I feel like when reading my book I understand but I just blank out when sitting in fron of the IDE(compiler)
I know I am not the smartest person around and maybe learning C was just a dream
BUT how did you 'all learn???
self learner here and not going to school for computer science....just wanted to learn for myself
I am "almost" a self-lerner myself.
Well, I started now 36 years ago with programming when a math/physics teacher in (high)school (Gymnasium in Germany) asked who would be interested in learning to program. We then started a voluntary after-hours class, twice a week, for about 8 weeks learning the basics of programming logic and the basics of Pascal.
All on paper! There were no (home) computers really available back then (1976).
Along the way since, I then learned assembler for various CPUs (MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Motorola 6800/6809/68k as well as Intel 8080, then 8086 (x86)), about 30 dialects of BASIC, C, Fortran, Cobol, Forth, Java, C++ and probably two dozen more along the way that I never could "warm up to".
In some way, back then, it was a bit easier to get into this. Nowadays, people that want to learn to program face IMHO three problems/hurdles:
1) learning the basics of programming (data types, program flow and control structures, basic algorithms), which is/should be learned completely independent of any programming language
2) leaning the basics of a specific programming language, building on the knowledge gained in step 1
3) learning the specifics of a certain language implementation and the peculiarities of the operating system that is being used
The problem is that today, most people skip on step 1, lacking therefor the basics to move forward as well as trying to combine step 2 and 3. And on that note, learning to program in C on Windows is IMHO a bad combination. C has a lot of "quirks" which can easily frustrate newbies because of unexpected side effects and Windows is a fairly complex OS, where a lot has to be learned in it's inner workings when trying to cope with the UI (try printing in Windows and you will age by years with every day/week you are trying to understand it and get it to work). Back in the days of DOS, all those things were MUCH easier and IMHO, people should use this as their first environment to get their feet wet before jumping into the deep end...
Otherwise, as Tater stated, just reading a book isn't doing much good, you need to understand what and why you are doing things shown in those. And that is the hard part when you're missing out on my previously mentioned step 1 and you do not try to really understand how those examples work. Just typing them up (or loading from an accompanied media) doesn't do much good, try your own examples to understand how certain things work. And don't give up if things don't work right away, it is proven that you learn the most from your mistakes, you just have to be willing to accept them. And there is usually very little you can break, at least if you keep it simple to get a start.
As an old German proverb goes "Übung macht den Meister"...
Ralf