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Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

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Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#81

Post by foobarian »

carterdmorgan wrote: post #69
kaycebasques wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ordered the true Gang of Four: * The C Programming Language * The UNIX Programming Environment * The Practice of Programming * The Elements of Programming Style I've read the C book before and also remember the writing to be excellent. I'm sure I'll pick up lots of programming wisdom but I'm also approaching this as a technical writer, figuring out what exactly makes Kernighan's books so good. I have a hunch tha…

One of the great things about The Practice of Programming is how much it references other non-coding works. You can tell Kernighan draws his knowledge from many sources, not just technical ones.

Well one does wonder, where did the icons like BK pick up their own craft? Surely there were no programming books before computers. Which shoulders did our giants stand on?

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#82

Post by mvdtnz »

kaycebasques wrote: post #68
rramadass wrote: post #47

This book is foundational; all Programmers (especially beginners) should read it. Like all Kernighan's books, the language is simple, concise and precise focusing on the foundations/essentials with no fluff and all in a little over 200 pages. Understand the principles from the examples shown here and then apply them in your own context. The beauty of K&P's books is that they do not overwhelm you with theory but show…

Just ordered the true Gang of Four: * The C Programming Language * The UNIX Programming Environment * The Practice of Programming * The Elements of Programming Style I've read the C book before and also remember the writing to be excellent. I'm sure I'll pick up lots of programming wisdom but I'm also approaching this as a technical writer, figuring out what exactly makes Kernighan's books so good. I have a hunch tha…

In fact if you disregard the contents and preface, the very first words in The Elements of Programming Style are a quote from The Elements of Style,

"It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."

William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#84

Post by munificent »

rramadass wrote: post #47

This book is foundational; all Programmers (especially beginners) should read it. Like all Kernighan's books, the language is simple, concise and precise focusing on the foundations/essentials with no fluff and all in a little over 200 pages. Understand the principles from the examples shown here and then apply them in your own context. The beauty of K&P's books is that they do not overwhelm you with theory but show…

> This is the smallest and simplest exposition that i know of on how to write a compiler.

I haven't read Kernighan and Pike's book but another really small compiler exposition I like is Wirth's PL/0 in "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs". A little outdated at this point, but still a very pleasant read.

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#85

Post by fuzztester »

rramadass wrote: post #58
fuzztester wrote: post #50

Another author and his books in the same category of excellence as Kernighan and his books, is Jon Bentley and his books Programming Pearls and More Programming Pearls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley_(computer_scient...

Also his earlier slim Writing Efficient Programs book. What this teaches you is how to think about efficiency from the top down with an emphasis on Algorithm and Language and hence useful to all programmers. Pair it with modern books on efficiency which deal mainly with compiler-level/OS-level/Processor-level performance techniques by Agner Fog, Fedor Pikus etc. and you get a complete picture.

the war stories briefly mentioned in the footnotes of the book, are very interesting too.

for example, one of them is about a team that speeded up the run time of a quicksort implementation on a supercomputer by a factor of a thousand times (yes, times, IIRC, not percent), by doing successive optimisations at many layers of the stack, from high level algorithms and data structures, down to the hardware.

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#86

Post by fuzztester »

rramadass wrote: post #58
fuzztester wrote: post #50

Another author and his books in the same category of excellence as Kernighan and his books, is Jon Bentley and his books Programming Pearls and More Programming Pearls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley_(computer_scient...

Also his earlier slim Writing Efficient Programs book. What this teaches you is how to think about efficiency from the top down with an emphasis on Algorithm and Language and hence useful to all programmers. Pair it with modern books on efficiency which deal mainly with compiler-level/OS-level/Processor-level performance techniques by Agner Fog, Fedor Pikus etc. and you get a complete picture.

>with an emphasis on Algorithm and Language

did you mean algorithms and data structures?

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#87

Post by kps »

zombiwoof wrote: post #10

I wish interviewing now was more about knowing the concepts in that book versus leetcode Brian Kernighan prob couldn’t pass a leetcode hard interview in this ridiculous new world

Reminiscent of Peter Higgs (Nobel Prize winner for the eponymous boson) saying that he would not be able to get an academic job today, not to mention Katalin Karikó (Nobel Prize winner for mRNA) being demoted by UPenn for not attracting grant money.

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#88

Post by coolbreezetft24 »

rramadass wrote: post #47

This book is foundational; all Programmers (especially beginners) should read it. Like all Kernighan's books, the language is simple, concise and precise focusing on the foundations/essentials with no fluff and all in a little over 200 pages. Understand the principles from the examples shown here and then apply them in your own context. The beauty of K&P's books is that they do not overwhelm you with theory but show…

As someone who has been programming professionally for 10 years - what would I gain from reading this book? Not to sound snarky but genuinely wondering what makes it a 'must read' for people who are comfortably coasting in their careers

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#89

Post by senderista »

carterdmorgan wrote: post #11
zombiwoof wrote: post #10

I wish interviewing now was more about knowing the concepts in that book versus leetcode Brian Kernighan prob couldn’t pass a leetcode hard interview in this ridiculous new world

My last interview cycle I interviewed with some big names (Stripe, Square, Shopify, etc.) and was pleased that none of them asked any LeetCode style questions. All pretty practical programming stuff. Stripe had an interview where they had forked the Jackson Java library, introduced a bug, and then asked me to find and fix it. Pretty unique style, but much more applicable to the actual job of programming.

In my most recent interviews with Apple and Amazon there were no LeetCode questions after the phone screen. Quite a change from previous experience.

Re: Brian Kernighan on “The Practice of Programming” [video]

#90

Post by blandblender »

coolbreezetft24 wrote: post #88
rramadass wrote: post #47

This book is foundational; all Programmers (especially beginners) should read it. Like all Kernighan's books, the language is simple, concise and precise focusing on the foundations/essentials with no fluff and all in a little over 200 pages. Understand the principles from the examples shown here and then apply them in your own context. The beauty of K&P's books is that they do not overwhelm you with theory but show…

As someone who has been programming professionally for 10 years - what would I gain from reading this book? Not to sound snarky but genuinely wondering what makes it a 'must read' for people who are comfortably coasting in their careers

If you're at Goog or Meta, you probably have seen best practices around you. If you're working at elsewhere, some things in the book would might be new to you.
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