[brudgers]

Anybody who knows C should read this thread

People who know C are not the primary audience for Learn C the Hard Way. Every programming tutorial aimed at beginning students puts the student on a tricycle, points them toward a cliff, and tells them to peddle as hard as they can.

Norvig points out the cliff is always there.[1] Zed Shaw starts 50 lessons away from the edge. How to Design Programs puts the student at a different distance. Instruction for advanced students [working programmers] expects the student to know they are headed for a cliff.[2]

  The last compound type that we shall consider in this 
  section is the record type. Records are quite similar to 
  Pascal records and to C structures (and to
  similar features in other programming languages). A  
  record consists of a finite set of labelled fields, each 
  with a value of any type (as with tuples, different
  fields may have different types). Record values are 
  written by giving a set of equations of the form l = e, 
  where l is a label and e is an expression, enclosed
  in curly braces. The equation l = e sets the value of 
  the field labelled l to the value of e. The type of such 
  a value is a set of pairs of the form l : t where
  l is a label and t is a type, also enclosed in curly 
  braces. The order of the equations and typings is 
  completely immaterial | components of a record are
  identified by their label, rather than their position.  
  Equality is component-wise: two records are equal if 
  their corresponding fields (determined by label)
  are equal.  -- Introduction to Standard ML

[1]: http://norvig.com/21-days.html

[2]: http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/diwan/class-papers/ML-doc.pd...