C Study Plan

Your brief

Start by compiling a one-file program and explaining its output. Next, model small measurements with explicit units and boundary tests. Continue through array bounds and terminated text before pointers. Learn function contracts before sharing addresses, and ownership before dynamic collections. Only then add stream parsing, files and modular builds. Finish by selecting a project, writing its input and failure contracts, and checking it with deliberately awkward fixtures. This is a suggested route, not a saved progress profile or a fixed-duration promise.

Run it locally

Use a hosted C17 compiler in a separate lab folder. The command assumes a driver named cc; substitute gcc, clang or zig cc as appropriate. C does not currently run in Bhylu’s browser playground. Apache, PHP and MySQL are not needed for these C programs.

cc -std=c17 -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic -Werror study-plan.c -o lesson

On Windows, use -o lesson.exe and run .\lesson.exe in PowerShell. On Unix-like systems run ./lesson. Math-library linking differs by toolchain; GCC on many Unix systems needs -lm after the source.

Download the complete C source. File-writing labs must run in an empty private directory, away from existing reports.

Worked solution

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
    const char *milestones[] = {"Build and explain", "Validate and bound", "Own and release", "Parse and test", "Review a project"};
    for (size_t i = 0; i < sizeof milestones / sizeof milestones[0]; ++i) {
        printf("%zu. %s\n", i + 1, milestones[i]);
    }
    return 0;
}

1. Build and explain
2. Validate and bound
3. Own and release
4. Parse and test
5. Review a project

Extend and test

Pick the first milestone you cannot yet demonstrate. Build one tiny example, predict its output and explain one failure boundary before continuing.