C Programming Language

C is an old yet powerful language, which underpins most modern technology. It is used for everything from microcontroller software to desktop applications to web servers.

What’s So Hard About C?

Beginners tend to waste hours, if not days, struggling with:

• Pointers: properly wiring up pointers, dereferencing them, using the arrow operator, etc.
• Dynamic Memory: allocating it, and then remembering to free it.
• Signed vs Unsigned Integers: if you aren’t careful, mixing these up can lead to subtle wrong answers. Signed and unsigned integers have different overflow behavior and promotion rules.
• Complex Data Structures: arrays with structs, structs with arrays, linked lists, etc.

How Can You Help Me?

Our help starts where artificial intelligence tools like Claude®, Microsoft Copilot®, and ChatGPT® fall short:

• Deep Analysis: If your AI tools can’t find the bug, we can walk you through the debugging process.
• Popular Tools: We can help you use makefiles to organize your builds, valgrind to track down memory leaks, and gdb to isolate bugs.
• Test-Taking Tips: Your course will usually expect you to use specific C libraries and functions, which may be available on Linux or Windows only. Therefore, you can’t just use any techniques you find online. We can help you learn just the knowledge you need for projects and tests.
• Deep Knowledge: Our tutors have experience using C at work or on personal projects. Get answers to your questions when artificial intelligence tools can’t help you.

Resources

• The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. This book is a surprisingly short but readable intro to the C programming language, written by the authors of the language itself. You should read it before getting help, if possible.