Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!mccc!pjh
From: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: What's a good textbook?
Message-ID: <140@mccc.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jan 88 19:02:53 GMT
References: <523@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> <128@mccc.UUCP> <2023@pdn.UUCP>
Reply-To: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg)
Organization: Mercer College, Trenton, NJ
Lines: 42

In article <2023@pdn.UUCP> reggie@pdn.UUCP (George Leach) writes:
>In article <128@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg) writes:
>
>>Personally, I take my hat off to anyone who learned his/her C from K&R.
>>It just has too few examples and is too terse for me.
>
>Well, then Peter you will have to take your hate off quite a few times.
                                             ^^^^
>For many folks K&R was virtually the only book on the topic at the time
>they were learning C.  In fact, as far as I am concerned, if you know
>how to program in another language K&R should be sufficient.
>

Well, George, it ain't my "hate" that I'd take off anyway!  And I don't mind
taking it off any number of times.  Just isn't a problem.

My contention, however, is that people who learned C before it became 
popular were good programmers, and that the folks who are taking it now 
are perhaps less able (given that we're talking about people with the
same levels of programming experience) as programmers.  For example, we
gave our first C course 2.5 years ago.  The students were almost all
systems programmers from local industry, and they could have learned from
almost any source.  Last semester, my students included "regular"
freshman/sophs, plus applications programmers (including COBOL-only types).
I know that many of them would have had a hard time with just K&R.

To test myself, I went back and looked at one of my copies of K&R, and found
it to be delightful to read.  It has everything in it with no excess
baggage.  However, looking at it as a student, I find it to be too terse,
and lacking in both examples and explanations.  A person learning C from
K&R would have to spend many hours testing and playing to understand their
examples.

I guess part of the problem is that K&R seems to have been written for 
the "Bell Labs level" person.  There's a need for a different kind of text
for the rest of us.  

-- 
Peter Holsberg                  UUCP: {rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Technology Division             CompuServe: 70240,334
Mercer College                  GEnie: PJHOLSBERG
Trenton, NJ 08690               Voice: 1-609-586-4800