Customer Reviews

Unix for FORTRAN Programmers (Nutshell Handbooks)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the book I use for introducing Unix/Linux to ANY sysadmin or, more importantly, programmer. True, it says for *FORTRAN* programmers, but don't let that fool you -- most of the material is not FORTRAN-specific. And, let's face it, most could stand to have a little exposure to a language that is used to actually DO things. But don't worry -- this book won't make you wince at arithmetic goto's, "write (6,100)", statement numbers, and columnar significance. Instead, you have a single chapter introduction to: Unix, vi, make, and rcs. And if you do ever find yourself needing to know whether you need underscores to refer to standard library objects, the difference of pass-by-reference and pass-by-value, and column-major vs row-major arrays, well Mike covers these esoterica too. I keep three copies on my shelf -- and two are usually being borrowed at any time.

This is also an excellent book to study if you want to understand O'Reilly's business model, viz:
* publish an excellent book that combines exactly the right amount of material about two-four different topics
* assess the interest in the topics
* kill the book
* publish two-six books that cover each topic if far more detail than most people need, but with enough accessibility so that everyone will feel they need at least three or four of them
* rinse, repeat

This is another one of those white books from O'Reilly about UNIX. I can't seem to get anywhere with it. Does explain command line UNIX and UNIX architecture. I guess there are so many areas one can be a guru in that not all of us have the time to be UNIX gurus. From what I hear too the work environment at computer corporations is very alientating for UNIX gurus.