On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 07:55:18AM +0200, Otto Moerbeek wrote: > > Yes, it's a very tough book. > > I have had a similar experience.
> Wel, reading an answers book does not really help. Arriving at the > answers yourself (wich requires effort indeed) is much better. Agreed, the answer book is cheating yourself. One may be better off reading someone elses code. > A mentioned in the preface, K&R requires some knowledge about general > programming concepts and/or access to someone with experience. And it > requires real study, not just causal reading, as others have said > before. This is interesting "K&R requires some knowledge about general programming concepts", I couldn't agree more considering how I struggled with K&R. Perhaps though not only general programming concepts but general computing concepts as well? I have a book from Tanenbaum that I wish I had read before I tried the others. Perhaps something like Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems, could pave the way to easier understanding. Because how can you visualize pointers when you can't visualize how a process looks like, or how memory address translation is used between kernel and userland? Idealy something like that is combined together in a book but I haven't found one like it. > I'm probably biased, I learned C the hard way: I only had access to > the reference manual part of the 1st edition, a long long time ago, > must have been 1985. That reference manuals was about 30 pages > (somehat smaller than the reference manual in the 2nd ed). You turned out alright and wrote some awesome code. :-) > If you find K&R hard, still be sure to return to it after you feel > more confortable with C. C is a small language. K&R could not have > said it better in the preface to the 2nd ed: "C is not a big language, > and it is not well served by a big book". While it is a small book > they not only teach the language itself, but a lot about style, > standard idiom and general approach of writing C. When someone is done with K&R and they liked the little algorithms perhaps it's time to go to the next good book "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike. This one was recommended to me and whatever someone recommends to me I buy. I too like that book. > As often, a small book might require more effort, but in the end is > more effective. > > -Otto Well said. -peter
