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Introduction

Welcome to Intro to C on Windows. This book walks through topics in order. Your actual homework lives in one GitHub Classroom repository (see below)—you start from a base template with boilerplate and grow it chapter by chapter.

Important

GitHub Classroom

  1. Open the assignment: Accept the GitHub Classroom assignment.
  2. Sign in to GitHub if prompted, then accept the assignment so a personal repository is created for you.
  3. That repo is created from a base template project: it includes boilerplate (solution, project files, stubs, etc.) that you will keep using for the entire series.
  4. Watch for the invitation / acknowledgement email from GitHub (or your course) and complete any steps it asks for.
  5. Clone your Classroom repository to your machine (HTTPS or SSH, as your instructor prefers) and open that solution in Visual Studio for all labs.

Note

One project, growing over time

As you move through the chapters, add to the same template—new files, functions, and behavior stack on what you already wrote. You do not start a fresh project each week unless your instructor says otherwise. Chapter titles (e.g. “Pointers”, “The PEB and loader”) describe what you are learning next and what to implement inside your template next.

Tip

Submit work after each chapter

When you finish the code for a chapter (or whatever unit your instructor defines), commit your changes with a clear message (e.g. Complete Ch. 4 – lists and structs) and push to main (or the branch your instructor uses). That push is what signals “ready for review.” Push regularly so feedback can keep up with your progress—not only at the very end of the course.

Warning

The “Feedback” pull request

The Feedback pull request in your repo is for the instructor to leave comments and suggestions. Do not merge or close it. Keep implementing in your template on main (or the branch your instructor specifies), then commit and push; new commits on main are what get reviewed. The Feedback PR is a conversation surface, not a feature branch you complete or merge.

How this book works

  • Theory and guidance are written in each chapter: what the Windows APIs and C features are doing and why it matters.
  • Code in the book is what you study and reproduce: samples are complete enough to type in or adapt; they are not a second codebase you must hunt for elsewhere.
  • Your Classroom template holds the real project: you add .c / .h files, fill in main, split modules as directed, and wire everything to build.
  • At the end of each chapter, a short “Implement” section reminds you to build, test, commit, and push—the book does not assume you have a separate “solution repo” to copy from.

What you need

Note

VSCode in your browser

An attempt has been made to enable coding from your browser or even installing the GitHub Classroom VSCode extension. However, there is no guarantee that setup will work perfectly 100% of the time. The recommendation is to use VS2022 Community locally on a Windows host or Windows VM.

  • Windows and Visual Studio 2022 Community (or another build setup that can compile Windows C projects with the Windows SDK).
  • Many later labs use x64 only: several topics use __readgsqword to read the TEB/PEB and will fail to compile in 32-bit (x86) configurations by design.
  • Basic familiarity with a terminal, Git, and cloning/pushing to GitHub.

How this book is organized

Chapters proceed from numeric types and printf through pointers, structs, the module list, PE basics, threads and file search, and WinINet HTTP. Later optional material covers intrinsics and low-level patterns. The order matches how the course builds concepts—not a folder tree on disk.

Where things live

LocationPurpose
Your cloned Classroom repoThe base template you accepted from GitHub Classroom—this is where you edit, commit, and push all course work.
This book (IntroToCBook)Primary reference for explanations and code samples.
IntroToCBook/ (published site or repo)The rendered mdBook you read while coding.

Conventions

  • Long samples may be abbreviated with /* ... */ in the book; you still implement the full behavior in your template unless the chapter says otherwise.
  • Windows types such as DWORD, ULONG, PCHAR, and UNICODE_STRING come from Windows.h and related headers.
  • ERROR_SUCCESS is a common “success” return for Win32-style main examples.

Next chapter: Windows types—read the theory and samples, then implement them in your template, commit, and push when that stage is done.