I've had 2 C classes in college and have my "The C Programming Language" book by Dennis Ritchie at my side.
I'm about to enter the workforce and really want to hone up on C. What type of programs should I write to really get into this? I've done the simple programs you get in college, and am looking for something more robust. Any ideas?
Thanks!
A text editor would be a good project. You can make it as simple as inserting and deleting lines on the command line, or as complex as full insertion, deletion, replacement and searching with regular expressions and a GUI interface. This is a good exercise in optimized non-trivial data structures and algorithms.
My best code is written with the delete key.
That sounds great. The first thing I thought about was the old unix VI command.
any other good ideas out there? This will be on a windows based system.
What area of work are you moving into? There are many aspects to programming, so of which you may or may not actually touch on in your career.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
If you're posting code, use code tags: [code] /* insert code here */ [/code]
My company makes data quality software and mail processing software. We develop for well over 13 platforms and most of the code is written in C, running on the various UNIX platforms we support. I really want to gain a full-time position there in a couple of months and would like to polish and learn everything I can.
No matter what I write it will help, but I just can't get any good ideas. I hope that answered your quesion.
>>data quality software and mail processing software<<
Sounds like raw data manipulation could be a good start. Something to reformat a name+address list, verify zip codes, etc. How about a system that verifies structured input data based on predefined templates.
I dunno what level you're at etc, so I can only really advise you to think of something your company does, and incorporate that into your program.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
If you're posting code, use code tags: [code] /* insert code here */ [/code]
Thank you for your help. Your solution was so easy I should've thought about it - write something that my company has already written.
Although the only hurdle I see is actually gaining the information (database of zip codes, states, streets, etc..) I'll probably just go ahead and make some fake data and go from there. Great idea!
