I'd definitely buy Learn C the hard way, I've been following the book LPTHW online few weeks ago and the way you teach IMHO is the best approach so no programming folks like me can grasp the language.
Re: LCTHW, I am taking "Linux Systems Programming In C" course at ucsc extension. You are supposed to already know c before taking the course, but it has been a fun trial-by-fire to dust off ye olde c skills AND learn the intricacies of POSIX programming simultaneously.
I liked the "Advice From An Old Programmer" at the end:
"Which programming language you learn and use does not matter. Do not get sucked into the religion surrounding
programing languages as that will only blind you to their true purpose of being your tool for doing interesting things"
"Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. ...You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.
People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."
I hear similar stories of editors not getting something important like that. What did he want to do with it, and what did you say that got him to grok it and leave it alone?
Yeah, it's a tough call. I can see R being very useful, but ChucK is way more fun. C just seems like a book that needs to be written before the "learning C sucks" situation gets worse.
For what it's worth, my vote would be for Learn C The Hard Way. Not having learned C in any formal setting and coming from a background of mainly interpreted languages, I've found it quite difficult to determine reliable, up to date resources for learning C. It's not that there's none around obviously, it's just hard to know which stuff to go with and hard to find something in between complete n00b and full master, which is what I'd be hoping for.
"hard to find something in between complete n00b and full master" - My theory is that the best technical books or books for learning are the "intermediate" ones.
There are usually a ton of acceptable beginner's books and then very specialized and complex books but very few good "intermediate" books like the favorites:
- TCP/IP ilustrated
- Perl Camel book
- R&K C book
- Silman's groundbreaking chess books
- Harrington's groundbreaking poker books
I'd love to see the R book to a) actually become familiar with it and b) because it'll also provide a refresher to some theory I've unfortunately forgotten. Plus, you're due for some more posts about the importance of that stuff for programmers. :)
I agree with all parts of that statement. A contemporary C book (as applied to servers etc.) would be much needed, before the world turns into a morass of webdev frontend programmers…
Yeah, but R is all caught up in a stats education -- and I think that's much harder to cover in a single book. Just my .02.
If people are looking for a broad overview of statistical stuff -- what's a t test, a sampling distribution, a regression, anova, variance, glm family, etc, I'd recommend this unfortunately very expensive book:
http://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Sleuth-Course-Methods-Anal...
It's very applied with subject oriented chapters, eg what is regression? What about regression where my dep var is counts? A probability? With correlations in the design matrix? It's not perfect, but for self learning of stats, it's the best thing I know of.
I really like that this book was written but $30 dollars isn't actually cheap for a technical book, I'd much rather like to buy something like Land of Lisp, but I'm probably not the main audience and I don't know how well I fit into the target audience.
It is a short book for $30 dollars though, and I don't know if it is just Lulu's pricing that is causing this, but kudos for offering it for free.
Edit: well sorry that I called a short book short, it is short on content compared to the other beginning python books imo as it doesn't really get very far in depth (you will know basics but you won't really know how to program in python past the basics) so it isn't really teaching you the same thing in less time it is teaching you a subset of the same thing in less time.
I hate, Hate, HATE this logic. Your comment is what's wrong with the technical book industry right now. Publishers instruct authors to pad their books to increase the perceived value while at the same time pushing them to cover less so the publisher can sell a "Pro" follow up book.
If this book can teach you Python in half the pages that INCREASES its value as far as I'm concerned.
Agreed. I have a bookshelf full of 60+ dollar tech books full of obsolete stuff. 30 bucks is a reasonable price for a tech book and one I'll gladly pay. (Also, +1 on the C book)
that and "The Practice of Programming" are my two favourite programming books. They are succinct, yet easy to read, and contain minimal bullshit. Perfect.
I based the price on The Little Schemer, which is even smaller, has even less instruction, and goes for $29 retail, $23 street. If TLS were 8.5x11 like mine it'd be 30 pages long.
> I really like that this book was written but $30 dollars isn't actually cheap for a technical book
Is that a joke? $30 is quite literally nothing for a new technical book. Refactoring is still $45 new (hardcover but more than 10 years old now), Effective Java is about the same price, TAPL will set you back $60 and ATPL is $56 on Amazon, HTDP is $67, Koza's "Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection" released in 1992 is $67, SICP is $70, amazon asks for a hundred bucks for the purple dragon books, and then of course The Art of Computer Programming boxset will blow a $200 hole in your wallet.
$30? That's the price of a small and widely-distributed paperback like Friedl's Mastering Regular Expressions. It's basically the lower bound, even The Art of the Metaobject Protocol (345p, published in 1991) is $40.
Here's what's under $30: "For Dummies" books. Even the Head First collection bottoms out around $30.
Just ordered, been waiting for this one - I find it much easier following a book like this when it's printed and sitting beside my computer, not as a browser tab to be constantly switched back and forth.
+1 for LCTHW from me
(ps coupon code LEAF305 will get a small discount on the lulu order).
I enjoyed LPTHW and my vote for the next book would be Learn C The Hard Way. As I'm sure you know, that scratches an itch in a way that the other options for the new book don't IMO.
Second. Assembly is a big gap in my programming knowledge and I'm on a search for the best ways to learn it. Hoping to come across something as enlightening as PG's lisp essays were, but nothing clear yet.
I think we're in the minority here, but I would also be into ChucK. there are so many resources on C already (though, and python) but I found ChucK hard to delve into.
Way to go Zed.