Quality of books on programming
Despite the proliferation of screencasts, blogs, programmers, e-books, etc., a regular paper book remains an important element when training a novice programmer or for upgrading the skills of a more experienced coder.
And it is very important which book falls into the hands of the reader, who has decided to get new knowledge. I myself regularly buy books, but earlier, when I first started learning languages, I bought more often. The bulk of the books I read are made up of (constituted) Visual Basic 5/6, Visual Basic .NET, C #, and to a lesser extent C ++ and Delphi languages. Therefore, we will draw conclusions on the basis of these books, but I think that the picture will be similar with other languages.
The first thing that always catches the eye is the difference in class, in professionalism, call it what you will, between books by foreign authors and domestic writers. Practically, any programming language has its own recognized gurus, whose books are read, republished, and studied far and wide. But this applies specifically to foreign authors. As a rule, foreign authors write fresh, informative and accessible. Often, even in a serious book, the author has the time and place to put in some kind of joke or give a cheerful commentary on any problem. This style can be found in C. Petzold, J. Richter and many others.
Not to be unsubstantiated, here are some quotes from the book Programming in the C # key :
This is only part of interesting phrases from the book. Or take the preface to the book Jeffrey Richter CLR via C # , written by his son-toddler (I will give only a part of the text, it is very difficult to copy it):
For those who do not understand what is written above - imagine that a kitten ran over your keyboard - is the hint clear?
And now let's look at the works of domestic authors. It is no secret that so many books in Russia are written by various teachers. And, apparently, they are not at all joking. The main thing is to write a smart book so that it is recommended for students to study at universities throughout the country. Reading our authors is very hard and boring. But all the records broke a book that I bought recently. And it is called C #. Beginning of programming (by E. Ishkov). On the cover of the book was a contented reddish cat sitting on the moon, who caught a # # with a fishing rod. I could not resist and bought this book for my collection. But the first heads shocked me. Judge for yourself - Chapter 1.2 describes the organization of the workspace on a computer and states the following fact (hereinafter referred to as a book) - in folder names (directories), as well as in file names, there should not be more than 8 characters and should not be used non-latin characters . The last time I heard about the limit of 8 characters, probably when I was working under DOS. At first I could not believe my eyes and immediately began to look through my projects, as well as the examples downloaded from MSDN. Almost all of the folders and file names contained more than 8 characters and loaded well. What am I doing wrong? I haven’t found any ready-made examples about non-Latin characters, so I created my own example, gave Russian files to the files and launched them again - again no problems. The answer came on the next page of the book - a screenshot of the Windows Commander 5.0 program is mentioned and given there. It turns out that to learn C # you need to install not only Visual Studio, but also an additional Windows Commander program. And it is written in a book published in 2009. Probably, the author is not yet aware that Windows Commander no longer exists. By the way, if you look at the screenshot of this program, then the title contains the text of Windows Commander 5.0 - Gold Soft 2002 . I have big doubts about the legality of this product, and you? And, ending the topic with WC - apparently there was a limit of 8 characters, which the author issues as a feature of the system.
Then the book was no longer of practical interest when you read, for example, that Russian symbols cannot be used in variable names, since the compiler will generate an error. Oh well. And the examples with the keywords for, if / else, and others brought simply deadly boredom. Well, why, foreign authors try to give examples from life - for example, calculate the cost of fuel, or the amount of payment on a loan, and so on, and our authors give such an example.
What is these faceless m and n? And so on all the examples. By the way, pay attention to how the text of the code is designed - no spaces or indents. Visual Studio does not allow to write so carelessly, the text int val = 55; will be automatically converted to int val = 55; . Perhaps this is not the author’s fault, but of the publishers, but it’s very unpleasant to read the code glued together in this way.
In fact, it is very difficult to write about programming in a lively and understandable language, and even good experienced teachers may not be able to express their thoughts intelligibly. Writing correctly is also a kind of art, like the art of programming, but for some reason, foreign authors have much better knowledge of this art.
')
PS I spoke about the general level of books. It is clear that there are exceptions - and the book of our author can be good, and any book of a foreign author can be a sediment.
By the way, I laid out the third part of my lessons on C #. My lessons are not a masterpiece either :-).
And it is very important which book falls into the hands of the reader, who has decided to get new knowledge. I myself regularly buy books, but earlier, when I first started learning languages, I bought more often. The bulk of the books I read are made up of (constituted) Visual Basic 5/6, Visual Basic .NET, C #, and to a lesser extent C ++ and Delphi languages. Therefore, we will draw conclusions on the basis of these books, but I think that the picture will be similar with other languages.
