[H-GEN] C programming idioms

[Greg Black]

On 2007-02-19, Russell Stuart wrote:

> My personal addition to Greg's list would be "Programming
> Perls" by Jon Bentley.  Not exactly a tutorial or a
> reference, but most C programmers find it a joy to read.

I am also fond of the various Programming Pearls books by Bentley, but
again I don't think they are part of the answer to the original
question.  Back when the articles they were constructed from were
written for CACM in the early 1980's, the world was quite different.
Hardware was very costly and not very powerful.  Programmers were very
cheap and considered their time should be spent getting the best out of
the limited hardware.

Today, hardware is more or less free.  Programmers are relatively costly
and need to be as effective as they can in a limited time frame.

Therefore, Bentley's lessons are much less relevant today than they once
were.  They are, nevertheless, great fun to read and they do certainly
contain many useful gems.  I think all programmers should read those
books, as well as the others in my first list.  But these Programming
Pearls are not of great use to the person who is trying to get on top of
modern C programming practice.

Cheers, Greg