Re: Book questions
Hi.
On Mon, Apr 13, 2015 at 05:18:09AM -0700, Rusi Mody wrote:
> On Monday, April 13, 2015 at 12:30:03 PM UTC+5:30, Petter Adsen wrote:
> > On Sun, 12 Apr 2015 09:35:25 -0700
> > David Christensen wrote:
> >
> > > On 04/12/2015 01:33 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:> OK, thank you, I will
> > > definitely consider Perl also, as I already know
> > > > a little and have a few books on it.
> > >
> > > I'd advise learning one language well, where "well" includes security
> > > best practices. Understand that learning any modern language takes a
> > > lot of time and effort. So pick one that is good at solving the
> > > kinds of problems that you are motivated to work on, because the
> > > going will get tough and you'll have to find the tenacity to struggle
> > > through.
> >
> > I can see the logic in that. The issue with that is that I need them
> > for two separate things - I want to learn C to get a deeper
> > understanding of how Linux works, and I was initially thinking about
> > Python for sysadmin tasks that I can't or don't know how to do in shell
> > scripts.
>
> One way to fry a brain is to learn C.
Please. I'd understand if it was C++ or Java. Learning C is simple and
fun. Just read classic K&R treatise, do all the examples. Did so back in
high school, and no brain was damaged in the process :)
The only problem today is to get a C compiler that understands K&R C.
And yes, about the only *reasonable* way to understand Linux is to do
write something which (ab)using syscalls. And that's something best done
in C (maybe Perl).
> Another way to fry the brain is to struggle with regular expressions.
> Unless you like a double-fried brain I suggest doing strictly one at a time.
Now that's something I tend to agree with. One just need to see RFC822
fully compliant regexp to beleive.
> 20+ years ago I wrote a rant on why teaching (and ∴ learning) C causes grief:
> http://blog.languager.org/2013/02/c-in-education-and-software-engineering.html
>
> In one way it shows a lot of traps and pitfalls of beginners.
> It also recommends better paradigms than C for learning programming.
>
> If python had existed then I would have recommended it.
[1] says - appeared: 1991. Qualifies for 20 years IMO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)
Reco
Reply to: