5 ms·
K&R still holds a place for me as one of my favorite programming books. It may not hold up today, especially not for new readers, but at a time when the alterna
by Zanni 7y ago
K&R still holds a place for me as one of my favorite programming books. It may not hold up today, especially not for new readers, but at a time when the alternatives were Pascal, Fortran, Basic and Assembly, the C Programming Language was an intoxicating blend of power and elegance. In addition to serving as an introduction to C, K&R was opinionated in a way that I hadn't seen from other programming books to that point, with as much emphasis on style as how to get things done. It's the Strunk and White of programming (or was at the time).
- kps 7y ago> It's the Strunk and White of programming (or was at the time). On the chance you don't know — and because many don't — Kernighan & Plauger wrote The Elements of Programming Style a few years earlier.
- omaranto 7y agoI know you probably mean it as a compliment to K&R, but you shouldn't compare K&R with S&W: while both are opinionated, the advice in K&R is coherent and sensible! S&W is a bizarre book: it's a pleasure to read because the authors are both excellent writers, but they don't know anything about grammar so their advice often makes no sense. Seriously, read it again (it's a short book) and count how many times they actually follow their own grammatical advice (their advice not about a technical grammar point is usually sound, and you should, for example, omit needless words). My opinion is that you should take S&W as style exemplar, but not a style guide. Geoffrey Pullum's article 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice explains all this better than I can: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/50years.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/50years.pdf
- dunefox 7y agoEven when the alternative was (Common) Lisp?