[Pgubook-readers] Book Conclusion

[Mark Schmid]

Hi again,

O.K., I've just finished Programming from the Ground UP.
Here's my final comment if anyone cares about it. ;-)

I started skipping more and more exercises towards the
end, just to get this book through without loosing motivation.
It's a great book and it really has great skill in how things 
are taught, unfortunately it suffers from a lot of typos and
errors which would not be necessary.

I'm not sure I ever read a book with so many typos, errors,
forgotten things (such as file names for source code printed).
But, admittedly, this *can* be seen as yet another thing
this book teaches, in that this seems to be VERY symptomatic
to Linux and the open source world. - i.e.: Lots of bugs and
things that don't work and nobody who fixes it.
(At least that's my experience with Linux, - even if I do
see what makes UNIX lovable and like it myself!)

If *ALL* bugs, typos, forgotten things and other suggestions
I and everyone else has made were corrected, this would truly
be an outstanding, fantastic book!
But to be fair, perhaps this really can't be expected like from
a book sold and maintained professionally for money by some
big publisher. After all, if I'm not mistaken this book is
some kind of "free" project itself and is downloadable for
free as a PDF. - So there isn't big bucks involved and hence
not an entire staff of editors who find and correct bugs,
typos, etc. - I guess this is what *any* book starts out as
before it gets proof-read about a dozen times when it's sold
for big bucks by a major publisher.
Anyway, certainly this book really is a fantastic entry point
to any kind of Linux programming and I would still recommend it!

Here some more suggestions for the last chapters:

Chapter 9:
I *never* even *touched* the "simple" memory manager program.
This is probably by far the biggest and most "dry" source code
in this book and by the time I finally got there I really didn't
have the patience or motivation to enter that giant *klunk* of
code! So I skipped everything which is directly related to
the source code or using this program. To me this seems quite
a bit overkill. Perhaps this part should be cut out and
replaced with something else, perhaps a more detailed theoretical
explanation of memory handling?

Chapter 10:
I felt this is an *EXTREMELY* important chapter.
Anyone who gives up on the book because of the "memory manager"
program in chapter 9 REALLY MISSES BIG TIME some of the value
of this book!
Make sure you do NOT not read chapter 10! :-)

Here's a small correction for the program "conversion-program.s":
On page 209 in the book, right before the program exits, there
is a comment that says, quote: "Write a carriage return"
CAUTION!! This is the source for MUCH confusion with the
windows world! Windows uses a "carriage return" and a "newline 
character" after every line in text files.
Linux uses ONLY a "new line"!
"Carriage returns" do NOT belong to Linux as far as I know, so
this comment, even if it's just a comment really should be
corrected!
Then, 2 lines below that, right after "call write_newline",
the stack once again is not cleaned up, the following line
is missing for good programming practice:
"addl $4 %esp"

Finally, in chapter 11, there is one little typo, on page 215,
the PURPOSE of the C program "Hello-World.c" reads:
"This program is mean to show..."
While I agree that the memory manager program and a lot of 
the exercises could be considered as plain "mean" ( ;-) ), 
this little C program hardly is. Obviously it should read 
"This program is meant to show...".

Make sure you read chapters 11 and 12, even if you skip
chapter 9 almost entirely! They're very important and easy
to read as well!

While I skipped Appendix A, GUI Programming simply because
I need "some fresh air" now, I am VERY glad this Appendix is
in here. I *know* that *IF* I ever really do plan on programming
for Linux (which I originally intended, but am not sure now
after continuing problems of ALL kinds with Linux), I WILL
need this Appendix very much. So leave it in the book!
:-)

Other than that, I learned *A LOT* from this book!
BIG and IMPORTANT things about computers which apply
even for Window$.
Jon has REAL talent of teaching newbies the stuff that
REALLY should be known in a very good manner.
All he needs is more editors doing the corrections for him!
;-)

Regards,
Mark


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