The document is about a presentation given at OSCON 2008 on learning just enough C to work on open source projects. The presentation aims to quickly cover the basics of C in order to work on projects written in C like Perl, while acknowledging that C is very different from languages like Ruby, Python, Java and PHP that many modern programmers are used to. It begins with a simple "Hello World" C program to get started.

1. Just Enough C For
Open Source Projects
Andy Lester
OSCON 2008

2. Why this session?

3. It's all for
Michael
Schwern
Schwern is a brilliant
programmer.
An invaluable asset to the Perl
community.
He still doesn't know C, even
though Perl is written in C.

4. My assumptions
• You're like Schwern.
• Already a programmer, but raised on Ruby,
Python, Java or PHP.
• You don't know what it was like in the bad
old days.
• You want to work on open source projects.

5. Goals
• As much territory as possible
• As fast as possible
• Danger zones
• Impedance mismatches