Courses instructor Tom Kelly never had an interest in computer programming until his third year of college.

After two years as a University of Florida undergraduate, he was accepted into the UF College of Engineering and upon admission had to soon declare a major. Not only tired and uninspired but terrified of facing anymore supposedly applied, but in reality abstract, math such as Physics With Calculus, he chose Computer Science as his college major, although he still had to take several applied math-based, engineering core classes.

After graduating from the UF College of Engineering - Computer Science in the Fall of 1984, Mr. Kelly got a job as a contract programmer at AT&T in the Maitland Center area just north of Orlando on I-4 and stayed there from January 1985-July 1986. He decided to remain a contract programmer and his next job was at IBM in Tampa, then he came back to AT&T at its main Maitland Center building then in 1989 he went to IBM in Boca Raton to work for the one-and-only DOS, Windows and OS/2 Group in Building 227 and was soon making $10,000/month. Since moving to Brevard County in 2003, he has worked at the UCF Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa and TOA Systems in Melbourne.

Mr. Kelly has been a Brevard County Public Schools substitute school teacher from 2004-2007 and from 2016-present, subbing, other than this school year, on average three times a week, so there is a strong likelihood that he has subbed in one of your classrooms if you go to school in the central Brevard County area.

For the Summer 2023 term the 10-lesson course will meet every week for three hours at either the Cocoa Beach Public Library or the Cape Royal Office Center, 1890 N. Atlantic Avenue, 2nd Floor, Cocoa Beach, FL   32931 and parents are welcomed to stay. If the course is taught at the Cocoa Beach Public Library the cost is free pursuant to the library's rules and if taught at the Cape Royal Office Center the cost is $400 and carries a prorated unconditional refund. All students must be present for the Week 1 lesson.

 

 

Download the Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition C Compiler if running Windows or the GNU C compiler if running Linux.

Each student must bring his or her own computer to class which must be a laptop with a command-line C compiler installed on it. All else will be provided although bringing your own notebook, pencils, pens and scratch paper is recommended. It is irrelevant which C compiler you decide to use although Microsoft Visual Studio C and GNU C have the highest profile by far within the C programming community. Also even though the classroom has Internet access, I do not recommend connecting to the Internet at all since we will only be using the C compiler and a text editor. Staying disconnected will also alleviate any worries about malware getting on your computer during class.

If you currently do not have a C compiler installed on your computer and you are running either Windows or Linux, follow these respective installation procedures at home so you will be ready for class:

Windows

Go to visualstudio.microsoft.com, then click on "Downloads" at the top bar, then click on "Free download" under the "Community" edition. The installer EXE should automatically download to your Download directory. Go to your Download directory and run the installer EXE named VisualStudioSetup.exe. Follow the prompts until you get to the,

"Workloads    Individual components    Language packs    Installation locations" screen

whose first category of Downloads is labeled "Web & Cloud". Skip this first category then at the second category labeled "Desktop & Mobile" make one checkbox selection which is "Desktop development with C++". The C and C++ compilers are bundled together. Ignore all other Download categories, then click on "Install while downloading" and follow the prompts.

To verify that Visual Studio Community Edition installed properly, click on the Windows icon in the lower-left corner of your display, hover over Programs, hover over Visual Studio 2022, hover over Visual Studio Tools, hover over VC, then select x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 22 which will open a Command-line window. Type cl, then hit ENTER. Type link, then hit ENTER. Both times you will get a Microsoft Visual Studio diagnostic message, a Usage: diagnostic, if Visual Studio installed correctly. If anything in this install procedure goes wrong you will probably have to Un-Install then Install again.

Linux

There are various Linux distributions. Often times GNU C, by default, has already been installed on your Linux computer. To test this, go to the command line and type, gcc   --version, then hit ENTER and if you get a GCC version diagnostic message, then GNU C is installed. If you do not get the diagnostic message, then try the following procedure -

Ubuntu -

Go to the command line and type,

$ sudo apt update (without the dollar sign which is the command prompt)

$ sudo apt install build-essential (then follow the prompts)

$ gcc   --version (if you get the GCC version diagnostic, GNU C is installed.)

Red Hat/Fedora/Centos -

Go to the command line, log in as root then type,

# yum update (without the pound sign which is the root command prompt)

# yum groupinstall 'Development Tools' (then follow the prompts)

# gcc   --version (if you get the GCC version diagnostic, GNU C is installed.)

   

In General

Mr. Kelly does not recommend using a code editor with any IntelliSense features but rather when initially learning to write computer programs he recommends using a raw text editor such as NotePad for Windows or vi for Linux.

Although Windows has a much larger market share than Linux on Desktops, many software projects are developed under Linux and most commercial webservers run under Linux. It is irrelevant which C compiler you use for Mr. Kelly's courses, however, here are some global statistics for operating systems posted by Global Statistics at gs.statcounter.com,

 

All Platforms

 

 

Desktop Installations