"Head First C" by David & Dawn Griffiths

This post is part of my Book reviews series, where I share thoughts and impressions on the books I read.

"Head First C" is written by David and Dawn Griffiths and published in 2012 as the first edition by O'Reilly.

💡Topic

Learning C as a programmer who already knows how to code.

📖Content

12 Chapters an 553 pages of whimsical pictures and graphics, alongside mostly serious text.

A particularity of "Head First" books is that they're meant to teach you the material in a very non-orthodox manner, via funny stories, questions and gags.

👩‍💻🧑‍💻 Who is this book for?

Programmers who would like another type of experience than the usual technical book can offer.

The book is not what I would call "beginner-friendly", but it does provide quite a lot of knowledge to get you writing C by the end of it.

👍Likes

I found the humor to be good, a bit on the sarcastic side, which is just my cup of tea.

The sections titled "there are no Dumb Questions" were for me the most useful. Very well "asked" questions, and good enough answers to both answer your question in a brief manner while also sparking your curiosity to learn more on your own.

The editing is top notch, and I couldn't find any mistake.

👎Dislikes

Personally, I found the style to be too generic and shallow for me. I'm more of the traditionalist in that I like my technical books to be packed with knowledge and dense content, making the most of my eye movements across the page, as well as the number of pages.

The hand-written and hand-drawn graphics were too distracting for me, alongside the fact that it's all printed black and white, which makes most pages with pictures have quite a lot of attention-grabbing areas.

Overall I struggled to concentrate on the actual code and the explanations. Just to point though that this is purely a matter of style preference, and I believe for some other type of learners it can be great.

🚧 Improvements I would suggest

A bit less of the shenanigans and more on the content side.

I doubt this book will ever get another edition though, and also considering that it's not a type of book that I would buy again, can't really offer any constructive suggestions.

🤔Final Thoughts

Interesting concept, though not for me. I believe one can get much more bang for their buck in 2023 if one just takes a C course on Udemy or on YouTube, which will be more engaging and also offer more knowledge - and entertainment - per minute spent.