Top all-time · #972
Zed Shaw
Personal blog · learncodethehardway.orgprogrammingcareer
Zed Shaw writes Learn Code the Hard Way, a personal blog at learncodethehardway.org about programming and career. Since 2010, 71 different Hacker News readers have linked it 80 times, most often “Learn C The Hard Way”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Learn C The Hard Way27 people · 30 mentions · first linked 2010-10-15
- “Learn C the Hard Way” is no longer available for free12 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2016-09-11
- Programming Languages Have Social Mores Not Idioms5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2012-08-19
- /5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2012-08-12
- Please Don't Become Anything, Especially Not A Programmer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-05-15
- Learn Code the Hard Way3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-06-13
- /javascript/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-07-24
- /python/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-08-01
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-19
- /more-python-book/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-01-17
What Hacker News says?
https://learncodethehardway.org/python/ Was the first time programming clicked. It reminded me of most math books I have used, an explanation of the topic and then tons of problems/examples to solidify/learn the concept. Most other programming books I had used had almost no examples or practice problems. https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer for learning about how a computer worked. Again it clicked for th…
Comment linking /python/
on “Ask HN: Do you recall any book or course that made a topic finally click?”Submitted Please Don't Become Anything, Especially Not A Programmer as a story · 670 points
HN discussionFrom various discussions on Hn, I think the consensus is most people really like k&r as a technical book (it's concise, clear and a fun read) - but everyone working with C says its a terrible book for learning modern C. I tried to refresh my memory from previous threads, and I think the general trend has been to recommend (as seen in sibling comments): https://modernc.gforge.inria.fr/ https://nostarch.com/Effective_…
Comment linking /c/
on “Actually Portable Executables”Submitted Learn C The Hard Way as a story · 419 points
HN discussionProbably as a reference to Zed Shaw and the website https://learncodethehardway.org/
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on “Learn FFmpeg the hard way”Submitted Programming Languages Have Social Mores Not Idioms as a story · 244 points
HN discussionZed's Learn Python the Hard Way. https://learncodethehardway.org/python/ It wasn't what I used to first learn (Larry Ullman's first PHP5 & MySQL book which I still have, with a spine held together by duct-tape) but it showed me a simple method to help absolute beginners (and helped me realize my ideas on teaching concepts in an unorthodox manner don't work at all for that target group) and to refer to acquaintances…
Comment linking /python/
on “Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?”Submitted The Command Line Crash Course Controlling Your Computer From The Terminal as a story · 204 points
HN discussionI'd check out Zed Shaw's book [0]. It's opinionated, but I think that's a good thing for something like C. It's broken up into exercises that you start working through straight away, and you start early with valgrind. [0] https://learncodethehardway.org/c/
Comment linking /c/
on “Ask HN: How do I learn C properly?”Submitted The Command Line Crash Course (Zed Shaw) as a story · 165 points
HN discussionI highly recommend Zed Shaw's "Learn C the Hard Way": https://learncodethehardway.org/c/ I worked through this and felt well-prepared to actually use C in anger when I had to.
Comment linking /c/
on “I stopped everything and started writing C again”Submitted Can't Code? Learn Design. as a story · 101 points
HN discussionLearn C the Hard Way was Zed Shaw's aspiration of a K&R Replacement[1]. If you like it, great, if you don't, you have company[2] [0] https://learncodethehardway.org/c/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20141205223016/http://c.learncod... [2] http://hentenaar.com/dont-learn-c-the-wrong-way
Comment linking /c/
on “Modern C [pdf]”Submitted “Learn C the Hard Way” is no longer available for free as a story · 67 points
HN discussionhttp://www.learn-c.org/ looks good, I've also got https://learncodethehardway.org/c/ but not everyone will like that style.
Comment linking /c/
on “Bootstrap yourself to write an OS from scratch”Submitted Programming Languages Have Social Mores Not Idioms as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThe author appears to run this website: https://learncodethehardway.org/ which directly profits from people not doing bootcamps but rather, teaching themself to code (using his books). So maybe not the most unbiased source (even if some of the content rings true). Everyone - everyone - always has an angle.
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on “Let me give you a list of the top scams coding bootcamps use to steal your money”Submitted Junior Developer Certification Program (Zed Shaw) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt always puts a bad taste in my mouth when information/knowledge is locked behind a pay-wall. It frustrates me when I think that someone somewhere is getting turned down from what they want to learn from because they had no money to pay for it or doesn't have the means to pay for it. I know the authors should profit but why can't they do something like https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ or http://debian-handbook.info/…
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on “Our Django Book is Launched”Submitted Learn Code the Hard Way as a story · 3 points
HN discussion(side note, there seems to be a page linking problem) Clicking into http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/intro.html and hitting the title takes me here http://learncodethehardway.org/ruby/ Clicking a link there takes me to http://learncodethehardway.org/ex00.html It looks like that header should link back to http://ruby.learnruby ...
Comment linking /ex00.html
on “Zed Shaw: The wonderful Rob Sobers did a great job translating LPTHW to Ruby”Submitted Please Don't Become Anything, Especially Not a Programmer (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis looks like an approved translation to me: http://learncodethehardway.org/ Also, from the linked page: The prose in this translation is nearly 100% identical to the Python version with the exception of a few paragraphs that have been modified to be relevant to Ruby. All of the code exercises and required libraries have been completely adapted for Ruby. In other words, Zed did all the really hard work.
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on “Zed Shaw: The wonderful Rob Sobers did a great job translating LPTHW to Ruby”Submitted Using TIOBE To Research My Book Topics as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJust needs someone to step up and one day it might be listed here: http://learncodethehardway.org
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on “Projects the Hard Way – Coding Projects for Early Coders”Submitted Zed Shaw: Can't Code? Learn Design ('12) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI've been programming in Python for a long time and recently took up an OS class which exclusively used C. Syntactic differences aside (declarations in C can get pretty hairy), the steepest learning curve while writing anything useful in C is with a) pointers and b) memory management which this guide doesn't seem to cover. From my experience, the best way for learning C has been [0] Build Your Own Lisp and Zed Shaw'…
Comment linking /c/
on “C for Python programmers (2011)”Submitted Learning To Code Blog as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI really enjoyed "Learn C The Hard Way" by Zed Shaw. His style of learning resonates with me. https://learncodethehardway.org/c/
Comment linking /c/
on “Ask HN: Best book to learn C in 2022?”Efficient programming is all about knowing how to use CPU features and memory to your advantage. If you don't already know C, I suggest "Learn C the Hard Way"[0]. After that, here's two great places to start: "What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory"[1] and "What's new in CPUs since the 80s and how does it affect programmers?"[2] [0]: https://learncodethehardway.org/c/ [1]: https://people.freebsd.org/~lstewar…
Comment linking /c/
on “Efficient music players remain elusive”
