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“Why Learn C” Book Announcement

Paul J. Lucas on July 31, 2025

Introduction I'm pleased to announce the pre-release of my forthcoming book Why Learn C to be published with steadfast support from my e...

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Andres Cassagnes • Aug 6

You got my attention. I'll try to get your book. C is like my mother tongue at this point, and I love reading about it.
Congratulations for yout book and your blog, which I'll start to read just right now

Oscar • Jul 31

I'm not normally a big reader, but this might be something that I pick up. Sounds super interesting.

Parag Nandy Roy • Aug 6

Love seeing C get the respect it deserves..

G. Berthiaume • Jul 31

Congradulation Paul!
As an avid reader of your blog, I can't wait for its release.

Pierre Gradot • Jul 31 • Edited

I like the tone of this preface :)

Kudos for all this work!

Unlike far too many other programming blogs, I wanted to write about either advanced or obscure topics, or topics that are often explained incompletely or incorrectly elsewhere

Oh I couldn't agree more!

My book is 404 pages

Coincidence? Really?

Considering that The C Programming Language (known as “K&R”) is the classic book for learning C, that too is a fair question.

I remember being very disappointed by this book (somewhere in 2011). I was young, eager to learn, C was my main language, I was happy when I received my copy...and never read it entirely.

The code style was so outdated. I remember unreadable for loops with an empty body that demonstrate what could be done with them. While being "instructing", this was also very bad practice in real life code.

Giri • Aug 6

Congratulations Paul for your efforts on evergreen C !
I want to recommend a book other than K&R on C to the new CSE grads (my son has just joined CSE). Can you please share sample pages on a topic?
Also, do you plan to release an edition for India and other Asian countries?
Thank you

Paul J. Lucas • Aug 9

The response was:

Yes, most of our books include sample material on Amazon. This is usually the Introduction of the book.

As for translations, this typically happens on a book-by-book basis. The most common language that we would translate to is German. These are typically auto-translated with AI or done by authors who are fluent. The process involves the book's editor (me, in this case) nominating the titles for translation to our German counterparts. From there, the book will be selected for a translation depending on sales and the market.

For other languages, we evaluate the book’s popularity and sales figures. Our translation team will then decide whether to pursue localization efforts based on audience potential, cost-effectiveness, and available resources influence these decisions.

Giri • Aug 9

Thank you, Paul for the clarification.
Providing a sample chapter on a topic is more beneficial for people to understand how it is presented in comparison to other material/books on C language. Introduction may not help on that aspect.

By Asian edition, I meant Indian edition in English and priced accordingly. Students may not be able to purchase titles priced in USD.

Thank you !

Paul J. Lucas • Aug 9

I think "Introduction" was a generic term. The book has no section specifically labeled "Introduction." There's the Preface and then the chapters. I'd assume "Introduction" likely actually means "Chapter 1" since the first chapter of any book is its "introduction."

As for editions, that's strictly up to the publisher. I've already given their response.

Paul J. Lucas • Aug 8

I've asked my editor these questions. I'm still waiting for a response.

Mike Talbot ⭐ • Jul 31

Ah this should be great - I applaud the sentiments behind the "why C" - I think it was learning C many years ago that taught me how to think in code, I wonder how much I've forgotten with my current tool chain...

John M • Aug 1

Nice to see people still appreciate the 'real' languages. Not sure C will ever go away, nor does it need to.

Paul J. Lucas • Aug 1

Fortran (which is older than C) is still around, though Fortran has evolved much more dramatically than C has. Fortran also has the "killer app" of huge number crunching for things like weather prediction. Fortran optimizers are really good. I suppose C's "killer app" is just raw general performance and efficiency.

Two features I'd like to see added to C are:

Something like defer borrowed from Go.
Lambdas borrowed from C++.

I also wish C23's auto was exactly the same as C++'s auto. I don't know why the C committee only added it half way.

The harder problem is memory safety for C (though there are still plenty of CVEs in Rust, a memory-safe language), but there are people working on it.

KC • Aug 6

Hi Paul. Mind sharing your blog site?

Paul J. Lucas • Aug 6 • Edited

You're looking at it right now. This is my blog site.