The first thing that always catches the eye is the difference in class, in professionalism, call it what you will, between books by foreign authors and domestic writers. Practically, any programming language has its own recognized gurus, whose books are read, republished, and studied far and wide. But this applies specifically to foreign authors. As a rule, foreign authors write fresh, informative and accessible. Often, even in a serious book, the author has the time and place to put in some kind of joke or give a cheerful commentary on any problem. This style can be found in C. Petzold, J. Richter and many others.
Not to be unsubstantiated, here are some quotes from the book Programming in the C # key :
This happens because an algebraic expression like “B = 2” means some immutable value of B; this is similar to the statement "Down is a cat." What is great about programming is that experimenting is both easy and safe. This is not like in chemistry. You will not blow your house. To become a good programmer, you need to learn to think like a computer. Of course, not all the time. Otherwise, you can go nuts. Always consider user convenience first and foremost, not programmer convenience. You are smarter than them (or at least you think so). If you understand the haiku compiled by this program, you may need to stop programming and go to sleep. In order to help the programmer answer such questions, C # supports the bool data type (rhyming with "cool"), which has four fifths of the English spelling of the last name George Boole. You can help yourself remember the symbol OR, if you imagine that the vertical bar looks like a paddle (in English, oar, which resembles the logical OR operator - OR.
This is only part of interesting phrases from the book. Or take the preface to the book Jeffrey Richter CLR via C # , written by his son-toddler (I will give only a part of the text, it is very difficult to copy it):
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii k fgb lkbiubr, g463wb / '[] ...
For those who do not understand what is written above - imagine that a kitten ran over your keyboard - is the hint clear?
And now let's look at the works of domestic authors. It is no secret that so many books in Russia are written by various teachers. And, apparently, they are not at all joking. The main thing is to write a smart book so that it is recommended for students to study at universities throughout the country. Reading our authors is very hard and boring. But all the records broke a book that I bought recently. And it is called C #. Beginning of programming (by E. Ishkov). On the cover of the book was a contented reddish cat sitting on the moon, who caught a # # with a fishing rod. I could not resist and bought this book for my collection. But the first heads shocked me. Judge for yourself - Chapter 1.2 describes the organization of the workspace on a computer and states the following fact (hereinafter referred to as a book) - in folder names (directories), as well as in file names, there should not be more than 8 characters and should not be used non-latin characters . The last time I heard about the limit of 8 characters, probably when I was working under DOS. At first I could not believe my eyes and immediately began to look through my projects, as well as the examples downloaded from MSDN. Almost all of the folders and file names contained more than 8 characters and loaded well. What am I doing wrong? I haven’t found any ready-made examples about non-Latin characters, so I created my own example, gave Russian files to the files and launched them again - again no problems. The answer came on the next page of the book - a screenshot of the Windows Commander 5.0 program is mentioned and given there. It turns out that to learn C # you need to install not only Visual Studio, but also an additional Windows Commander program. And it is written in a book published in 2009. Probably, the author is not yet aware that Windows Commander no longer exists. By the way, if you look at the screenshot of this program, then the title contains the text of Windows Commander 5.0 - Gold Soft 2002 . I have big doubts about the legality of this product, and you? And, ending the topic with WC - apparently there was a limit of 8 characters, which the author issues as a feature of the system.
Then the book was no longer of practical interest when you read, for example, that Russian symbols cannot be used in variable names, since the compiler will generate an error. Oh well. And the examples with the keywords for, if / else, and others brought simply deadly boredom. Well, why, foreign authors try to give examples from life - for example, calculate the cost of fuel, or the amount of payment on a loan, and so on, and our authors give such an example.
if (m == n) {Console.WriteLine ("m equals n"); m ++};
if (m! = n) {Console.WriteLine ("m is not equal to n"); n ++);
What is these faceless m and n? And so on all the examples. By the way, pay attention to how the text of the code is designed - no spaces or indents. Visual Studio does not allow to write so carelessly, the text int val = 55; will be automatically converted to int val = 55; . Perhaps this is not the author’s fault, but of the publishers, but it’s very unpleasant to read the code glued together in this way.
In fact, it is very difficult to write about programming in a lively and understandable language, and even good experienced teachers may not be able to express their thoughts intelligibly. Writing correctly is also a kind of art, like the art of programming, but for some reason, foreign authors have much better knowledge of this art.
')
PS I spoke about the general level of books. It is clear that there are exceptions - and the book of our author can be good, and any book of a foreign author can be a sediment.
By the way, I laid out the third part of my lessons on C #. My lessons are not a masterpiece either :-).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/65379/
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