4 ms·
I think this is excellent advice. From the small amounts I've read, the other thing these books do well is connect what the reader already knows to what's being
by actuallyalys 8y ago
I think this is excellent advice. From the small amounts I've read, the other thing these books do well is connect what the reader already knows to what's being taught.
My only quibble is that I suspect minimalism is more a matter of taste than a widely applicable principle of solid technical writing. I've learned a lot from minimal books, but I've also learned a lot from books that incorporate screen shots or full-color illustrations. This isn't to say minimalism didn't work well for Kernighan-just that it's not as generalizable as the other principles.
FYI, You can read both the The C Programming Language [0] and The AWK Programming Language [1] at the Internet Archive.
[0]: https://archive.org/details/TheCProgrammingLanguageFirstEdition https://archive.org/details/TheCProgrammingLanguageFirstEdit...
[1]: https://archive.org/details/awkprogrammingla00ahoa https://archive.org/details/awkprogrammingla00ahoa
- copperx 8y agoA counterpoint would be Knuth's The TeXbook. In that book, Knuth explains every feature of TeX in excruciating detail, without being boring. He could have made the book 1/4 the size, but the book would have been worse for it.
- Koshkin 8y agoYes, opposite sides sometimes converge.
- userbinator 8y agoThe TeXbook has a lot of examples too, and Knuth makes very good use of the fact that it was itself written in TeX to illustrate the functionality.