Re: another good book
On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, David Parmet wrote:
> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 10:07:27 -0400 (EDT)
> From: David Parmet <dparmet@interport.net>
> Subject: another good book
>
> Can anyone recommend some good reading on basic programming? I have no
> knowledge aside from knowing a bash shell from a hole in the ground and
> I'd like to learn some basic skill so I can figure out how this thing
> works?
Hi David
Which book I would recommend depends on what language you want or need
to program in. If C++ and you have limited programming skills, then I'd
say buy Walt Savitch, Problem Solving with C++, AWL. Caveat: I ghost
authored the recent revision with Walt's close supervision, so that
really isn't blowing my own horn too much - we do use it in our course
here at WCU. It has an annotated bibliography of books in programming
in C++ that is pretty good.
If you are already understand problem solving and need to learn C, this
can be learned from the Kernighan and Ritchie, ANSI C language, from
Prentice Hall, or one of the plethora of other C++ beginning programming
books. Beware of books that deal with the synatx of a language
without dealing with much programming. K&R does not suffer from that
problem.
Frankly, for Debian or any Linux distribution, shell programming, Perl,
and Java Script might be better places to put your effort. C and C++
will take a couple of years of part time effort to get really good at.
Perl etc. perhaps less time. The hard part of learning to program well
is problem solving, not learning the syntax of the language.
Write me back and I'll send some recommendations on Perl. I'm sure the
others on this list will have some further, excellent recommendations.
--David
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