DEV Community: Julian

Open sourcing my C programming learning notes

Julian — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 20:16:35 +0000

Sometime around late November of 2022 I started a C programming course on the online learning platform Udemy, it was called C Programming for Beginners - Master the C Language. It took me about 6 months to go through the whole course and I learned a lot of concepts that weren't even taught in my Computer Science classes at university.

My workflow was: start watching a video and listen, pause if I needed to take note of something important and/or take screenshots, write and run code if it was needed. Then solve the assigned challenges without looking at the solution until I had tried my hardest.

I decided to Open Source my notes from the course because I realized they were pretty beefy and it could help other people like me in their learning path, they are stored inside of this repository on GitHub.

I created the original file with the Cherrytree note taking application, it has a .ctd extension, you will have to install the previously stated program in order to view the file, there is also a PDF file that was included to make it easier for some people so you don't have to install Cherrytree on your machine.

The contents of the repository are the following:

Code: for learning syntax and trying to solve challenges.
Notes: Cherrytree document and PDF file.

I would like to emphasize on the fact that learning C is not just for someone who wants to focus their career on this programming language, knowing some 'low level' concepts related to C will make you a much better programmer at other High Level Languages because you will know what's going on 'under the hood' inside the computer, so my notes are intended to help most programmers out there.

Currently I am taking Advanced C Programming and will post the notes from that course as soon as I am done with it.

There will be some typos, mistakes and code that doesn't compile, but this is due to the fact that they are personal notes, I was learning and initially didn't intend to make this open source, otherwise I would have formatted it in a much nicer way.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with the creators of the course, nor the learning platform. I took the course, really liked it, learned a ton and wanted to share some content with other fellow learners.

Diferencia entre parámetros y argumentos en una función

Julian — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 21:13:59 +0000

You can read the english version of this post by clicking here

Cuando comencé a aprender a programar (en Java) usando un libro de mi biblioteca cercana, siempre mencionaban "parámetros" y "argumentos", pero nunca entendí la diferencia.

Algunos de ustedes como programadores deben haberse preguntado en algún momento, ¿cuál es la diferencia entre un parámetro y un argumento en una función?

Miremos la diferencia:

Al declarar una función, los datos que esta recibe (generalmente van entre paréntesis en la mayoría de los lenguajes de programación) se les llama parámetros.
Al invocar (llamar) una función, los datos que le pasamos a esta se les conoce como argumentos.

Vamos a usar un ejemplo de código en C para dejar las cosas más claras:

1  #include <stdio.h>
2 
3  int addTwoNumbers(int x, int y) {
4     int sum = x + y;
5
6     return sum;
7  }
8
9  int main(void) {
10    int a = 5;
11    int b = 7;
12    
13    int c = addTwoNumbers(a, b)
14
15    printf("The sum of the two numbers is: %d\n");
16 
17    return 0;
18 }

En la línea 3 del bloque de código declaramos una función llamada addTwoNumbers, los parámetros que toma son dos variables de tipo int llamadas x y y:

3 addTwoNumbers(int x, int y)

Invocamos la función addTwoNumbers en la línea 13, y pasamos las variables a y b como argumentos:

13 addTwoNumbers(a, b)

Difference between parameters and arguments in a function

Julian — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 19:45:48 +0000

Puede leer la versión en español de este post haciendo click aquí

When I first started learning how to program (in Java) using a book from my local library, they would always mention "parameters" and "arguments", but I never quite understood the difference.

Some of you as programmers may have wondered at some point, what is the difference between a parameter and an argument in a function?

Let's take a look at a the difference:

When declaring a function the data it takes (usually goes inside parentheses in most programming languages) is called parameters.
When invoking (calling) a function the data we pass to it is referred to as arguments.

We are going to use a code example in C to make things more clear:

1  #include <stdio.h>
2 
3  int addTwoNumbers(int x, int y) {
4     int sum = x + y;
5
6     return sum;
7  }
8
9  int main(void) {
10    int a = 5;
11    int b = 7;
12    
13    int c = addTwoNumbers(a, b)
14
15    printf("The sum of the two numbers is: %d\n");
16 
17    return 0;
18 }

On line 3 of the code block we declared a function called addTwoNumbers, the parameters it takes are two int type variables named x and y:

3  addTwoNumbers(int x, int y)

We invoke the addTwoNumbers function on line 13, and we pass the a and b variables as arguments:

13 addTwoNumbers(a, b)