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However, I do know of a really good author, that is a "dead tree" author, for C: Herbert Schildt.

I used to recommend his books too, but he has a bad reputation among many developers:

Why do many experts not think very highly of Herbert Schildt's books?

A good answer to this question could fill a book by itself. While no book is perfect, Schildt's books, in the opinion of many gurus, seem to positively aim to mislead learners and encourage bad habits. Schildt's beautifully clear writing style only makes things worse by causing many "satisfied" learners to recommend his books to other learners.

Do take a look at the following scathing articles before deciding to buy a Schildt text.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html
http://herd.plethora.net/~seebs/c/c_tcr.html

The above reviews are admittedly based on two of Schildt's older books. However, the language they describe has not changed in the intervening period, and several books written at around the same time remain highly regarded.

The following humorous post also illustrates the general feeling towards Schildt and his books.

http://www.qnx.com/~glen/deadbeef/2764.html

There is exactly one and ONLY one C book bearing Schildt's name on its cover that is at all recommended by many C experts - see Q 25.

Also, read this excerpt of the alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ FAQ:

6: Why do many experts not think very highly of Herbert Schildt's books?

A good answer to this question could fill a book by itself. While no book is perfect, Schildt's books, in the opinion of many gurus, seem to positively aim to mislead learners and encourage bad habits. Schildt's beautifully clear writing style only makes things worse by causing many "satisfied" learners to recommend his books to other learners.

Do take a look at the following scathing articles before deciding to buy a Schildt text.

http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html
http://herd.plethora.net/~seebs/c/c_tcr.html

The above reviews are admittedly based on two of Schildt's older books. However, the language they describe has not changed in the intervening period, and several books written at around the same time remain highly regarded.

The following humorous post also illustrates the general feeling towards Schildt and his books.

http://www.qnx.com/~glen/deadbeef/2764.html

There is exactly one and ONLY one C book bearing Schildt's name on its cover that is at all recommended by many C experts - see Q 25.

C++: The Complete Reference by Herbert Schildt

Haven't read Schildt's C++ book but his C Book used to be notorious.
Check Seeb's review
Most of these errors must have been corrected by now, however.

Also check the ACCU reviews

MFC Programming from the GROUND UP 2nd Ed by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Jul 1999)
C++ from the Ground Up (2nd ed) by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Mar 1998)
Java Programmers Reference by Joe O'Neil & Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Mar 1998)
Windows NT 4 Programming from the Ground Up by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed May 1998)
C++ from the Ground Up by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Sep 1998)
Expert C++ by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Sep 1998)
STL Programming from the Ground Up by Herbert Schildt [Not Recommended] (Reviewed Jan 2000)
C: The Complete Reference 4ed by Herbert Schildt (Reviewed Jul 2000)
C/C++ Programmer's Reference 2ed. by Herbert Schildt (Reviewed Sep 2000)

Most of his books have a "Not recommended" review.

Slightly offtopic, but this will serve the needs of those of us reading this thread for a fix of C-related humour. The Infrequently asked questions in C (C-IAQ).

The Hacker FAQ.

Slightly offtopic, but this will serve the needs of those of us reading this thread for a fix of C-related humour. The Infrequently asked questions in C (C-IAQ)

Don't. 30 years of psychological research has shown that punishment has no desirable long-term effects. X is not a lab rat. (Even if he were a lab rat, punishment wouldn't work; at least, not if he were one of the sorts of lab rats the psych research was done on.)

I love the "dyslexics of the world: untie!" joke, but I must ruin your variation by pointing out that the flyer object represented in the proposed hacker logo has the same "flying" (moving) qualities regardless of symmetry (vertical and horizontal flips, and/or rotations in any direction by 90 degree increments yields a virtual object with the same behaviour). So it wouldn't really be dyslexic at all to have the little arrow formed by your flyer point to the lower-left, as opposed to the arbitrary orientation in the proposed logo.

