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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2024 09:26:41 +0200
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On 20/08/2024 22:56, Kalevi Kolttonen wrote:
> In comp.unix.programmer David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>> No, you do not need your particular favourite out of the thousand and
>> one Linux programming books in order to program for Linux.  You do not
>> need /any/ book in order to write useful and successful code for Linux.
>> Of course you need /some/ reference - and in the days before the
>> internet was so easily available and so full of information, I went
>> through a lot of programming books.  Some were good, some less so, and
>> some have become famous.  But none of them were /necessary/ in any way.
> 
> Well, I am a quite bad programmer but I am interested enough in the
> Linux/UNIX workings so that reading the newest APUE and The Linux
> Programming Interface did not feel painful or unnecessary at all. On
> the contrary, it was a great pleasure to examine what kind of
> programming facilities my favourite OS offers.

I have no doubt that this could be interesting to read about, and the 
book could be very well written (I don't know the book myself, so I'll 
take your word for it).  At least half the computing and programming 
books I have read covered things that I have no use for personally, and 
don't expect to use.

So I don't question that it is interesting, informative, or a pleasure 
to read.  I question that it is /necessary/.  You simply cannot argue 
that people who want to program for Linux /must/ read that book.  There 
is no justification for that claim.  There is no justification for 
claiming that people wanting to program for Linux need to read any books 
on the topic at all, nor for claims that people need to "know POSIX" to 
be able to write code for Linux and/or in C.

> 
> Having these two books, or just one of them, is a great way to educate
> oneself about Linux/UNIX. I see that The Linux Programming Interface
> is available online as a free PDF, but I am not sure whether it is
> a pirated version.
> 
> There is no better way to learn Linux/UNIX workings than these two
> books. Period.
> 

That claim is not /wrong/ - it falls into the category of "not even wrong".

There are a thousand and one ways to learn about the workings of Linux - 
and that's counting "reading books" as one way, regardless of /which/ 
books.  You have personally tried one way - from that, you cannot 
possibly conclude that it is the "best" way.  All you can say is that 
you liked those books, and found them informative and pleasant to read, 
you learned a lot from them, and you can recommend them to others. 
That's great.  Leave it there, and stop making completely absurd, 
exaggerated and unjustified claims beyond that.

And you don't need to know about the workings of Linux to program for Linux.

And you don't need to know anything about Linux, UNIX or POSIX to 
program in C.  I've programmed C for some 35 years, and almost none of 
it has been for Linux or other *nix.  I've used only a small fraction of 
the standard library.  Even the few programs I have written that run on 
Linux had no POSIX-specific code.  What you need to know about for any 
programming task is the stuff appropriate for the task at hand - /not/ 
comprehensive knowledge of APIs and interfaces that you will never use, 
and certainly not some ancient random book recommended by someone off 
the internet.