C Review
Jon Forrest
forrest at blia.BLI.COM
Thu Jan 15 09:29:48 AEST 1987
I do freelance technical reviewing for several publishers and
have some feel for what goes into such reviews. I think the major
reason for your surprise is because the reviewer that examined
your book (not me, by the way) may have been including
people who program in C on micros in his comments. These people
don't always have the same level of experience as Unix (or VMS)
hackers. Anyway, I've added a few well chosen comments to
those of your reviewer.
>
> "... 95% of all C programmers couldn't give you a good
> explanation of the term lvalue..."
>
Probably less than 95% but more than 50%
> "... Switch/case could be classified as rarely used and should be
> kept till later.
>
Completely wrong
> "... very few C programmers know much about sizeof..."
>
Probably wrong
> "... 99% of all professional C programmers have no idea
> what typedef is all about, couldn't care less and probably
> won't ever need it."
>
Again, probably less than 99% but more than 50%
> "... 99% of all professional C programmers have no idea
> what the comma operator is all about, couldn't care less and
> probably won't ever need it."
>
Again, probably less than 99% but more than 50%
> "... Leave the comma operator altogether. An intro book is no
> place for obscure and unmaintainable tricks..."
Depending on how complete your book is intented to be,
this may be a good idea. However, C is such a small language
that there really is no reason to leave anything out.
>
> "... Pointers to functions ... few C programmers understand
> them or would ever need them..."
Completely wrong
>
> "... a C programmer never needs to know what a byte is..."
Completely wrong
Jon Forrest
ucbvax!mtxinu!blia!forrest
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