11 May
2010
11 May
'10
11:43 a.m.
On Tue, 11 May 2010, Jeff Walther wrote:
The clearest C book for beginners that I've read
was "C: Step-by-Step" by
Waite & Prata. It actually teaches the material, rather than just
throwing it on the floor and hoping the student will pick it up.
Supplemented by K&R it made an excellent teaching vehicle. My opinion and
obviously different folks learn in different manners, but I felt that
Waite & Prata filled in the holes better and left fewer unexplained
assumptions than other works that I have seen.
"C Primer Plus" is also by Waite, Prata, and Martin.
I like their style more than Deitel.
Deitel's coverage of C derivatives is useful, but too large a portion of
his book.
There is another "C primer" type of title by somebody else. Pretty good,
but not as versatile as the Waite Group stuff.
For a FIRST ASM book I liked Lafore's book (another Waite Group title),
but it is thoroughly out of print.
Unfortunately, most of the other classes in the area spend most of the
first semester on how to use THE MICROSOFT C COMPILER, and don't ever show
the student a command line nor a SIMPLE IDE. Many of those students hit
"RUN" in the IDE, and never even understand the requirement to create an
.EXE file! (nor how to use other compilers when necessary)
In ASM, I started them off in DEBUG, and they write a few very simple
programs before we switch over to MASM. It seemed to give a better
understanding of what a program is, and what is going on when building a
program.
I seemed to have gotten a reputation for being the hardest, and toughest
grader, but MY students had the ability to pick up an unfamiliar tool and
work through how to use it.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com