I come from a Fortran and Perl background so already know quite abit of programming. For someone who already programs but in a different language then this book is a great guide to getting started in C. However if you are new to programming then I feel you need to learn from another book instead. Saying that I found this book much more readable then than the Perl book and overall I think it is a very useful and am happy with the money I spent on it. I think the section on pointers need works thou.