I'm new to Linux. I've got Ubuntu and K&R. Now what?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23589

by pashbonk • 19 years ago

4 20 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

davidw• 19 years ago

... go start a company?

ralph3• 19 years ago

What's your aim? If you've K&R are you trying to learn C? If you want to learn the Unix philosophy then get Kernighan and Pike's _The Unix Programming Environment_. If you want to create a web start-up, learn Python and Django. What skills do you already have?

inklesspen3• 19 years ago

Are you a Django fan? If not, what's your motive for solely recommending Django, instead of TurboGears or Pylons?

(Yes, the fact that Python has multiple frameworks is a problem, but settling on Django is not a solution.)

ralph3• 19 years ago

Django is a reasonable enough one to learn. He hasn't the skills to examine the possible contenders and make a good decision himself. After learning Django, then he may be in a position to better appraise the competition.

Likewise, I didn't say "read a book on Unix" but gave a specific, worthy, contender. As a complete newcomer there's little more annoying than general hand-waving.

bootload• 19 years ago

'... I'm new ... Now what? ...'

Learn how to become a hacker ~ http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

omouse• 19 years ago

He should also read Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon to become inspired to hack. Man I love those books.

Snow Crash at scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/10862/Neal-Stephenson-Snow-Crash

tx• 19 years ago

What do you want to do? Join one of the smaller open source projects, get a mentor and build something amazing! :-)

Seriously, I do think that some hands-on useful development is the fastest track to become a master of your domain! :-)

dazzawazza• 19 years ago

Surely the next step is to contact some VC companies and ask for say, $10 million :-). This really is an open ended question! If you are about to start programming then there is no limit to the possibilities so you'd better pick a direction to go in that you will find interesting. Good luck.

jey2• 19 years ago

If you have enough balls to learn C from K&R, you could try learning C++ from Koenig & Moo's "Accelerated C++" instead. C++ contains everything in C, and has a lot of handy higher level constructs. You can deal with the specific idiosyncrasies of pure C later, but can get started quickly with C++. http://tinyurl.com/26cjz9

If you don't have any background in programming, or don't really know that you want to learn C or C++ specifically, I would recommend starting with Python. C++ is good if you know that you want to write systems software, or need to interface with C/C++ libraries. If you're just looking to learn to code, then learn Python. kyro said that he enjoyed learning from the free ebook "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python". http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

jsackmann• 19 years ago

Ditto the recommendation on "How to Think..." ...a few years ago, I had no programming knowledge whatsoever, read about 1/3 of the book, and was already building useful stuff (to me, anyway).

benhoyt2• 19 years ago

Hmmm, I definitely wouldn't recommend newbies learning C++. Every time I've tried to dig into C++, it's been a turn-off. K&R's great. C's great, and it's small enough to get your head around, but if you want to know a language like C++, yeah, definitely agreed about Python.

jey2• 19 years ago

What's the trouble with C++? It seem to me that using the higher-level constructs of C++ is a lot friendlier than having to malloc and free things all over the place. You don't have to jump into C++ template metaprogramming. :-)

ivan• 19 years ago

Congrats :) I have first edition of K&R in my bookshelf and I still love it. It cost 25 slovak koruna /approx $1/ at that time :)

timg• 19 years ago

Start compiling Gentoo. When it's done, you'll be ready for it.

skittles• 19 years ago

Here's information on cgi programming with C: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/cgic.html

Not many people do cgi programming (especially with C) anymore, but it will teach you a lot about Linux and programming. You will have to get a working web server for one. Configuring Apache on Ubuntu should be a good learning experience. If you can also get a working database server such as PostgreSQL (my preference) or MySQL working with your website, you will know the basics for building a real web-based application.

I'm new to Linux. I've got Ubuntu and K&R. Now what?

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