🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3f433abc$0$10359$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au>,
 "Davo" <dgwood@optushome.com.au> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I am looking for active newsgroups, productive user friendly tutorials, good
> weblinks, and local private tutors (Melbourne Australia) in the programming
> language C. The two news groups athome.aus.programming  and
> athome.aus.programming.c++   dont seem to have much activity. Any
> information or advice will be much appreciated.

There is a book for wide-eyed mortals such as yourself. It is a book of 
wonders, marvels, and incredibly dense, yet inestimably valuable, 
information on the C language. This book is not exactly cheap, with a 
price tag (when I bought mine) in the US$35-40 range for less than 300 
pages. But while not cheap, it is worth ten, nay, a hundred times its 
own weight in gold for the knowledge it will impart to a seeker after 
knowledge of the C language. The name of this wondrous tome is "The C 
Programming Language, Second Edition", and it was written by the two 
people to whom the entire world owes a debt of gratitude for the very 
existence of the language: Brian W. Kernighan, and Dennis M. Ritchie.

Published by Prentice Hall of Englewood Cliffs, NJ, (With a branch 
office in Sydney) it wears an ISBN number of 0-13-110362-8, and was in 
its tenth printing when I got my copy back in 1992. 

Before taking even a fraction of a tiny baby step further on your 
journey towards knowledge, *FIND YOURSELF A COPY OF THIS BOOK!* Doing so 
is "step 2" in the recipe for learning C. Step 1 is, of course, 
realizing that you want to try to learn C in the first place.

*EVERY* C book, tutorial, pamphlet, website, or college course ever 
published/taught by anyone with even the slightest amount of competence 
will eventually refer you back to "K&R", as this book is commonly known. 
Short of going to the ANSI/IEEE standard, there is no more definitive 
work on the language, and no more authoritative information source than 
the very creators of the language you're trying to learn. 

Again I say *GET A COPY OF THIS BOOK*! The C programming language simply 
cannot be learned even halfway effectively without it.

Advice:
If you're able to find a spiral-bound copy of it, that's the one you 
want. More likely, you'll be forced to settle for the more 
"conventionally" (Paperback/hardcover) bound type. Go for the paperback 
version if it's available - Not only is it going to be somewhat less 
financially draining, it's MUCH more user-friendly when you're trying to 
key in an example, or follow along with an analysis of "this construct 
does that task" with pen and paper. Do not fear for durability - I've 
been using mine heavily for 10+ years, and so far, the most "wear" it 
exhibits is the peanut-butter smear on pages 248 and 249.

Advice Part 2:
*NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES* allow your copy of this book to fall 
into another "computer geek"'s custody, no matter how temporary that 
custody is intended to be. You will never see it again... It's not that 
they'll "steal" it... It's just that the book has that sort of 
"magnetism" to it. Non-computer-geeks will be automatically repelled by 
its aura, so it can safely be left in the care of mundanes, but those 
who are computer savvy are immune to this effect, and will in fact 
probably attempt to give it a new home - namely, next to THEIR computer 
instead of YOURS! :)

-- 
Don Bruder -  dakidd@sonic.net <--- Preferred Email - unmunged, SpamAssassinated
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