Christopher Sawtell wrote:
Dear Christopher,
Thank you for your extensive reply. Does RUTE
stand for something else;
Root User's Tutorial and Exposition.
I always thought it was Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition, following the recursive acronym tradition (GNU etc.)
A play on the homophonic nature of 'root' and 'rute' as well as being a recursive acronym. Mad Unix geekery unleashed.
I want to know more about this book and where I'm more likely able to obtain a copy. I don't mind a used edition and I live
near Christchurch.
Tech books, Whitcoulls. -- Unlikely possibilities.
amazon.com -- Certainty.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130333514/qid=1086733573/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-3810111-6221559?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Mail system will probably mangle the above line, just go to amazon.com and put
RUTE Sheer
into the search box.
Note the reviews. They are all pertinent. In particular the one which reminds us that RUTE is now quite old, ~5 years. The content is almost all timeless, but there are some things which are now commonplace and not mentioned. e.g. there is nothing about broadband, and a number of now ancient techniques are discussed quite extensively, e.g. uucp, uucico, etc.
Do you have opinions on C++ books with regard to the efficiency with
which one can self tutor.
No, I haven't any opinions one way or another about C++ books.
C++ is one of the last languages I would recommend to somebody trying to teach themselves programming.
I'd suggest starting out with an interpretive language.
RUBY is my suggestion, The book I mentioned is both pretty good and available on the WWW. Also the mail-list is really helpful, and the interface to the FOX windowing system is excellent.
Ruby tends to be one of those languages that people agree how nice it is but nobody really uses it[1]. Python, on the other hand, is also very nice, is used much more extensively, and has far more documentation and tutorials. Try http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/ for a reasonable introduction to programming in python.
If you do, I'd like to know them. Better books will probably be, for my purposes, ones that were texts at university level
as the assumption is that only those that are lucid and to the point will
be prescribed by lecturers.
um :-) dangerous assumption, imho the number of computer texts which are "lucid and to the point" can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Overstated, but by and large true.
The UoC computer science course teaching C used an excellent textbook (At least, it did when I was teaching it) which is perhaps the best C textbook in existence (No, not Kernighan and Ritchie) for learning C. I can't remember the author (King?)
Cheers, Carl.
[1] Sourceforge states: Ruby(298 projects), Python(3320 projects)