Which makes me wonder why ESS picked that particular direction/orientation. Surely the choice was not politically motivated, since the arrow points to the right (lower-right, yes, but definitely not left as one might expect). Then again, you might say the vertical element sort of leans left, so that would be appropriate. :)

Seriously, I'm still not sure about the whole logo idea. On one hand, I really don't care -- those that like it should feel free to use it and, in time, it may garner some respect. If not, those who embraced it will be ridiculed for an appropriate length of time and intensity. On the other hand, it sucks because, well, because it's a logo. And a contrived one, specifically chosen to try to be cool, which is, of course, as un-cool as you can get. If a logo for the hacker community just sort of happened accidentally, as the result of some odd, unexpected, unifying event or meme, it might stick. But I think a contrived logo, even with a reference as cool as John Conway built in, is unlikely to catch on.

But, on the bright side, R'ing TFA led me to this funny hacker FAQ that I hadn't seen before. Very accurate, if a bit too condescending. Regardless, my boss is getting a copy of this right now -- not that he really needs is, but he'll laugh for sure and maybe learn a little.

Mostly because "hacker" has a negative connotation purely from the media nowdays. Hackers used to be looked on with respect, because they were the people who did interesting things with the technology they had access to. See this for more information.

Perhaps we need an article about the psychology of PHBs.

All companies should make reading the Hacker FAQ mandatory for all employees. Even IBM uses the Hacker FAQ!

My personal favorite:
0.2: How should I manage my hacker?
The same way you herd cats. It can be a bit confusing; they're not like most other workers. Don't worry! Your hacker is likely to be willing to suggest answers to problems, if asked. Most hackers are nearly self-managing.

Jonah Hex

Csh Programming Considered Harmful, by Tom Christiansen.

The Ten Commandments for C Programmers (Annotated Edition) by Henry Spencer.

How has 'building|making' been/is confused/missused/associated with 'destroying|demolishing' things?

Case :

I think before publishing material publicly, one should do some research and confirm sources/results with other relevant people on that subject.
(eg. confirm "hack[er|ing]/crack[er|ing]" with (a) guru[s] in computers, like ESR).

This goes aswell to the slashdot editors for their (subject)postings; and all other form of publishing (you know who you are).

Reference :
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker.htm l
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/hacker-eth ic.html
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracker.ht ml
http://www.tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/cracking.h tml
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=dark-side %20hacker
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=cracker
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html
http://home.planet.nl/~faase009/Ha_hacker.html
http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci212220,00.html
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0 ,,sid14_gci211852,00.html
....and many more are out there, on the World Wide Web.

First of all i get a nice time to step back and defrag my mind during the long ass reboot

When you get into the real world, you will find that most bosses understand the concept of thinking time. See The Hacker FAQ for detail on how hackers work. We all need time to think, bosses get that.

If every couple of hours somehting is wrong and it takes me a half an hour to fix it thats fun time for me

Agian, in the real world, you get paid to do a specific job. I program and monitor routers. When my computer breaks, I call the Help Desk and log a job. I like working on computers too, but at work, my job is not to fix broken computers. If I were to try and fix my box, I would probably get fired for goofing off. The chances that I would really make the prob worse is slim, but still, it is someone elses job. I get paid $60k to fix routers, the help desk gets paid $40k to fix PCs. You do the math.

Considering the topic this isn't out of place. The Manager FAQ:-

The following list is an attempt to cover some of the issues that will invariably come up when hackers without previous experience of the business community first start working in it. Other workers may also find it informative.

A handy guide to dealing with management. Also useful for manager's dealing with hackers.

Whatever you do with that book, don't count on Schildt to have any idea what he's talking about.

If the developers are the mindless ASP or VB trolls, or something similar, I am sure they can do just fine with the Office Package and Visual Studio and not needing to configure a thing.

However, if those are your developers, you may have other problems....

All that aside, in my work place that would be totally impossible - almost as impossible as it is explaining this to a suit. Heh. We are expected to run the whole show, fix any problems that arise and come up with new and better solutions, fast fixes and generally run the show. This includes, for the first thing, a lot of downloading and evaluating new software, be it IDEs, databases, browsers, languages, whatever to get the job done.

