Yeah, it's a tough call. I can see R being very useful, but ChucK is way more fun. C just seems like a book that needs to be written before the "learning C sucks" situation gets worse.
For what it's worth, my vote would be for Learn C The Hard Way. Not having learned C in any formal setting and coming from a background of mainly interpreted languages, I've found it quite difficult to determine reliable, up to date resources for learning C. It's not that there's none around obviously, it's just hard to know which stuff to go with and hard to find something in between complete n00b and full master, which is what I'd be hoping for.
"hard to find something in between complete n00b and full master" - My theory is that the best technical books or books for learning are the "intermediate" ones.
There are usually a ton of acceptable beginner's books and then very specialized and complex books but very few good "intermediate" books like the favorites:
- TCP/IP ilustrated
- Perl Camel book
- R&K C book
- Silman's groundbreaking chess books
- Harrington's groundbreaking poker books
I'd love to see the R book to a) actually become familiar with it and b) because it'll also provide a refresher to some theory I've unfortunately forgotten. Plus, you're due for some more posts about the importance of that stuff for programmers. :)
I agree with all parts of that statement. A contemporary C book (as applied to servers etc.) would be much needed, before the world turns into a morass of webdev frontend programmers…
