🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec23.220530.15347@netcom.com>, noring@netcom.com (Jon Noring) writes:

> My wife ...  is now interested in learning C programming ...  I, too, have
> an interest in learning C ...

There is a difference between learning C and learning C programming.
 
> 1) There seems to exist C, as well as C++, and possibly other variants.  What
>    are the differences between these?  Which should we learn first?

You really have to learn C before learning C++, but you might as well learn
C++ _programming_ directly.
 
> ...
> 3) How robust is C compared to Fortran for purely number crunching, scientific
>    type applications on the PC?

Neither C nor C++ has an exponentiation operator, and multidimensional arrays
are arrays of arrays of single dimension, or arrays of arrays of arrays of
single dimension, or ...

If you can deal with these, you can get started.  Much of what is done by
nested arrays in FORTRAN is done by arrays of structs in C/C++.
 
> 4) What books would you recommend in learning C (my wife might want to take
>    classes - I do better teaching myself)?  ...

To my taste, nobody has beaten K&R II for C.  For C++, or the non-C part of
C++, you'll need at least two books: a book from which to learn and the ARM
(Elis and Stroustrup, _The Annotated C++ Reference Manual_) for checking the
details.  Since my book hasn't hit the shelves, I'll refrain from comment
on which book you should buy to learn from.

-- 
 (This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end				Mark Terribile

 mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