Course · 6 lessons ~43 hr Intermediate

The C Programming Language

The C Programming Language covers: Head First C, K&R, C By Example. Learn C well enough to read systems code (OSTEP exercises, kernel snippets, CSAPP examples) and write small systems programs. Not "become a C expert" — become a C-literate systems learner. Ruby's C extension API is documented in the Ruby source. Your gems may depend on C extensions (nokogiri, pg, mysql2, ffi). After this module, you can read C extension code, understand why certain gems are faster than pure Ruby equivalents, and debug C-level segfaults. More importantly, you will understand what Ruby's GC is actually doing — because you have managed memory manually and felt the pain that the GC eliminates.

reading · we frame, you read MIT or the canonical taught · we author, no canonical fits ↺ spirals back to earlier lessons

Course locked

Complete How Computers Work — The Big Picture first.

This course unlocks once you've finished its prerequisite. Open prerequisite →

reflection reading · 8 min

Honest Take — Before You Begin

Companion to COMPUTERSYSTEMSMASTERYCURRICULUM.md Written April 30, 2026 — honest reflections, no sugar coating.

preview →

reading · 30 min + ~430 min canonical L1

Head First C: The Accessible Way In

Here's an uncomfortable truth about your daily work: the language you write all day is written in the language you're about to learn. When you call Array#sort, C code runs. When y…

primary CS50 C lectures (YouTube)

after L1 locked

reading · 30 min + ~430 min canonical L1

K&R: The 272 Pages That Define C

Somewhere on your shelf — physical or mental — sits a 600-page framework book you never finished. Now consider this: the book that defines the entire C language, written by the pe…

primary CS50 C lectures (YouTube)

after L2 locked

reading · 30 min + ~430 min canonical L1

C By Example: Making Pointers Automatic

There's a specific moment in learning C that veterans of the language all report: somewhere around your fiftieth pointer bug, the model snaps into place and you suddenly see memor…

primary CS50 C lectures (YouTube)

after L3 locked

exercise reading · 30 min L1

Module Checklist

Work through each item before the checkpoint.

after L4 locked

project reading · 60 min L1

Project: C Building Blocks — Dynamic Array, Linked List, and wc

Three C programs from scratch — the data structures Ruby gives you for free, built with your own malloc, realloc, and free. 44 tests verify growth behavior, bounds safety, and wc-…

after L5 locked

6 lessons. Read in order; spiral back when you need to. By the end you'll have used the core ideas twice — once on the abstract, once on something you'll meet at work next week.