[H-GEN] The perennial book thread

[Greg Black]

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On 2003-10-19, Jason Parker-Burlingham wrote:

> So today I stopped in at a localish Borders and spent mayb $100 on
> books:
> 
>    * Windows 98 Annoyances, David A Karp
>    * Programming Pearls, 2nd edition, Jon Bentley
>    * K&R, 2nd edition (yes, I didn't own a copy of this until now)

Not having any interest in Windows, I can't comment on the first
beyond saying that I'd never spend money on such a thing.  the
other two are excellent.

> More interesting is the list of titles I'm thinking of getting:
> 
>    * Windows XP Annoyances, Karp
>    * The Standard C Library, Plauger
>    * Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen et al
>    * Unix Systems Programming, Robbins et al
>    * Code Generation in Action, Herrington
> 
> (The Windows books are for my work and general sanity; the others are
> part of a drive to learn more C and less Perl.)
> 
> Comments welcome.

Same comments for the Windows book as above.

I used to like Bill Plauger's work and have many of his books on
my shelves.  I haven't read that one, so can't comment directly.

Don't know the other three.  But, given the stated aims, I'll
suggest a few that you may have already but which I think are
well worth considering.

  * The Elements of Programming Style, Kernighan & Plauger
  * The Practice of Programming, Kernighan & Pike
  * Writing Efficient Programs, Bentley
  * Unix Network Programming, Stevens
  * Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment, Stevens

Some of these use languages other than C, but in ways that are
easy for any practising programmer to understand.  Some of them
have errors (e.g., the fifth one), but a Unix and C programmer
should know what those are on sight.

Apart from the new one (which came out too late to be useful to
me, although I thought it was excellent), I've found them all
useful for the purposes you have stated.

Cheers, Greg

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