Can Novices Jump Directly in C? (Books)

[uunet!bria!mike]

In an article, levels.sait.edu.au!marwk writes:
>K&R has got to be the worst book for learning C for a beginner that I have
>seen!  I used it to advance my knowledge, but it gave me headaches years ago
>when I wanted to learn the language.

I personally found it to be an _excellent_ book when learning C.  One of
the things that I greatly dislike in many of the C books that are out today
is the focus on cute pictures and sayings (here is a how a structure is
declared, see the cute little elf holding up the structure in the diagram ...)

As it is said, C is not a big language, and is not served well by "big"
books that cram page after page of diagrams, flowcharts, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
The best companion is K&P's (as in "Pike") "Software Tools".  If you can
snag some of the old Tool's ratfor goodies as well, more power to you.

On the bit about starting out in Pascal vs. starting out in C, I would
say that C would give the budding programmer the advantage in life.
Agreed, the hill is steeper to climb, but once you're on top, you can
definately get a better view of the world.  One of the big complaints is
that the concept of the pointer is overwhelming to C neophytes.  The
reason why is because so many other langauges go through great contortions
to "insulate" you from the reality of memory and addresses.  Feel free
to flame on, but IMHO programmers program _machines_.  Anything that
goes to great lengths to insulate you from the machine is deprivation.
It's just a matter of how much deprivation is useful, and how much is not.
-- 
Michael Stefanik                       | Opinions stated are not even my own.
Systems Engineer, Briareus Corporation | UUCP: ...!uunet!bria!mike
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