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C: The Complete Nonsense

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Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#21

Post by rmaccloy »

Jun8 wrote: post #20
tokenadult wrote: post #10

Please remind those of us reading this thread who are less familiar with the reliable books on the subject what books are good books about C. I know about K & R, but what else do busy C programmers recommend? After edit: when you know a book is crap, do you say so in reviews on Amazon.com? That's helpful for people browsing books by subject.

I found Peter van der Linden's Expert C Programming to be excellent, and, as a bonus, fun to read (which you can't really say of K&R ).

Word (although I find K&R a pleasant read). My copy is at the office; I often take a quick glance through it when I need to poke at some C code and usually end up spotting latent bugs.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#22

Post by prodigal_erik »

andreyf wrote: post #2

Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?

This wasn't a handful of innocent mistakes. This was such severe ignorance that it was actually negligent to publish the book at all. He made a living of misinforming a generation of programmers.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#23

Post by bartl »

vmmenon wrote: post #6

Not sure what the point is in bashing a book thats known to be crap.

To demonstrate that the new edition is still crap.

It does not only warn (new) people to stay away from it, it also reflects badly on the publisher, who only seems able to bring out shoddy work.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#24

Post by sireat »

tokenadult wrote: post #10

Please remind those of us reading this thread who are less familiar with the reliable books on the subject what books are good books about C. I know about K & R, but what else do busy C programmers recommend? After edit: when you know a book is crap, do you say so in reviews on Amazon.com? That's helpful for people browsing books by subject.

A dog eared copy of http://www.careferencemanual.com/ is what I keep on my desk at work, it is not a learn C book, it somewhat unsurprisingly is a reference manual.

Authors(Samuel P.Harbison and Guy L.Steele Jr.) write concisely and clearly.

For tricky C language questions CAR is much preferable over trying to find answers in the standard.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#25

Post by alextgordon »

makecheck wrote: post #9

It seems like it used to mean more to be published. Somehow, the mere existence of your book on the shelf made it clear that a high standard for quality had been met. In recent years, especially in technical books, this doesn't seem to be true anymore. One problem is that there's 40 books on any given subject. Each time a new language or tech comes along, there are lots of publishers wanting to be the ones to sell mi…

From the point of view of revenue, each publisher has about the same chance of making a sale to an unsuspecting buyer, so it almost doesn't "matter" (to them) if a book has errors everywhere.

I think this used to be true, but I buy all my books on Amazon now and I can choose the book with the best rating.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#26

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Bjoern wrote: post #4
andreyf wrote: post #2

Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?

I think that from "I spent about a decade on the C committee—and [2] unlike Schildt, I actually showed up [..]" we can assume that he has some kind of history with the person in question [1]. Peter seems also to get quite some share of hate mail [3]. Despite all that and the tone of the book review I think he is quite right about the bad quality of the book. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writings_of_Herbert_Schild…

I spent about a decade on the C committee

I know this sounds mean, but whenever they say they spent a decade on a committee, I can almost guarantee you that the next thing they say will be true yet inconsequential.

I say this because I have done my share of proof-reading C and C++ books. And there are a lot of errors. But that's not the worst of it. The worst books don't teach you anything, are full of errors, and the author continues to try to impress you with his work on the standards. The best books teach you and have a few errors that you will figure out on your own.

(I got into the proof-reading and writing biz years ago for a couple of years. How? By writing a letter about how book X was so full of mistakes it was unreadable. So I speak from experience)

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#27

Post by cubicle67 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #3
andreyf wrote: post #2

Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?

When an otherwise quality work is marred by a few errors the responsible thing to do is submit an errata report to the author. However, when a work is so low quality that every single page appears to contain a glaring error, as seems to be the case here, the responsible thing to do is warn others away from it with as loud a voice as possible

Four editions worth, too

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#28

Post by tokenadult »

sireat wrote: post #24
tokenadult wrote: post #10

Please remind those of us reading this thread who are less familiar with the reliable books on the subject what books are good books about C. I know about K & R, but what else do busy C programmers recommend? After edit: when you know a book is crap, do you say so in reviews on Amazon.com? That's helpful for people browsing books by subject.

A dog eared copy of http://www.careferencemanual.com/ is what I keep on my desk at work, it is not a learn C book, it somewhat unsurprisingly is a reference manual. Authors(Samuel P.Harbison and Guy L.Steele Jr.) write concisely and clearly. For tricky C language questions CAR is much preferable over trying to find answers in the standard.

I had misremembered titles last night, and thought that the book used as a reference here was the one panned in the article submitted to open this thread. Whew! The book we have is actually Harbison and Steele. I tried to read the Amazon recommendations carefully before buying.

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#29

Post by rbanffy »

andreyf wrote: post #2

Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?

For a leaflet-sized errata, that would be the case. Here, it seems, the errata would be comparable, if not larger, than the original book.

I wonder if the guy could get away with publishing a book called "What's Wrong in C:TCR". Any copyright lawyers want to chime in?

Re: C: The Complete Nonsense

#30

Post by rbanffy »

I just imagined a hilariously awkward social encounter between Christian and Herbert Schildt, perhaps in a book signing.

"We meet again, Mr... Seebs"

I wanted to share this with those with similarly distorted imaginations.

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