[supplementation]

> Ever since then I have not been able to figure out why it is commonly taught next to the variable name.

C does this very cute (read: horrifyingly unintuitive) thing where the type reads how it's used. So "char ⋆a" is written so because "⋆a" is a "char", i.e. pointer declarations mimic dereferencing, and similarly, function pointer declarations mimic function application, and array declarations mimic indexing into the array.

[sergeykish]

I found it much easier to understand than Pascal. It just clicked. Later there was a moment of confusion with "char* a, b".

It helped than I've learned by K&R C book. Windows API and code examples are horrific, like another language.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/wi...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/learnwin32/ma...