Learning C and Assembly: Week One

Week 1 of my C and Assembly learning journey is in the books. I didn’t have a ton of free time this week, but I still made solid progress toward re-learning the C language and laying the groundwork for systems-level development.

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I kicked things off by completing the first two courses in the Pluralsight C learning path:

• C: The Big Picture
• Getting Started with the C Language

To reinforce the material, I also watched two tutorials on YouTube:

• C Programming Tutorial for Beginners by Bro Code
• C Programming Full Course by freeCodeCamp

I also picked up The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. It’s already clear why this book is still so highly recommended: it’s straightforward, dense, and packed with insight.

The C Programming Language

One thing that really stood out this week—how much I remember. I first tried learning C when I was around 12. While I didn’t go deep at the time, the structure and syntax stuck with me. Years of working in C#, and occasionally Delphi, probably helped keep that mental model sharp. Function declarations, in particular, feel oddly familiar.

Over the weekend, I even tried some “osmosis learning” after falling asleep on the couch with my toddler while watching C programming videos. The last thing I remember before dozing off was malloc and calloc—then I woke up to a tutorial on compiling C to WebAssembly.

Next week, I plan to shift from passive learning to hands-on practice. I want to start small: writing basic utilities, experimenting with pointers, and setting up a workflow I can build on as things get more complex.

For the full background on why I’m learning C and Assembly, check out my project kick-off post.