Thinking in C

On Mindview.net there is an excellent C foundation course in Shockwave Flash format that you can download from here as a ZIP archive for off-the-Net viewing. It isn't a full introductory course, but rather concentrating on the parts of C you'll need to better understand Java or C++.

Mindview also has courses in C++ and Java, called Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++, so this Thinking in C course could be seen as an introductory course for these other, more advanced courses. If I understood correctly, the old versions of these two courses can be downloaded for free, but if you want the most recent versions, you have to buy the printed copies, which seems reasonable to me.

I have done the first introductory chapter and it seems to be excellent for those who have little programming experience. However, I don't recommend it for the absolute newbies in programming, because it might be a little too steep in the learning curve for those. You need to be aware of some basic concepts of program development, and how your system works on the command line.

For those absolute newbies to programming, I recommend a site like the platform-independent Programming 101.

For how the command line works, I advice to visit:

• Command-line reference (Windows)
• Learning the Mac OS X Terminal (Mac OS X)
• An introduction to the Linux command line (Linux)

I realize that these might not be the best links for newbies (especially the Windows link). If anyone has suggestions, feel free to put it in a comment.