[aclug-L] Re: Mp3Lister.app

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

No. The "learn C in 1 week" books are only useful if you're working with
Microsoft tools and need clues to the IDE. To learn C itself, start with
Kernighan & Ritchie (like we did in the dark ages). I also like a book
by Donald Alcock, "Illustrating C", but it's probably out of print.

Then read a lot of code, starting off with simple programs where you
already understand pretty much what they do. Two other things that can
help are a bit of assembly language and a how-to compiler book (like
Holub's out-of-print "Compiler Design in C", or Aho-Ullman-Sethi's
"dragon" book). You should at some point capture some assembly output
from your C compiler to get some idea what the code generation looks
like. C was originally written to displace assembly language, so the
relationship is somewhat intimate. Besides, sooner or later you'll
have to debug something using disassembled code, and perhaps you'll
even have the hideous job of finding a compiler bug.

For C++, the best book is probably still Lippman's "Primer" (although the
latest edition has grown too fat for my tastes). Don't know whether Eckel's
book is any good,but you can download it from http://www.bruceeckel.com
and check it out yourself.

gLaNDix wrote:
> 
> > So you need a C book by example. Look around there are some, for Perl
> > there is the Perl Cookbook, which I've not read but heard was good.
> 
> are the "learn C in 1 week"-type books any good, or should i stick to the
> O'Reily (sp?) & Associates-type books?  right now, all i've got is a C++
> book from Tabor...
> 
> jesse

-- 
/*
 * Tom Hull -- mailto:thull@xxxxxxxxxxx or thull@xxxxxxxxxx
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