Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!gatech!mcdchg!usenet From: usenet@mcdchg.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.unix Subject: Re: Unix Internals Manual Message-ID: <1123@mcdchg.UUCP> Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 12:38:57 EDT Article-I.D.: mcdchg.1123 Posted: Thu Jul 16 12:38:57 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 08:00:50 EDT References: <734@mcdchg.UUCP> <888@mcdchg.UUCP> <985@mcdchg.UUCP> Sender: usenet@mcdchg.UUCP Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Santa Monica CA Lines: 46 Approved: usenet@mcdchg.UUCP In article <985@mcdchg.UUCP> kjepo@portofix.liu.se (Kjell Post) writes: >In article <888@mcdchg.UUCP>, oliveb!miriam@ames.arpa (Miriam Eldridge) writes: >> supply to his customers: one for the new user, one for the somewhat >> more sophisticated user (I put Russ Sage's TRICKS OF THE UNIX MASTERS >> in this category), and one for the programmer. >Aaaah, REVENGE! >1. Don't buy "Tricks of the UNIX masters"!!! > It's practically worthless, written by someone who obviously wanted > to make just a few, fast bucks. It's not in the UNIX spirit at all and > it just makes me mad when I see all the stupid examples. Instead, ... > >2. Marc Rochkind "Advanced UNIX programming" is great! > >3. Kernighan, Pike "The UNIX programming environment". > -- Kjell Post THough I haven't read "Tricks of the UNIX Masters", I have an idea of what it's about. We've all seen books of this type where the author tries to put a few gimmicks in and sell the book. I think a good UNIX book should try to explain the philosophy of UNIX and the function. Both selections #2 and #3 do just that (#2 being much lower-level). While I'm on the subject.... When I first started programming in C some while back, I bought a book called "The C Programmer's Library" by Jack Purdum. It seemed pretty good, and the only thing I could complain about was the style, etc. But later, I needed to write some routines that dealt with binary trees in C. I'd done this before in Pascal (yuk!) but I forgot. To refresh myself, I consulted Purdum's book (which had a little about trees in it). Whoa! He left out the most complicated part: that of deleting nodes. No doubt as a excercise to the user. When I'm taking a class I want to do excercises. When I'm doing a job, I want to see example code. What I'm getting at is that he showed how to build a tree, and how to traverse a tree (in 3 ways, even) but left out the part that really is worth a damn (idiots can figure out how to add and traverse). Boy, cop-out's like that just make me mad! MikeP -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The company and all my associates and friends and ESPECIALLY the government put me up to say all this useless trash. MikeP {seismo|sdcrdcf}!ism780c!mikep "Some of my best friends are Bigots..."