
Ask HN: I want to have a basic familiarity with C, shoudl I read K&R? - walrus_pen
I don&#x27;t plan (at this time) to use C professionally, but I do feel like understanding C well would benefit me professionally (I mostly do Typescript&#x2F;JS)<p>I&#x27;ve been trying to settle on a good text to get a &quot;good enough&quot; understanding of C but many of them are much longer than I am motivated to invest in at this time, while K&amp;R is very succinct&#x2F;short.
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ThrowawayR2
I like K&R but it's so incredibly dated that it would be like reading the HTML
2.0 spec (from '95) to understand web frontend development today. Wouldn't
recommend it.

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walrus_pen
Thanks for the feedback! Any more brief texts that you recommend?

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ThrowawayR2
The common suggestion seems to be Gustedt's "Modern C"
([https://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/](https://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/)) which
is available in print but has a free ebook version. Just stop at the end of
chapter 14 and it's probably around the same length as K&R. It's a bit heavy-
handed on the prescriptiveness for my taste but decent material.

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walrus_pen
Great, thank you!

