Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!oliveb!sun!snafu!lm
From: lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: 4.3BSD book available from Computer Literacy
Keywords: 4.3 BSD UNIX internals
Message-ID: <88137@sun.uucp>
Date: 2 Feb 89 23:28:17 GMT
References: <2214@eta.unix.ETA.COM>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: lm@sun.UUCP (Larry McVoy)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 28

In article <2214@eta.unix.ETA.COM> rscott@eta.unix.ETA.COM (Rich Scott) writes:
$	BTW, the BSD book is very, very good. IMHO, it's much better
$written (whatever happened to readability in C.S. books?) than
$the Bach book.
$
$----------
$rich scott	 (612) 642 -8949 internet: rscott@diamond.unix.eta.com
$eta systems, st. paul, mn     uucp: {amdahl,rutgers}!bungia!eta!rscott

Umm, as a kernel hack that has read both books I'd like to throw in my
two cents and say I think the Bach book is better. *My needs* and use for
these sorts of books are:

    I'm trying to figure out some some concept, say the line discipline,
    that is documented (pretty much) only by the code.  With the Bach book,
    I turn to the section on terminal drivers and quickly find diagrams that
    show the big picture and code fragments that show greater detail but not 
    so much as to lose the forest for the trees.

    With the BSD book it requires more reading and more distilling on my 
    part to get the same information.

If your needs are similar, I'd reccommend starting with Bach and moving to the
BSD book after you understand what Bach said.  I'm not saying that the BSD 
book is bad, just that the Bach book is quite good and that I personally think
that it compares favourably to the BSD book.

Larry McVoy, Lachman Associates.			  My opinions are that.