Learn and Master C Programming For Absolute Beginners!

I have been a professional Windows developer using Microsoft stack since 1995. I used to teach C/C++ as well as VB since 1997 as part-time while working full time as a programmer. I obtained experience from large software companies like Microsoft where I spent 9 years as a software engineer and learned from the smartest people in the industry. I worked for other companies including Citrix, LEAD Technologies and many more. I have a passion for learning to program and love to share my experience with other, so I hope you find my approach suitable and engaging for you!

This lecture will give you a quick overview of what we will cover throughout this course...

Please download the attached zipped file that contains source code for all the projects that we will be building during this course.

We will cover the goal of this section, topics to be discussed and the target audience.

This section is for absolute beginners, so if you have a background in computer science or you have programmed in another language, you can skip this section.

We will learn the role of CPU and its components and also learn about the role of GPU and touch base on differences between 32-bit and 64-bit processors as well as Operating Systems

In this lecture, we will learn the different types of memory, physical and virtual addressing and also discuss secondary storage (HDD & SSD)

In this lecture we will cover different types of software and the role of OS and its impact on our programs.

We will cover the definition of a programming language and the different types of languages that are important and understand difference between compiled versus interpreted languages

The goal of this lecture is for students to understand the meaning of a programming language and learn about the different types of languages and their use and how they look like...etc.

We will also see where C sits in between programming languages

In this lecture we will cover how C language was created and go over the different versions of C standards available and understand differences between them.

You will understand what versions of C are available and what standards mean and which one we will be using in our course.

Computer Basics

In this lecture, I will show you how to download visual studio 2015 even after the release of Visual Studio 2017.

NOTE: You can also download the attached bootstrap installer that I downloaded from Microsoft website for you.

In this lecture, I will walk you through the installation and configuration of Visual Studio 2015.

We will learn how to write then compile and run our first C program using command-line tools

You will learn how to write your first C program then compile it and run it using Visual C compiler on the command prompt.

In this lecture, I will show you a slightly easier and different way to quickly build and run a C program from the command line by launching the "Developer Command Prompt for VS2015" and running the compiler (CL.EXE) from the command line.

You will learn an easier and slight faster way to build and compile C programs from the command prompt.

In this lecture go over what we learned in this section and to reflect on what we did in the last 3-4 lectures so that we get a better understanding of it and touch base on some key concepts and iterate over some important points..

By the end of this lecture, you should feel more confident to try out a C program from scratch by yourself :)

Understanding Your First C Program

Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) offers a set of tools that help you write and modify the code for your programs, and also detect and correct errors in your programs.

In this section we will go over:

•A quick tour of the Integrated Development Environment

•Using the menus & graphical elements of Visual Studio IDE

•Working with Projects and Solutions

You will become more familiar and more comfortable with Visual Studio IDE by the end of this section

This is a quick overview of the start page to understand what it does and how to use it.

In this lecture we will go over the file menu and learn what it does and try out some of its features like loading projects, closing a file and reopening it...etc.

In this lecture we look at some of the important items on the edit menu and learn how to use Undo/Redo as well as the clipboard operations

In this lecture we learn how to show the line numbers in the text editor to help us when we review and look at our code.

In this lecture we will go over the differences between tabs versus spaces when using white space and learn why you should be using spaces instead of tabs and also learn how to turn TAB keys into spaces from Tools | Options menu.

This is very important if you want your code to look exactly the same in all text editors.

In this lecture we will look at the Quick Find feature of Visual Studio which allows you to search text inside your code files and locate the exact match of your search string and learn the many different options it offers.

In this lecture we will look at the Find & Replace feature of Visual Studio which allows you to search text inside your code files, project or solution and replace exact matches with new strings of your choice. This is very important tool and can save you a lot of time once you start writing a lot of code.

In this lecture we will cover the debug menu and some aspects of debugging, but we won't go deep into debugging yet.

You will learn some new concepts about debugging and stepping through code by the end of this lecture

In this lecture we will go over the build menu and discuss some of its important items and see how to compile, build and clean a solution

You will learn more about building solutions and the output files generated by the end of this lecture.

In this lecture we will discuss the contents of solution files as well as project files and also understand the relationship between them. We will also build a solution containing two projects and learn some new functionality in Visual Studio specific to targeting multiple projects and the concept of startup (active) project.

You will become more familiar with solution files and project files after finishing this lecture

Understanding VS (Visual Studio) IDE

In this lecture we will go over comments and commenting out code and the different styles of comments supported by C language.

In This quick lecture we will look at the C language symbols and keywords to understand what we will be covering in this course

In this lecture, we will start the discussion on C Data Types and learn the basic types in C including char, int, long, float and double. We will also discuss signed versus unsigned and learn how to figure out the memory footprint for each type using sizeof operator.

This lecture will make you familiar with C Basic types and get us started to dig deeper into C...

In this lecture we go over the C basic types again and discuss them in more detail so you become more familiar with them.

In this lecture we will learn how to display all basic types using prtinf function. We will also discuss the difference between characters and strings in C.

In this lecture we will begin to use variables and learn how to declare, initialize and use them. We will also talk about constants and understand their use by doing a new project in C together.

In this lecture you will learn how to declare and use 'enum' or enumerated types in C/C++.

In this lecture we will learn the two variable scopes in C: global and local scopes. By the end of this lecture, you should become more familiar with declaring variables and understand their life time and visibility rules.