If we needed to wait for permission or some IT administration dude (that knows about 2% of what we do about the machines anyways) we'd simply never produce a thing. Ever.

Also, add in that developers are often hackers, and as such, playful, imaginative, curios and creative - actually, that is why you should pay them at all, because of those qualities. To me, it seems you are trying to kill that very thing that makes them tick. Bad move.

Treat your hacker right. - it pays off.

Don't touch Schildt if you want to learn decent C++. His books have many well-known problems. A couple of the earlier C ones were so bad that people wrote lengthy pages about them to make the point. There was a running joke that his The Annotated ANSI C Standard contained the complete text from the C standard, but was published at a fraction of the cost. This was said to represent the value added by his comments.

If you really want to know what his books are like, you could visit Amazon and read their reviews, which are written by people who purchased the beginners' books, and are therefore by definition not qualified to review them for technical merit. Or, you could do the smart thing and visit the Association of C and C++ Users web site, and check out their book reviews. These are generally regarded as being fair and accurate, and there are an awful lot of bad reviews of an awful lot of Schildt books.

</rant>

I read the following essay sent by a friend as I was reading this thread. Seems appropriate. Care and Feeding of your Hacker for Management I also should probably get around to washing my car.

Don't forget the FAQ. which addresses dress codes in regards to hackers, amongst other things. See Section 1.1.

--

Normally, the link is http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html, but IBM just bought a copy, so it's currently sitting at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/su-s e2.html.

(I enclose the old link in case this article survives past the 30-day exclusive publication period.)

You might also want to read the other side of it, the Manager FAQ. The URL will eventually be http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/manager.html, but IBM paid for the writing, so it's currently sitting at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/su-s e.html.

Normally, the link is http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html, but IBM just bought a copy, so it's currently sitting at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/su-s e2.html.

(I enclose the old link in case this article survives past the 30-day exclusive publication period.)

You might also want to read the other side of it, the Manager FAQ. The URL will eventually be http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/manager.html, but IBM paid for the writing, so it's currently sitting at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/su-s e.html.

http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/pres.html

Also have a look at the description of how Gore sold his vote: http://www.culturaldissident.com/Simpson.htm.

1. Poor user base. More people with Macs run MacOS than run LinuxPPC and NetBSD/macppc put togther. Should we all switch to MacOS then?
2. NetBSD can't read Apple Partition maps. True for the 1.4 release edition, but not true for -current (for the brave), or the upcoming 1.5 release (for the patient).
3. No support for Linux/PPC binaries. True, but only a valid reason if running LinuxPPC binaries is on your list of priorities. It's not a sign of lack of support on NetBSD/macppc's part, but yet another indicator that NetBSD/macppc is still in its infancy. And neither system can run MacOS binaries, so maybe we should all just switch to that?
4. 8-bit XServer - Blah. I don't recall running into this issue, but I'm not a graphics weenie. If you need to run TheGIMP or something like that, then yes, this is an issue.

I tried out both systems on a PowerBook 3400 last year. Both were okay for my purposes, (NetBSD/macppc was marginally superior for me), but trying to get X to cope with one pointer button just ruined the whole experience.

Once I get the hardware straightened out, I'll likely set up a desktop box to dual-boot NetBSD/macppc and Debian/PowerPC until one or the other has all the features I want. Since I lack any MacOS, installing LinuxPPC isn't likely to be worth the effort.

I haven't taken a look at LinuxPPC 2000, but I have worked extensively with LinuxPPC R4 and LinuxPPC 1999 - mostly in setting up workstations... And the OF Booting in LinuxPPC 1999 is very broken.

The boxes with which I worked, specifically a PowerBook 3400, some PowerComputing box, and other boxes, were all loaded with LinuxPPC R4 way back when that was the latest available. R4, for those of you who haven't encountered it, only boots via OF. (And does so fairly nicely.) With that to consider, and also considering the intended uses of these boxes, all traces of MacOS were dumped.

