<story><title>32 years on, K&amp;R&apos;s &quot;The C Programming Language&quot; still stands alone</title><url>http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/programming-books-part-4-the-c-programming-language/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There is, essentially, nothing to be known about C beyond what is in this book.  If you can read those 272 pages, and understand them all, then you are well on the way to being a C wizard.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say what? This is like saying that once you know what all the commands in Illustrator do, you&apos;re well on your way to being a professional illustrator. The reason that K&amp;#38;R is so small is that so much of C programming happens outside/above the language.&lt;p&gt;I like K&amp;#38;R a lot, and I won&apos;t argue that it&apos;s the best soup-to-nuts C book (though I recommend C Interfaces and Implementations more heartily). But if everything you need to know about C is in K&amp;#38;R, how do you implement a balanced tree?&lt;p&gt;(&lt;i&gt;I caught myself typing &quot;how do you implement a hash table&quot;, and remembered that K&amp;#38;R actually has a hash table in it. Damn you, K&amp;#38;R!&lt;/i&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tjr</author><text>&lt;i&gt;But if everything you need to know about C is in K&amp;#38;R, how do you implement a balanced tree?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Read a good algorithms text to learn about balanced trees. Once you understand what one is, you ought to have learned enough about C from K&amp;#38;R to be able to implement one in C.</text></comment>
<story><title>32 years on, K&amp;R&apos;s &quot;The C Programming Language&quot; still stands alone</title><url>http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/programming-books-part-4-the-c-programming-language/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>&lt;i&gt;There is, essentially, nothing to be known about C beyond what is in this book.  If you can read those 272 pages, and understand them all, then you are well on the way to being a C wizard.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Say what? This is like saying that once you know what all the commands in Illustrator do, you&apos;re well on your way to being a professional illustrator. The reason that K&amp;#38;R is so small is that so much of C programming happens outside/above the language.&lt;p&gt;I like K&amp;#38;R a lot, and I won&apos;t argue that it&apos;s the best soup-to-nuts C book (though I recommend C Interfaces and Implementations more heartily). But if everything you need to know about C is in K&amp;#38;R, how do you implement a balanced tree?&lt;p&gt;(&lt;i&gt;I caught myself typing &quot;how do you implement a hash table&quot;, and remembered that K&amp;#38;R actually has a hash table in it. Damn you, K&amp;#38;R!&lt;/i&gt;)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>MikeTaylor</author><text>tptacek, I LOLled at your last comment :-)&lt;p&gt;But I think you&apos;re being unfairly selective in your quoting of the original article.  _Immediately_ after the part you excerpted, it continues: &quot;(Er, assuming you have the patience to go on to accumulate a decade of experience leading to wisdom, taste, good judgement and technical intuition.)&quot;</text></comment>