compiled, statically typed programming language |
| Pascal | Imperative and procedural language designed in the late 1960s |
| Perl | High-level, general-purpose, interpreted, scripting, dynamic language |
| R | De facto standard among statisticians and data analysts |
| COBOL | Common Business-Oriented Language |
| Scala | Modern, object-functional, multi-paradigm, Java-based language |
| Fortran | The first high-level language, using the first compiler |
| Scratch | Visual programming language designed for 8-16 year-old children |
| Lua | Designed as an embeddable scripting language |
| Logo | Dialect of Lisp that features interactivity, modularity, extensibility |
| Rust | Ideal for systems, embedded, and other performance critical code |
| Lisp | Unique features - excellent to study programming constructs |
| Ada | ALGOL-like programming language, extended from Pascal and others |
| Haskell | Standardized, general-purpose, polymorphically, statically typed language |
| Scheme | General-purpose, functional, language descended from Lisp and Algol |
| Prolog | General purpose, declarative, logic programming language |
| Forth | Imperative stack-based programming language |
| Clojure | Dialect of the Lisp programming language |
| Julia | High-level, high-performance language for technical computing |
| SQL | Access and manipulate data held in a relational database management system |
| Erlang | General-purpose, concurrent, declarative, functional language |
| VimL | Powerful scripting language of the Vim editor |
| OCaml | General-purpose, powerful, high-level language |
| Awk | Versatile language designed for pattern scanning and processing |
| Racket | Platform for programming language design and implementation |
| BASIC | Family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages |
| CoffeeScript | A very succinct programming language that transcompiles into JavaScript |
| LaTeX | Professional document preparation system and document markup language |
| Elixir | Relatively new functional language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine |
| Dart | Client-optimized programming language for fast apps |
| ABAP | Advanced Business Application Programming |
| F# | General purpose, strongly typed, multi-paradigm language. Part of ML |
| Chapel | Parallel-programming language in development at Cray Inc. |
| Dylan | Multi-paradigm language, supports functional & object-oriented programming |
| D | General-purpose systems programming language with a C-like syntax |
| Solidity | Object-oriented, high-level language for implementing smart contracts |
| XML | Set of rules for defining semantic tags that describe the structure and meaning |
| Vala | Object-oriented language with a self-hosting compiler that generates C code |
| ECMAScript | Best known as the language embedded in web browsers |
| Kotlin | Statically typed, general-purpose programming language with type inference |
| TypeScript | Strict syntactical superset of JavaScript, adding optional static typing |
| Markdown | Plain text formatting syntax designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write |
| Pike | Interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic language |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language |
| Factor | Dynamic stack-based language |
| Objective-C | General purpose language which is a superset of C |
| Standard ML | One of the two main dialects of the ML language |
| Alice | Educational language with an integrated development environment |
| Agda | Dependently typed functional language based on intuitionistic type theory |
| Icon | High-level, general-purpose language |
| PureScript | Small strongly, statically typed language with expressive types |
| Tcl | Dynamic language based on concepts of Lisp, C, and Unix shells |
| Eiffel | Object-oriented language |
| ClojureScript | Compiler for Clojure that targets JavaScript |
| QML | Hierarchical declarative language for user interface layout with a syntax to JSON |
| VHDL | Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language |
| OpenCL | Open Computing Language |
| Elm | Functional language that compiles to JavaScript |
| Haml | HTML Abstraction Markup Language |
| J | Array programming language based primarily on APL |
| LabVIEW | Designed to enable domain experts to build power systems quickly |
| Hack | For the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM), created as a dialect of PHP |
| Imba | Full-stack language that compiles to performant JavaScript |
| V | Statically typed compiled language to build maintainable software |
| PostScript | Page description language in electronic and desktop publishing |
| Arduino | Inexpensive, flexible, open source microcontroller platform |
| Nim | Statically typed compiled systems language with syntax resembling Python |
| Emacs Lisp | A dialect of the Lisp programming language. |
| Octave | High-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations |
| Bash | ‘Bourne-Again-SHell’ is both a shell and programming language |
| Limbo | Designed for applications running distributed systems on small computers |
| CSS | CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) specifies a web page’s appearance |
| Raku | Member of the Perl family of programming languages |