>i also got my hands on the original as well: software tools in ratfor. Great book. I first read it back in the 1980s (still have my copy), it was key componen

>i also got my hands on the original as well: software tools in ratfor. Great book. I first read it back in the 1980s (still have my copy), it was key component of my self-taught[0] programming skills that I parlayed into a twenty-plus year career as a sysadmin, DBA, and yes, programmer. [0] well, I did take one computer science course, PDP-11 assembly language, while I was in graduate business school, but other than that, completely self-taught.