The Little Book of C
Learning and science
programming book
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
2 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 7 critical, out of 13 comments about the project. Thread score -0.14.
Execution: 0 for, 1 againstDocs: 1 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clear, approachable introduction to C.
From 1 comment
This reads like one of the clearest intros to C that I have seen in a long time. Feels approachable the whole way through.
chrisbrandow on HN
Good to see C covered.
From 1 comment
Nice effort. Good to see 'C'!
indianmouse on HN
Objections
Content appears LLM-generated slop.
From 3 comments
Nobody finds it at all questionable that this submitter has "authored" around a dozen such books in 30 days?
user982 on HNI wonder if those LICENSE files in such repositories even mean anything in the world of LLM created stuff/slop/crap. There is no obvious authorship attached to this "Little book"…
teiferer on HNAnd many of them have the same "citation" to the math one by a Duc-Tam Nguyen, which they then didn't bother to adjust the title of. I'd vote for flagging this submission. It's…
teiferer on HN
Code examples contain bugs, such as fgetc using char and a pointer-to-pointer syntax error.
From 1 comment
There is a bug in this example: ``` char ch; while ((ch = fgetc(in)) != EOF) { fputc(ch, out); } ```…
omoikane on HN
Maker has published many similar books in a short time.
From 2 comments
Nobody finds it at all questionable that this submitter has "authored" around a dozen such books in 30 days?
user982 on HNYeah, 15 different "Little books of..." here: https://github.com/orgs/little-book-of/repositories. Seems LLM-assisted. This post about neural networks is from the "Math" book:…
ForceBru on HN
Lack of verifiable author credentials.
From 1 comment
How much is CC-BY-SA worth if nobody knows how much of the content fell out of an LLM? > I've been preparing these notes for 20 years, and now it's finally time to put them…
teiferer on HN
Requests
Open GitHub issues for the bugs found.
From 1 comment
My next step is to extract all the code into the "src/" folder and set up proper CI/CD to test everything. Could you help create some GitHub issues? I will fix them in my free…
tamnd on HN
Shorten the book to 150-200 pages.
From 1 comment
I'm planning to create a 10-page cheatsheet for fast learners, and I'd like to shorten the book to around 150–200 pages.
tamnd on HN
Questions
Is the content LLM-generated, and how much?
From 2 comments
How much is CC-BY-SA worth if nobody knows how much of the content fell out of an LLM? > I've been preparing these notes for 20 years, and now it's finally time to put them…
teiferer on HNI wonder if those LICENSE files in such repositories even mean anything in the world of LLM created stuff/slop/crap. There is no obvious authorship attached to this "Little book"…
teiferer on HN
Why was the submission flagged?
From 1 comment
I do not get this ? Why is this flagged ? I agree in flagging in the cases I have seen, but flagging a C book seems very odd.
jmclnx on HN
Alternatives named
K&R (The C Programming Language)
From 1 comment
For comparison, the "gold standard" of K&R is roughly 200 pages.
userbinator on HN