C Books and C++ Books You Don't Want

http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/yechiel/CS/BadBooksC+C++.html

by ekm2 • 14 years ago

59 39 14 years ago

cs.technion.ac.il

mikestew• 14 years ago

I remember using the SAMs books (which make the list). I learned more from correcting the errors, of which there were many, than I did from the books themselves. Simply horrid books that should have had much more time spent on editing.

gtani• 14 years ago

SAMS, Cue, Cybex, Wrox: the doorstop publishers!

pretoriusB• 14 years ago

Wrox actually has some nice books, especially in the C#, Java department that I know of.

3825• 14 years ago

Thank you for the article. Many of us share the hatred for Microsoft Corporation but perhaps we should let go of the M$ shorthand out of context?

mitchi• 14 years ago

totally... it's irrelevant now. The company has really changed and besides can we really say that they were that bad now? Is Microsoft Windows really such a bad product? I personally don't think so.

arkem• 14 years ago

The article was written in 1998 when such slang was common, as was the design elements used (like animated gifs).

I don't think being disdainful of Microsoft is interesting either but it makes more sense in context.

bcl• 14 years ago

Ha! I still have a Schildt C/C++ book on my shelf. I used it back when I was learning C with Mark Williams C on my Atari ST. Probably about time to retire it to the landfill.

srean• 14 years ago

I love books that go straight to the point. I appreciate terseness, and appreciate it orders of magnitude more when it comes with no loss in clarity. Its amazing what some authors can pull off with so few words.

You can guess K&R is one of my favorites.

I understand that C++ is a huge complicated language, Scott Meyers puts it very aptly by stating its a federation of languages, and this makes hard to write pithy pedagogic books. In spite of that, the ever too common 800+ page tomes have always worked against me.

Stroustrup's 3rd is probably a mighty fine book to learn from, its just not for me and its definitely no K&R.

I think my favorite is a little known book by Dirk Vermier http://books.google.com/books/about/Multi_Paradigm_Programmi... It should definitely not be one's first programming book, perhaps not even one's first C++ book. A shade shy of 300 pages, it did serve me well with its terseness, correctness and clarity. The only thing is that its too pricey for its size, its a bit dated now because it covers c++98.

I think C++ is best understood from one pithy book that shows you the just the language to get started, and then a series of Scott Meyers, Andrei Alexandrescu, Herb Sutter style books to get good at it.

sukhbir• 14 years ago

"Accelerated C++" by Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo is pretty good and somewhat along the lines of K&R.

systems• 14 years ago

there should be a new version for "accelerated c++" hopefully soon,

i have sent koenig an email asking about this, and he replied, and said he will start working on a new version with barbara moo as soon as she finishes working on the new version of C++ Primer

knightni• 14 years ago

I definitely found this an excellent read as well.

16s• 14 years ago

I second this comment! Excellent book that will have you up and writing idiomatic C++ in no time.

andrewflnr• 14 years ago

Interestingly, "C++ For Dummies" is absent. I wonder if he just missed it, or really thinks it's not that bad. I learned C++ from it, and I think it did a decent job.

mturmon2• 14 years ago

This web page is really quite awful. There's no sense of a uniform level of treatment -- there's a condemnation of assert() right next to page-by-page book errata. The comments are not incisive at all. There's no table of contents. And the rotating gifs.

theobserver3• 14 years ago

"There's no table of contents." Really? Did you look at the top?

mturmon2• 14 years ago

You are right. Of course, the page is still a travesty of form and content.

frozenport• 14 years ago

Rants about void main seem archaic, unjustified, and pretentious.

dsrguru2• 14 years ago

How so? The argument as I understand it is that all C89 standard-compliant compilers work with "int main" (and work correctly), regardless of whether or not the target OS has exit statuses. Not all compilers work with "void main", and those that do will yield executables that always produce an exit status of zero. While there are times you might write C code that doesn't need to be portable (in which case "int main" and "void main" are effectively the same if your system doesn't use exit statuses), there is no good reason for a C textbook to teach the non-standard approach that only works in certain non-portable cases. If a textbook does so, that's likely a sign that the authors made other poor decisions.

_kst_• 14 years ago

No, compilers that accept "void main" do not necessarily produce executables that produce an exit status of 0. I just tried it with gcc on Ubuntu, and the exit status was 1.

And the validity of "void main" doesn't depend on whether the system uses exit statuses. An implementation may accept forms of main other than the ones defined by the language, including "void main()" -- but if it doesn't, the behavior of such a program is undefined.

