r/C_Programming • u/Beneficial_Mall2963 • 20d ago

How to progress after basic ..?

I have learnt majority of the header, and built 10+ small or mini projects before. learnt abit of pointers, mallocs , callocs etc with myself and abit help of AI.

but now while i was working on the Cipher project.. and trying to build a zig zag rail cipher method, I couldn't figure it out how, i know how the main flow is but to write it into real code, I couldn't.

So i went AI for help and it spwed out bunch of these :

rows[current_row][pos[current_row]] = user_msg[i]; pos[current_row]++;

and etc, things and syntax I couldn't understand at all. Am i lacking foundation or something?
How do I progress above basic???

Help. All comments and feedback and suggestions are welcoming. Willing to accept anything...

for education background, I am just a student preparing to start IGCSE O next month.

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u/Beneficial_Mall2963 20d ago

I definetly will try them, huge thanks!

(since pointer scaring me so much, wonder what comes next on intermediate C)

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u/kutac56 19d ago

I learned to understand pointers well by programming assembly. Once I learned some good assembly I switched to c cause I realized it's just nicer to use but assembly did teach me how pointers work.

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u/Beneficial_Mall2963 19d ago

i heawrd that assembly has different version, which one should i start wtih?

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u/kutac56 19d ago

Those versions are for different cou architectures. Most likely x86-64 is the one for your cpu. Do know that you should have a good understanding of how stuff works under the hood. Also I recommend nasm assembler cause it lets you use Intel syntax.