Learning the C Language in 20 days

C has been one of the most popular and widely recognized programming languages for the past 40-45 years. In fact, it is often the first language learned by many individuals. Acquiring knowledge of the C programming language can greatly enhance your understanding of underlying processes at the ground level. This can boost your confidence and fundamental knowledge, thereby making it easier to learn other high-level programming languages. Additionally, proficiency in C programming offers diverse career opportunities, prompting you to consider learning the language.

C was developed by Dennis Ritchie and it is a procedural programming language. the language was practically developed as a system programming language to write an operating system and is used in the development of various major platforms such as Microsoft, Windows, Linux, etc. Moreover, C language has a rich library that provides various built-in functions and offers dynamic memory allocation as well.

This article offers a thorough curriculum and guided pathway that one must follow to learn C language in just 20 days.

Let's Dive in:

👉🏼 Day 1: Introduction to C Language

This is the first and foremost thing you need to do – to know and understand the nature of C Language! You’re required to go through the fundamentals of the C Language, such as the origin of the language, its features & applications, how to compile and run a C program, etc. Furthermore, you need to create your first C program as well to get a better understanding of C programming. In this initial stage, you’re required to get familiar with the basics of the language as much as you can!

👉🏼 Day 2 - 3: Go Through Variables, Data Types & Operators

While learning a programming language, you need to know about the variables, how to define and store them (datatypes), how to perform logical and mathematical operations (operators), etc. prior to any other programming concepts. These topics can be considered as the basic necessity to learn C programming skills. Meanwhile, you need to cover here several other related topics as well, such as how variables are scoped in C, how to perform typecasting in C, type of operators, etc.

👉🏼 Day 4 - 5: Understand the Control Flow Statements

Now, it’s time to understand the process that controls the flow of a program’s execution. You are required to know what the control statements are & how to implement them. There are various topics, such as Conditional Statements, Loops, Jump Statements, and many more. After having a theoretical understanding of these concepts, you can opt for their implementation as well through solving programming questions and creating basic programs. You are also recommended to cover several additional topics like Switch Statements, Continue Statement, Break Statement, etc for more clarification.

👉🏼 Day 6 - 7: Learn Array & String Handling in C

After going through the control flow statements, now you’re required to know about Arrays & String Handling in C. Precisely, an array is a collection of data that holds a fixed number of values of the same type, whereas Strings are actually a one-dimensional array of characters terminated by a null character ‘\0’. You need to understand how to declare an array & access its elements, what are multidimensional arrays, string library functions, and other relevant topics.

👉🏼 Day 8 - 10: Get Familiar with Functions in C

Once you get done with the above-mentioned topics, now you need to know about the pillar of the C programming language – Functions in C. A Function is a block of code that performs a specific task or computation. You need to know about user-defined and standard library functions, function prototypes in C, function calling – call by value and call by reference, and various others. Meanwhile, you’re also required to go through several other crucial topics such as storage class, recursion, etc. to understand the functions in C effectively.

👉🏼 Day 11 - 13: Learn about Pointers, Structures, and Unions

Okay, let’s dive deeper into the world of C programming with some more in-depth concepts like Pointers, Structures, Unions, and many more. In short, a Pointer is a variable that stores the address of another variable or a memory location. Moreover, structures, unions, enums, etc. are types of user-defined data types having their own functionalities and specifications. You need to know how to declare and Initialize Pointers, about Double Pointer, how to define Structure & Union, and other related concepts.

👉🏼 Day 14 -17: Understand Dynamic Memory Allocation & LinkedList

Furthermore, you need to understand concepts like dynamic allocation of memory, linked lists, etc. Dynamic Memory Allocation is the process of allocating memory manually during run-time. You’re required to learn Dynamic Memory Allocation in C using malloc(), calloc(), free(), and realloc(). Moreover, a linked list is a linear data structure where each node contains a data field and a reference to the next node in the list. You also need to cover several other appropriate data structures such as Stack, Queue, etc. as Data Structure is the backbone of each programming language.

👉🏼 Day 18 - 20: Learn about File Management & Preprocessors in C

Lastly, you’re required to get a thorough understanding of File Management & Preprocessors in C. File Handling in C concerns various operations such as creation, opening, reading, writing, moving to a specific location, and closing a file. You are required to learn about the functions used for performing these operations, etc. Moreover, you need to know about the C Preprocessor, which is used automatically to transform your program before actual compilation. It will also help you to understand the architecture of C programming.

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