Lori Nagel wrote: > I'm planning on working on a C primmer for FLOSS manuals > http://en.flossmanuals.net/, and I think we could use more authors. It is a > colaborative project sort of like wikipedia but with a smaller group of > contributers and more editing (being published like a collaborative book.)
Primmer or primer? > I think that C is better to start with for newbies than C++, having used both > languages. C has the tendency to introduce pointers early on (e.g. before chapter 10). Pointers are hard to learn for most people and I consider them to be an advanced topic. I've seen too many very bright people struggle to understand them and many people simply give up. With C++, you can avoid learning about pointers until much, much later - with the inherent potential of NEVER having to learn about them. You are going to be hard-pressed to avoid teaching pointers until later in C and even more hard-pressed to not teach them at all. Most of the functionality in C is made possible by the use of pointers. You can only focus on for-loops, while-loops, and if-statements for so long. But I do agree, there needs to be a good, free resource for learning C that closely follows the ANSI Standard. To my knowledge, none exist. > I already started a thread on the topic back in March, and then I kind of let > it go thinking that there wouldn't be enough interest, but now I believe that > there is plenty of interest in having such a book. > > If anyone else is interested the place to respond would be by signing up to > their mailing list. > http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net I see the site is not IE6-friendly. I've been wondering when someone would start doing "open/editable book" sites using a Wiki as the backend. Free online edited books will potentially hurt traditional print publishers, but people still like holding a physical book. To compete with this, a publisher would need Wiki => Print. Still, this is a pretty good idea. I don't know how I feel about the FLOSS-based focus. For an ANSI C/C++ book to be considered reputable in this industry, you will have to avoid making any recommendations of any specific compiler. The FLOSS community loves touting FLOSS components wherever possible - essentially turning most things into advertisements for GNU/GPL. -- Thomas Hruska CubicleSoft President Ph: 517-803-4197 *NEW* MyTaskFocus 1.1 Get on task. Stay on task. http://www.CubicleSoft.com/MyTaskFocus/
