C: The Complete Nonsense
seebs.net
C: The Complete Nonsense
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Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#2Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#3Why 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
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#4Why 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_Schildt [2] Peter Seebach, http://www.seebs.net/res-w.html [3] http://www.seebs.net/humor/hate.html
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#5Why 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…
[3] oddly reminds me of bash.org
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#6Not sure what the point is in bashing a book thats known to be crap.
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#7Why the mean-spirited tone and expose? Why not just submit the errata as he sees it?
For way more background on that than you probably actually want, check the archives of comp.lang.c...
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#8Not sure what the point is in bashing a book thats known to be crap.
It's not known to everybody, apparently.
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#9It 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 millions of copies. 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.
Another problem is that the industry moves so quickly. Who cares what was published even 5 years ago in tech, in most cases? The problem is, any true experts in a new field won't be working at publishing companies, they'll be doing the high-paying jobs building the actual products. So unless the author sees an error, no one else will, before the book goes to print.
The responsibility then falls to the consumers of books. If you want accuracy, you need a more peer-reviewed model; or, simply, peers, for asking questions. Something like Wikipedia has both the immediacy of the web and the accuracy of a huge number of eyeballs (minus a contingent of vandals that seems insignificant in practice).
Re: C: The Complete Nonsense
#10Please 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.