Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!mkhaw
From: mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: What's a good textbook?
Message-ID: <20331@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: 19 Jan 88 00:03:38 GMT
References: <140@mccc.UUCP>
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 28

From article <140@mccc.UUCP>, by pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg):
+ 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
+..
+ 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.  

My personal experience agrees with the observations above.  When I first
tried to learn C from reading K&R, while still a novice Pascal user, I found
it impossibly terse and dry.  After delivering a number of substantial systems
written in Pascal, I tried K&R again, and found it succinct yet adequately
comprehensive.

Mike Khaw
-- 
internet:  mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
usenet:	   {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!mkhaw%teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
USnail:	   Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303