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Comment by orangeduck | Hacker News Reader

I wrote this book over several months. It took a few days to get the courage to share it online. It probably took you about 20 seconds to not read my book, dismiss it, and post a comment telling other to do the same. If you think an alternative is better that's fine, but how about you take an extra 20 seconds to think about the situation next time you are going post a comment.

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The person you're responding to has a history of hating on C around here. I wouldn't take what he wrote personally (easier said than done, I know). That said, I offer the following:

Almost any language can be (ab)used in an "unsafe" manner. Conversely, it is entirely possible to create elegant, efficient, and safe code using C, and there is no particular reason to not use C for this project. In fact, C is marvelous in its simplicity and is an excellent candidate for it.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd put my skill with C++ around a 6 or 7. For C I'd go lower, around 3 or 4. I appreciate the work you put into this, and I intend to read your book to help me improve my skills with C.

So thanks for your effort.

> In fact, C is marvelous in its simplicity and is an excellent candidate for it.

While I don't disagree with your comment, I'd like to point out that the Oberon language (used in pjmlp's suggested book) is even simpler than C. It's worth checking out if you value simplicity in your programming languages.

http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/Oberon/Oberon07.Report...

@OrangeDuck - Just wanted to thank you. Your style is clear and ideas progress easily from the first chapter onward.

The links offered in this thread are wonderful, The University links are impressive. HN is a tuition free education.

I had the time to read a good portion of this book. Really well written. I hope some of the negative comments don't discourage you from sharing your work next time around. I learnt something useful this time.

OP, I hear you on this one and commend you for sticking it to the trolls. For what it's worth, I LOVE the book and think you rock for making it.

I took a look at your book and was immersed unil my eyes started itching from strain, I got to the variables chapter.

Very well written, fun to read and immensly useful. Wish I had your book 10 years ago. Thank you.

Sorry but I think the world is better server by younger generations learning that C is not the only way to do systems programming and there are better, safer, alternatives.

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