Hello,
I am currently learning (or really just begun) Assembly (my first programming language, by the way) and am wondering once I become somewhat good at Assembly, should I start picking up the C language. I know that several languages are based upon it, and I am even planning on doing work in the Objective-C language (i think it's a Macintosh-specific language), which states C as a pre-requisite. Java and C# are also based upon C, which I think means if I learn C I'll have an easier time picking these languages up.

If yes, what are some good resources / books that are useful for a beginner in C.

Thanks,
Ryan Leaf

See the Read Me Starting "C" at the top of this board. You posted right over it.

Its good that you are studying assembly language but I would not have picked it as my first programming language because assembly is not considered a good way to program. That is, the language is chucked full of jumps and gotos. You will have to unlearn all that in order to code effectively in any of the higher-level languages. In other words, assembly language teaches you a lot of bad habbits.

The second reason not to learn assembly as a first language is that there are very few people who actually program in that language any more. Most programmers code for years without even seeing any assembly language code.

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread122847.html

i learned assembly years ago as my first language (not counting BASIC, Pascal and Fortran, which i never did anything meaningful with)...

in the early 90's it was important to know Assembly to do embedded programming, because the C compilers for embedded controllers were terribly inefficient -- and expensive if you were a student or hobbyist. the "Assembly is Better" mindset continued even into this decade.

But now the C compilers rock, and only the most specialized apps or processors would ever need such low-level programming.

so, as some one who learned on assembly, and loved all its peculiarities.... I hate to say it... stay away from Assembly if at all possible. at the very least, don't start learning to program on it, for reasons Dragon pointed out already.

do yourself a favor and learn C and learn C++... C is especially suited for microcontroller and embedded work, while C++ in particular will give you the Object-Oriented foundation on which you can expand in any other direction as needed.

dont bother with C# unless you are immediately going to go work in a Microsoft shop. Definitely do not get bogged down in some Macintosh "objective c".... no one uses Macintosh for C programming in the industry, that I've ever seen. i mean, if you want an object-oriented version of C... it's already here: it's called C++. And it's portable to any OS. Vendors reinvent the wheel because they want to lock you into their proprietary hardware or software. don't do it. if you know C++ you can easily pick up C# or "Objective-C" if the need ever arises.

if you learn C you'll always have a skill in high demand. if you learn C++ you'll have the additional benefit of understanding Object-Oriented programming, and can take that knowledge and apply it to any number of languages, such as C# and Java, and can likely get hired based on your C++ background even if you dont have the specific OO language they prefer.


.

That is a big contridictory sentence Assembly could not have been your first language if you had learned others prior to that.

I think the only people who write in assembly to day are either 1) compiler writers, or 2) program EPROMs.

i should have qualified "assembly was the first language in which i did any meaningful work" ... i just played with the others. Basic/Pascal/Fortran are, for all intents and purposes, completely useless languages -- unless you're an Excel Programmer (Basic) or a Nuclear Engineer (Fortran)

...

i was going to say that i program eeproms using C... if driving external hardware to manipulate data bit-by-bit, counts... probably not. i guess you've still got to understand basics of low level assembly programming.

but that should all be secondary to first learning the higher level languages like C/C++ ... assembly should come later.



.

Microcontrollers are mainly programmed in assembly still. C has advantages when it comes to things like decision making. Assembly has advantages when you need precise delays. Other times, the program would just end up one liner C statements anyway, so there isn't much point.

im not sure what kind of microcontrollers you mean, but the ones i deal with ... scientific instrumentation and medical products ... are all programmed in C.

now there's always an occasional macro in assembly, but they're short and sweet, and few and far between.

assembly programming is a rare skill these days, because the demand is but a fraction of what it was 10 or 15 years ago.

The most popular ones such as PICs and 8051 derivatives are mainly programmed in assembly.