Re: Can you recommend any C programming books?

In article <Q%s9f.22955$6i4.11372@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
omar khan <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>"Greg Comeau" <comeau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:dk5941$p0s$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> I started programming in high school I think in 1978, and
>> I'm still learning.

>Thats almost four decades of experience?!?!,

Three decades, not four.

>surely by now you would be able
>to write many thousands or millions of lines of code alone or as part of a
>team of programmers?

I must be 1-3 years older than Greg, and sure I can write a lot of
code alone or as part of a team of programmers. That doesn't mean
I'm not still learning about programming. The saying, "There's another
born every minute" can just about apply to programming languages and
programming techniques and programming in the context of specific devices.


As a quick example: I've been working hard with the Cisco PIX Firewall
("Security Appliance") for four years, going carefully over its
documentation, creating reference material, making a nuisance of myself
to the manufacturer, and deliberately seeking out and answering
literally thousands of questions so as to increase my understand of
it. Many people would say that I am a "PIX expert". Even so, I find
that at best I am able to answer 2 questions out of every 3, because
there is so much to know. The number of potential configuration
interactions on a device like the PIX is N factorial, where N is the
number of features. If the PIX had as few as 10 features, that would
be over 3 million potential feature interactions. If I had worked
8 hours a day, 365 days a year, for four years, I would have had
to have learned a new interaction every 12 seconds in order to know
all of those interactions by now.
--
All is vanity. -- Ecclesiastes
.

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