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Honestly, working with gcc is the closest thing I've found to vinge's programmer archaeology. There's a lot of useful stuff in there, named / hidden behind the ugliest incantations imaginable in C and often platform specific or otherwise buggy.

I've been reading Modern C too. I don't know C well yet, but can say that the book is very raw and in dire need of heavy editing. It seems that it will officialy be released in September via publisher, so hopefully this will improve things. It has lots of typos, LaTeX markup errors, and pacing issues. In the past, some people on HN rightly pointed out that the book contains some code trickery. I haven't finished it yet because it is a very dense book. Still, I feel it is definitely worth reading.

What disappointed you about the book?

I skimmed the foreword, didn’t like the first half, but did like the three levels of understanding and expected that the book would follow this. If it doesn’t, then your book idea sounds excellent.