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From: Muttley@dastardlyhq.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Python (was Re: I did not inhale)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2024 07:27:57 -0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 20:56:00 -0000 (UTC)
kalevi@kolttonen.fi (Kalevi Kolttonen) boringly babbled:
>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.
>
>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.

The advantage of books written by professionals is that the code and
explanations are usually much clearer and of better equality than the quickly 
knocked up might-work-might-not crap you often find on stack overflow and 
similar sites. Thats not to say good example code isn't out there but wading
through the rubbish can be a tedious business and IME its often quicker just
to reach for APUE or similar.