C

OK you guys, so basically the first thing you should know about the C programming language is that it is fucked beyond belief. It was designed in the late 60s, when computers were fucking slow as hell, and half the programmers were high ALL THE TIME. Dennis Ritchie, one of the inventors of C, definitely had to be high most of the time. Seriously, just like, go fucking read some of the shit he wrote back then. He tries to sound like he's all mysterious and wizardly, but really he's just a fucking pothead or something. Maybe. I dunno. Anyway, enjoy fucking around with header files, buffer overflows, and various other shit that only a 40-year-old, almost-assembly programming language can offer. yeah, I heard C is “fast” and shit, so maybe that's good. Whatever, do whatever the fuck you want.

The above being said, C is still pretty much the common language amongst programmers, and despite its faults is beloved amongst them. C is taught in every single computer science major, all computer scientists know C, most exploits are published in C, and therefore reading it will be of great use if you have any intention of doing more serious programming.

The main aim of this tutorial is to provide you with the knowledge needed to not only write your own programs, but also to correct errors in others' programs.

A compiler is a program which converts source code into machine code. Humans cannot read machine code and computers cannot read C. Think of it as a translator between you and someone else that doesn't speak your language.

Any other operating systems will be added on demand.

The first step will be to acquire the tools required for programming and compiling. There are many different ways to do this; but since it's likely this is your first experience of C, I'll go with the simplest.

Windows C compilers are ubiquitous and many of them do the exact same job. Unfortunately, most of them cost assloads of cash for the full version. Here's a listing of integrated development environments that support C on Windows, along with download links for the free ones.

• Microsoft Visual Studio Express - you want the C++ version.
• Dev-C++ - GNU free, it uses an ancient version of GCC, so beware.
• wxDev-C++ - GNU free, like Dev-C++ but you can use any compiler you want (i.e. a more modern version of GCC).
• Code::Blocks - GNU free, supports plugins.
• Eclipse - Eclipse handles more than just C/C++ through its extensive plugins system.
• MonoDevelop also provides supports .Net frameworks. ←- b0rked, there's no username/password to the ftp
• NetBeans - it isn't just for Java anymore.

My recommendation would probably be to go with MonoDevelop, which supports the full .Net stack without shelling out for Visual Studio. That said, Visual Studio does have its perks, particularly when you're using functions listed in Windows (which, generally speaking, you shouldn't do).

It's likely that you already have a compiler such as gcc installed. To be sure, go to the command line and type “gcc” (minus the quotes of course). If you get the response “no input files”, you're good. If you do get an error then I suggest you install it now from https://gcc.gnu.org or your distribution's package manager. The latter course of action is preferable, because compiling it takes forever–it took 4 hours on a first generation MacBook. For Ubuntu users, use 'sudo apt-get install build-essential', as this will give you everything you need to compile C.

The majority of Unix and Linux programmers don't use an IDE, but rather prefer the text-based interfaces provided by the GNU utilities, which are included with most Unix/Linux operating systems. Emacs can also be set up with CC mode which will help with editing and compiling C and C-like languages with all the power (and confusion) of emacs! Of course, if you're not gay and have no interest in learning Lisp to learn C, vi/vim works just as well without the overhead.

You can also get Anjuta IDE, get it from Add/Remove programs or sudo apt-get install anjuta or yum install anjuta. This particular IDE is fully integrated with GNU's Autotools, and will produce source tarballs that Unix users expect. The environment is fully integrated with the GNOME desktop, and thus will look like shit on KDE. It'll also let you configure a graphical front-end that will look and feel like it belongs in GNOME/Xfce.

For KDE users, there is KDevelop, which is made by the KDE people. It'll look better in KDE than Anjuta, and provides a similar feature set, but with support for Qt based graphical interfaces instead of Glade/GTK2 graphics.

Lastly, MonoDevelop, NetBeans, and Eclipse are available on Unix-like systems as well, and work exactly the same as they do on Windows. These should all be available through your operating system's package management system.

Mac OSX includes Xcode (the installation will install gcc and all your libs) on the operating system DVD. It's pretty easy to set up a C project. Open Xcode, File→New Project. Of course, you can always follow the *nix tutorial. It should work as Mac OS X is essentially BSD with a pretty frontend.

Be warned: Apple's GCC is ass. While it will take forever to build and install on your Mac, you should probably install the gcc out of Fink after installing the development tools. It's a more vanilla version of GCC, and unlike Apple's GCC, will not be broken. For those that do not want to use Xcode, the Smultron text editor is really nice.

Whatever you do, don't use the beta of Xcode 3.1 right now. It's debugger is seriously borked, and the -g options on GCC don't work worth shit, either. I guess that's what you get for trusting Apple.