In this lecture, we will look at an important tip to help you avoid running into compilation issues with some C compilers when declaring and using local variables.

This applies to some older versions of Visual C compiler as well as some other non-Microsoft C compilers.

In this lecture we will learn how to create our own functions and call them (invoke) them from within main as well as other functions

Understand Basic Concepts about C and its Syntax

In this lecture we will cover arithmetic, relational and logical operators. You will understand these operators and start using them by the end of this lecture.

In This lecture we will learn about a new way to combine both arithmetic as well as assignment operators together.

Learn about the cool C/C++ incrementing and decrementing operators!

In this lecture we will learn about type casting and how to use the cast operator in C

Precedence of operators

If more than one operators are involved in an expression, C language has a predefined rule of priority for the operators. This rule of priority of operators is called operator precedence. In this lecture, we will look at the different operators and how C language defines the rules of operator precedence.

Understanding Expressions in C

In this lecture we will look at how to use if...else conditional statements in C and understand how they work. By the end of this lecture, you will be able to write code that checks and evaluates expressions to execute specific statements when the conditioni is met or if it is not met.

In this lecture, I will show you an example that uses several if...else statements and also how to nest if statements using a blood pressure reader function that takes two numbers and gives you back your result as string.

In this quick lecture we will see how we can use the C/C++ ternary operator ?: instead of if...else... clauses for cases where ternary operator is a better fit.

In this lecture, we will learn how to use switch statements instead of if...else. Also, we will learn about break keyword that is usually used with switch conditions.

In this lecture, we will learn how to use 'continue' keyword in C/C++ with loops.

Understanding Conditional Statements in C

Section Overview

In this quick lecture, we will look at the for loop syntax and dissect its parts to understand how it executes and become familiar with it.

In this lecture, we jump into Visual Studio to write a demo app that uses for loops so we can understand how to use them and practice using them in code.

In this lecture, we will step through and debug our 'for' loop code to see it in action one step at a time. The goal of this lecture is to show you how for loops work so you can understand it more and become familiar with it.

In this lecture, we will introduce you to the 'while' loop in C/C++ and to help you understand it well, we will go over some possible variations of using the while loop by trying out different scenarios together.

In this lecture, we will learn about 'do'...'while' loops in C/C++ and how they differ from both 'for' and 'while' loops.

In this lecture, we will learn how to use 'goto' keyword in C/C++

Understanding Loops and Jump Statements in C

In this lecture, we will look at how to declare and use arrays in C/C++. This is mainly a presentation on how to declare and access both single-dimension as well as 2-dimensional arrays.

In this lecture, we will see how we can declare and process a single-dimensional array in C/C++.

In this lecture, we will continue with the same project from previous lecture and try to build some generic functions out of the same code. You will learn how to pass arrays to functions the proper way and start to see how you can write more modular code in C/C++.

In this lecture we will learn how to use the compiler with the help of 'sizeof' operator to calculate the size (number of elements) inside array without having to hard-code this value!

In this short lecture, we look at an example of declaring and printing out a 2D array in C/C++

In this quick lecture, we look at how to declare and initialize multi-dimensional arrays. We also look under the debugger to see how we can inspect individual cells of the array.

In this lecture we will learn the main difference between declaring and using character arrays versus strings in C/C++

Understanding Arrays in C

Overview of the section and a quick review of memory, variables and the introduction of & operator (address of)

In this lecture we will quickly look at the use of address of operator (&) in preparation for our discussion on pointers

In this lecture, I will show you by example why we need pointers. This lecture will make you understand the meaning of passing by value and the local function variables in more details

In this lecture we will explore pointers in C/C++ and understand how to declare, initialize and use pointers.

In this lecture we will jump into Visual Studio to apply the stuff we learned in previous lecture and write some code to see pointers in action.

In this lecture, we will look at how pointers actually work in C/C++.

In this lecture, we will implement a proper swap function in C/C++ using pointers.

In this lecture, we will continue our discussion on pointers and functions. We will implement a function that can return two values at the same time, which can be done using pointers. The goal of this lecture is to make you feel more comfortable with pointers and show you how to pass more than one pointer to functions.

In this lecture, we will revisit passing parameters to functions to go over differences between passing by value and passing by reference (pointer). If you understand the differences between the two and why we need to pass by pointer, then you have mastered a key part of C/C++ by the end of this lecture.

In this lecture, we will learn how pointers and arrays are related and how we can treat array name as a pointer in some situations.

In this lecture we will learn about pointer arithmetic and how we can increment or decrement pointers in C/C++ and understand what that really means.

In this lecture, we will modify our sample from previous lecture to display memory addresses to inspect them and verify pointer arithmetic is indeed translating increments/decrements based on data type.

In this lecture, we continue with the same example as the previous lecture and try to apply the same rules to character pointers to learn how we can use pointer arithmetic with strings as well.

In this lecture, we will learn about strings and pointers and how to avoid pointer-related issues like access violation when we try to modify a string that is stored inside read-only (or write-protected) memory.

In this lecture, we will write a function called PrintVowels to learn how to process strings using pointers and practice with pointer arithmetic and contents of pointers...etc.

In this lecture, we will look at how we can use pointers to manipulate strings by implementing a function that removes all vowels from a given string.

In this lecture, we will learn how to apply pointer arithmetic to arrays and see different ways we can access array elements with the help from pointer arithmetic.