Reminded me of a very good book called
"21st Century C"
This article is by clueful professionals. That book is everything except that.
Is the entire book great? No, to be honest it touched too little on the C side for me, and yeah the punk analogies was a bit annoying at times, but it did get me to look critically at how I wrote c. Much like this blog I'm writing for clarity first and not optimization.
What would you recommend for a c programming book instead of this book?
I haven't yet found a decent C book. I've found many good C++ books and have backported the lessons I've learned there into C, however.
That said I did learn a few tricks, and generally appreciated the books overall tone of you don't need to do crazy pointer stuff/malloc/realloc in C in general. If that makes any sense, have you read the Embedded TDD in C book by Pragmatic Programmers? http://pragprog.com/book/jgade/test-driven-development-for-e...
What C++ books would you recommend specifically? I find most to not really be of much help in straight C given the differences of the two languages (basically huge reliance on the standard library etc..).
The former is ostensibly about designing reusable modules for data structures (e.g. ring buffers), but also contains a lot of wisdom about API design, particularly how to make the most of what little API design tools C gives you. The latter is all over the place, from funny anecdotes about compiler bugs and programming contests to all kinds of useful C information that is too advanced for an intro book on C-the-language, but way too practical for most books on a specific domain: valuable details about linkers, symbol visibility, different kinds of allocation, and the memory hierarchy. Also, it's called "Deep C Secrets" and has a giant fish on the cover. What more do you need to know?
I skimmed "21st Century C" briefly a couple months back and didn't have strong feelings about it one way or the other.