The rules are different for freestanding implementations, which are generally for embedded systems; for such systems, the program entry point is entirely implementation-defined, and might not even be called "main". But for hosted implementations, there's no advantage at all in using "void main" vs. the correct "int main(void)".

laichzeit0• 14 years ago

Agree. I've used "void main(void)" on embedded applications where 1. there is no OS under you. 2. it can never "exit"

void main(void) { init(); for(;;) { web_tick(); serial_tick(); tcp_tick(); etc. } }

An example is the horrible Dynamic C compiler from z-world (or digi as they are now called). Guys who complain about "violating standards" clearly haven't worked in diverse enough fields on broken, shitty and half-standard compilers ;)

matiu3• 14 years ago

Best c++ book is "The c++ programming language" by Bjarne.

I own the 3rd special edition: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/C-Programming-Language-Speci...

and have pre-ordered the 4th edition which includes c++11 info: http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/C-Programming-Language-Bjarn...

I've only probably read like 5 c++ books, but this one kills all the others for explaining how things work, teaching good programming style, and giving you a great all round understanding.

gsibble• 14 years ago

I've read two of the books on this list and both, while having their faults, were very useful and helped jumpstart my programming experience in my teenage years. The things this person is complaining about are limited to a tiny minority of pages regarding unspecific topics that changed significantly over time and were not necessarily incorrect when written.

Overall, the website comes across as bitchy and pretentious. especially considering how their own HTML comes across as flagrantly hideous.

nimeshneema3• 14 years ago

AFAIK worst book on C Programming Language in existance is "Let Us C" By "Yashavant Kanetkar"

http://www.ksetindia.com/books/let-us-c

Ironically this book is quite popular with students in Indian Universities (I guess mainly due to ignorance)

Even the wikipedia page for the author admits this fact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yashavant_Kanetkar

metaobject• 14 years ago

That guy has written more than 40 books according to Wikipedia - quantity over quality, I suppose. I wonder how he justifies having 9 editions for "Let Us C". It's almost as if he is doing solely to be able to force students to buy the new version (as opposed to the used version in the university bookstore).

nimeshneema3• 14 years ago

Correct. And the general misconception among students is that the newer editions contains contain updated stuff.

The gross thing is that the content is toatally based on Turbo C/C++ compiler for windows and is full of errors, with no attention paid to standards

eps2• 14 years ago

He lost me at this -

> assert is used for algorithmic error detecting instead of for debugging only. This is a serious error, common to many, otherwise good, books. But here it is very widely used.

One man's error is another man's programming style. Using asserts as comment-like statements to declare invariants is a very useful a well-established practice that leads to a more concise code. Perhaps it's a nuance not fit for the novices, but to call a book bad because if that is unreasonable at best.

theobserver3• 14 years ago

I think you missed the point: I agree that using assert() is good for declaring invariants - but it is used only at debugging (as the quoted text says). If you don't turn assert() off at production (NDEBUG) you are in a deeper problem. The main thing should be that assert() does not replace if() or other conditionals (say for testing successful scanf()), and moreover, assert() should be used in a textbook when teaching debugging - not when teaching the basics of programming (likewise, only a very advanced student-driver is taught how to restart a stalled engine while in 60mph motion on the freeway - not a beginner one).

eps2• 14 years ago

> If you don't turn assert() off at production (NDEBUG) you are in a deeper problem

In a deeper problem compared to when I don't turn it off? Are you sure about that? The only reason asserts are turned off in the production code is the performance considerations, nothing else.

Zoophy• 14 years ago

Didn't everybody in the world already know K&R is the only C book worth touching?

yechielkimchi2• 14 years ago

Not really. You need at least "The C Programming FAQ", by Steve Summit (it has a very useful Internet (partial) version) and one or two more. Those who understand K&R2 and C-FAQs know better than 90% of C programmers.

Ramonaxvh• 14 years ago

Without looking at the list I K&R isn't on it. It's really all you need to get started, you can find code snippets and experiment to get past that.

Has anyone noticed how many books on C are 4 times the size yet leave you with less valuable information than K&R?

jcmnetmedia• 14 years ago

I learned a ton from SAMS "teach yoursefl C++ in 21 days". Yeah I didn't think I would either, but it was given to me at work, and I went through about 75% of it and it was pretty damn good.

greyfade• 14 years ago

This list is unfortunately missing the O'Reilly-published "Practical C++ Programming" by Steve Oualline, which is a truly terrible text, and the only O'Reilly book I actively tell people to burn. It's filled with errors, code samples riddled with syntax errors, and non-idiomatic style.

C Books and C++ Books You Don't Want

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