IDI Course PR12-Cx

Modern C Programming
4 half-day sessions

Designed for:

Experienced programmers who want to acquire a command of procedural programming in C without making the larger commitment to a longer and more demanding C++ course, such as PR12-C.

Prerequisites:

Programming experience using a higher-level language that supports:

Structured coding constructs
Separately compiled subroutines, procedures, or functions.
Composite data strucures

Such languages include Pascal, PL/I, Ada, as well as newer versions of COBOL, Fortran, and BASIC. (Where all the participant share a common background, we can customize the examples so as to draw parallels and contrasts with their familiar programming environment.)

General description:

Emphasis on quality

We cover the whole C programming language, emphasizing those features and programming idioms that differ from other popular progamming languages.

We stress principles of good practice that lead to high-quality, maintainable software, including:

highly modular organization,
choice of appropriate data representation,
source-code readability.

C++ as a Better C

In 1999 very few software developers use pure C. Even if you don't want to take on the intimidating object-oriented facilities of C++, you'll probably want to take advantage of certain C++ language enhancements.

Since C++ compilers are now as widely available and as inexpensive as old C compilers, most C development is now being done under a C++ development environment.

We omit certain C features that have been superseded by C++ equivalents that are simpler, easier, or less error-prone. For example:

Instead of C's clumsy stream I-O (scanf, printf, etc.) functions, we present the much simpler C++ stream I-O operators.
Instead of managing memory with C's byte-oriented malloc and free functions, we use C++'s type-oriented new and delete operators.
As an optional alternative to modifying function parameters through pointers, we introduce the more natural reference parameters.

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This page was last updated 3 May, 1999.