This became an issue when the 'upgrade' to LinuxPPC 1999 arrived - there were no human readable text files on the CD, and there was no sign of any (working) OF based install/upgrade utility. Long hours of digging through documentation (and some experimenting with a leftover copy of MacOS 7.6 on site) implied that a new copy of MacOS would have to be purchased for every machine to get LinuxPPC 1999 to work.

Fortunately, someone did work out a process to install LinuxPPC 1999 without MacOS and that got things going again, but any further 'upgrades' are likely to jump to someone else's ppc Linux release.

On a lighter tone, the Hacker FAQ has provided the same sort of advice for ages. Check it out.

...serves me right to get overpassionate about such things, I don't _do_ 'passionate' well. Anytime I find myself underlining, italicising or boldfacing too many words, I ought to not post the comment ;)
I think it is very strange to be compared to a Moonie for what I've said. I'm only trying to provoke consideration and understanding- I have only a limited ability to reach out the other way to make contact, and a lot of people more autistic than me have even less ability to do this.
I am not lost and lonely (or school age, for that matter): I'm only trying against troublesome odds to get some people to have a bit of clue about what's going on here. There _is_ evidence to suggest that computer geekery is a singularly appropriate 'haven' for autistics and those with Asperger's. Many aspects of it help to cover for our weak points, and there are things about coding that are easier for an autistic person to keep track of. Denying this is foolish- it just is- this is hardly a great mystery. Nothing about it says that 'NT' (neurologically typical) people are less capable at computer geekery- it's simply that autistic/Asperger's people _thrive_ within computer geekery.
People are still learning what autism is. (It has nothing to do with schizophrenia, BTW, though there are some similarities with being schizoid.) Just because it is not 'black and white' rigorously defined doesn't mean it's not real- there's a lot of reality behind that simple term. It matters, it requires a certain amount of effort to coexist with (on both sides!), and it is part of the computer geek scene and will continue to be. No amount of mockery, shame, pity or dismissal will change this. If you don't like it, learn to tolerate it because it's not going to be possible to cleanse computer geekery of autism and Asperger's- or desirable, no matter 'what people think' of it.
So much for that. If this keeps up, Linux people are gonna need another HOWTO... interestingly, the Hacker FAQ is a very good start, and could almost be used as a handbook on how to keep an autistic person comfortable and productive in the workplace. It's not exact, but much of what it covers also applies to autism.

The following article should be forwarded anonymously to all the PHB's out there. The Hacker FAQ (for managers). Anyone who is, or works with hackers should immediately see its relevance.

I've refused to shop at Spamazon for quite some time due to their penchant for spamming. Cases in point go back at least as far as early 1998 and are widely documented on Dejanews.

A better write-up of their business practices can be found at the page of Peter Seebach, a long-time n.a.n-a.e (news.admin.net-abuse.email) regular.

Finally, there's Spamazon's practice of shilling for themselves on USENET - an "astroturf" campaign eerily reminiscient of Micros~1's "independently-written letters to the editor" stunt. (Available through Dejanews - Start here or search for Message-ID <3584e5cc.1368345@news.sirius.com>.

While I'm as disgusted at the "purchase circles" idea as anyone, I'm not at all surprised. Spamazon doesn't think in terms of customers; merely in terms of targets for additional marketing. Take your business elsewhere. (Many on n.a.n-a.e have recommended Powell's. I concur.)

Here's a link to Peter Seebach's Hacker FAQ which may be what Taco was looking for

It wasn't called the "Managers' Guide to Geeks", but rather, "The Hacker FAQ", and Peter Seebach wrote it. It's for managers, about understanding your hacker :). It's on www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker .html and is worth a read if you haven't seen it before.

In case someone (who's obviously not a real hacker :-)) doesn't know, Peter Seebach is one of the most eminent C gurus on Usenet.

Check out his home page. Judging from that, I think I can hazard a guess as to the identity of the submitter of this piece.. ;-)