Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 178 pages
- Published by: Micromethods
- Edition: 1st Edition September 8, 2000
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0970275455
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0970275455
-
Book Dimensions:
8.6 x 6 x 0.7 inches
- Weighs: 11.2 ounces
Book Description
If you've been using DOS, and now have your Linux system up and running, and you want to do C language program development in this new environment, this book is for you. When moving over to Linux, an obstacle some of us soon encounter is the absence of a familiar text editor. Your perferred editor probably is the one with which you are thoroughly familiar. With that thought in mind, what we do here is, we write our own.
From the Author
While yet a child, the originator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, working at the VIC twenty command line, wrote BASIC programs in what is now considered to be an obsolete dialect. Soon he was writing hand-assembled machine code for the VIC 20. The straightforward architecture of Chuck Peddle's 6502 perhaps encouraged Linus to explore and such explorations evidently gave young Linus an great grounding in the fundamentals. Where would a young Linus of today find such an accessible rung?
Short of digging a VIC twenty out of the attic, where can today's beginner find a starting place comparable to where Linus started? The thesis of this book is that a beginner is well served by starting at the command line; with programming tools designed primarily for simplicity, tools that assist by helping you explore the consequences of your own decisions rather than attempting to make those decisions for you. This book gives the reader experience at the keyboard, sans mouse, using text mode to communicate with the computer via the time-honored command line.
We cannot know for certain that command line experience contributed to the success of today's top programmers. What we do know for certain is that many of the really skillful programmers of today, such as Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Richard Stallman, Theodore Ts'o, Eric S. Raymond, W. Richard Stevens, and so on, did as a matter of fact, begin programming when such experience was the norm. It's true, we don't know for sure, but the odds are, such experience is essential.
Readers who can put this book to advantage include those have been using DOS, and who have found the migration path to Linux seems to ford a rather deep channel. In this book they will find tools to build their own bridge to Linux.
It is a small book. My approach aligns with that of Kernighan & Ritchie who remarked in the preface to their second edition, "C is not a big language, and is not well served by a big book."
Reader Reviews
The description on this page states the book is intended for readers who are Linux beginners, states a major goal of the book is to present a recipe useful for creating a text editor of one's own, and details supporting reasons for doing so; remarking the reality that the best place for a beginner to begin is at the beginning, preferably the beginning that was; where text mode was the norm, where for example Linus Torvalds began. Focused exercises using portions of the curses library directly supporting the stated goal are the subject of a chapter. Those wishing to use curses in other applications will find the exercizes serve to introduce the Linux beginner to the readily available more comprehensive curses treatment by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones. Although Linux appears to have been designed from the ground up to replicate the functionality of Unix, fortunately for all of us, Linus Torvalds ignored experts who declared society held no requirement for "yet another" Unix. Criticism meaningfully remarks mismatched goals versus achievements, advertised versus delivered product; such as a title promising "Linux Device Drivers" exhibiting invisible device drivers. Disparaging intended goals achieved, however, is like criticising Corrigan for reaching Ireland. Although experts told him to fly the other way, that's not the way he went.
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