Customer Reviews

The Art and Science of C: A Library Based Introduction to Computer Science

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I think the book is an excellent introduction to C placing emphasis on appropriate concepts. All the criticism I have read up to this point basically focuses on the autthor's use of libraries, so let me try to address that.

First, the reviewers give the impression that libraries are difficult to obtain or install. That is simply not true. The libraries are in public domain and available via anonimous FTP.

Second, any reasonable program will use some library facilities: the programming environment may make the fact more or less aparent. To take just one example, I doubt any of the reviewers would go implementing a GUI toolkit from scratch any time they wanted to give a GUI to their program: it's just not worth it. C is known for keeping the language small, and leaving it up to the libraries to implement a lot of common functionality.

So, the choice is not between using libraries and not using libraries, but rather between using ANSI libraries and using other libraries. Using ANSI libraries have the advantage of being standardized. They also have the disadvantage of being potentially incomprehensible to the beginning programmer. As far as I can tell, that was the author's motivation for choosing to use the libraries he developped, not a vicious desire to confuse students. The usual ways of dealing with strings and I/O _are_ introduced in the book in due course: after enough C has been introduced that the reader has a fighting chance at actually comprehending their interface. Eric Roberts clearly explains the reasons for his decision to use separately-developped libraries on page XV of the book.

I feel that the book's focus on abstraction and honesty about the programming/debugging process make it a very good introduction to programming indeed.

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF C was the textbook for the first-semester freshman college course on C programming at the university that I graduated from. It was a total disaster. The semester that followed (where we used the excellent A BOOK ON C by Al Kelley and Ira Pohl) consisted of unlearning virtually everything we had learned based on this book. The reason was that although the book claims to teach the reader how to program in C, it actually teaches the student how to program in Eric Roberts C, which is based on non-standard libraries that are completely different than the ones used everywhere else in the world.

The book is based upon several libraries designed to make things easier for the student. These libraries actually replace most of the standard C statements. Input/output is now done through these libraries, as are file handling, string functions and a host of other basic operations. The problem is that by replacing all these elementary processes the user is left learning nothing that is applicable to anything else outside of Eric Roberts C. In order to use any programming language at all, the student will have to go back to the beginning and learn most of everything over again. This will invariably lead to confusion as students struggle to determine which of the items they have learned are "real" C and which are the made-up items that have no usefulness. The similarity of the traditional and Roberts libraries result in quite a few mix-ups in syntax.

I have criticized the book's use of pointless libraries, but there are several things that it does well. There is a lot of good introductory material here for people who are unfamiliar with the bare basics of programming: loops (for, while, etc), conditionals, and syntax. By using the simpler libraries, the book teaches the student the basics of programming, if nothing of the specifics. This may well pave the way for the student to move on to learning real C, but for actually teaching the student anything that is useful, it fails and adds extra step that a novice programmer must go through before he/she can get to something that's informative and practical.

While in my personal library I kept almost all the Computer Science books that I used in my undergraduate days, this was not one of them, and was a book that I quickly sold back to the bookstore at the earliest opportunity. If you don't plan on using C in anything beyond what you learn here, then this book might be fine for you. If you want to learn C without having to relearn a lot of things later, avoid this one.

Having originally come from a non-programming background, I found this book an excellent stand-alone introduction to programming in general. The use of libraries allows you to learn one aspect of the language at a time instead of throwing everything at you at once. By the end of the book, you've learned all the fundamentals thoroughly and you understand enough to write the libraries yourself. The libraries are good helper functions that I've found useful in my later code and even in my code at the industry level. (Practicing decomposition and code-reuse is essential for developing a solid, long-term programming style)

The book emphasizes good programming methodology rather than just concentrating on memorizing the syntactical. You can easily look up standard ansi C syntax in reference books like "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie (which I highly recommend), but you can't always find a book that covers basic programming concepts in general. The use of libraries instead of standard ANSI functions allows you to think flexibly, realizing that there are many levels of abstraction and that there are many ways of programming the same thing. This is especially beneficial when/if you go on to learn other languages. However, I would say that C is a good language to start out with because it encompasses more of the lower level details that may be hidden in other languages but are essential for understanding why your program works, isn't optimized, etc.

Once you've finished this book, you can easily ease into the second book in this introductory series, Programming Abstractions in C, which takes you to the next step in becoming a good programmer. It explains many standard algorithms liked hashtables, linked lists, etc. The two books combined build a solid foundation for programming in C and leave you prepared to go into more complex algorithms and other languages. I highly recommend this book (I always keep it close at hand).

Fantastic.

This book is intended as not a plain C tutorial, but an introduction to computer science in general, which just happens to teach C along the way. The whole point of the book is to hide C's complexity with libraries, so that it can be grasped easily by the beginning programmer. I have K&R's C book, and for learning programming in general, I'm *extremely* glad that he didn't delve into everything. Roberts' language is clear, precise, and he never confuses. To paraphrase Roberts, the libraries are a necessity to ensure that you don't lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Please, please, do not buy this book.
I am a Grad Student at NIU and we use this book for the basic C class here. This book is useless! Most of the book needs the "specially made for the book" header files included with it to run the C code; therefore the book does not teach real C. If you go on to any thing higher in Computer Science this book will be of no use to you, due to the way it is written. ...DO NOT BUY BAD C BOOKS LIKE THIS!

Is it your dream to become an excelent programmer?
Are you going to studie computer science?

If you can answer only one of these questions with yes, then this book is for you!

But why is this book superior to other books of the same subject?
It helps to develop the right mindset needed to become a true computer scientist not just a programmer.
The use of libraries and abstractions from the beginning (this can not be emphasized enough; i have seen people building there own Java-packages with the same functionallity than the builtin ones, just because they were not able to use what was already there!). It is written in a style that shows that E. Roberts is an excelent teacher. For teaching basic software engineering and developement techniques.
Some reviewers have mentioned that the syntax of C is hidden away (to far?) from the student because E. Roberts uses his own libraries. I think it is a reasonable approach, for an introduction, especially when the language is C, but even more important, students learn to reuse code through modules and libraries.
The complexity of the hole language can be teached later, after reading the successor of this book by the same author, by diving into the sources of the libraries. After reading these two books by E. Roberts you have prepared yourself for the further studie of computer science and computer languages

The book is fine but it requires the reader to download the extended libraries from the publisher's web site thru FTP. I tried to use MS C++ 6.0 and Borland C++ 5.0, both compilers were not able to run Roberts' programs. It was a very frustrating experience for me. There was no help..

Eric Roberts is a brilliant professor whose book makes learning C programming a real joy. The format is clear, the examples are pertinent, and the book does not "talk down" to the reader, as do many other computer books on the market. If you want an introduction to programming, there is no better choice than this book.

I have to admit that I liked the book in the beginning. I thought it was well structured and clearly written. But my question is what is the use of a good book if you can not even run the programs because the extended libraries won't work as advertised. The publisher and the author ought to share the responsibility to lessen the burden on the readers by making sure the down-loaded programs indeed work. The added frustration is: where to turn to if they don't work. Please test the programs to make sure they will work for new versions of C/C++ compilers or at least give us a warning or even charge a fee for the patch. What a headache trying endlessly to make Roberts' entended libraries work!

This can't be the book I paid $100 for - this is not a book! What a rip off! How can Amazon be in business selling this "book"!? At best this is the worst copier version of a book. It is unreadable. It has a book's cover; but, this is no book. All of the figures and tables are blurry and so light that they are unreadable. Content aside, this is not a book, this is a scam!