[teach]

Your dismissal of his Python material is unfounded. This book is quite good, especially for beginners that literally would be unable to learn to code otherwise.

As a professional educator myself, I strongly disagree with your sentiment about "teaching dangerous practices to beginners". By far, the biggest "danger" to beginners is that they won't learn how to code at all or get frustrated and quit because of pedants.

Do we teach beginning drivers using 18-wheeled tractor trailers? Or using F-15 fighter jets? No, we use cars with automatic shifting driving around in an empty parking lot at first.

[MollyR]

When I started to learn python, I bought his book. It was okay.

I actually found youtube tutorials,videos,and codeacademy to be far more interesting and effective.

I don't think I would recommend a book to a pure beginner anymore, places like code academy have matured to be far better.

[rifung]

I don't think your analogy really makes sense; the issue isn't that the author tries to teach people things which are too difficult to handle but that the author may state things which are just incorrect. A better analogy would be teaching beginning drivers to use their knees instead of hands to drive.

I suppose I'm in a different position than you though; I don't see any need to get everyone to start coding. I think if people want to code there are already good books out there, and if they don't then I don't think we need more developers who hate their job.

[wyclif]

What about the C book is incorrect? I want data and citations.

[rifung]

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic but I'll respond in case you aren't. I don't recall saying that I thought there were mistakes in the book; I wouldn't know I haven't read it.

The person I was replying to just didn't seem to understand what anon1385 was trying to say; it's difficult to recommend a book written by someone who writes and teaches on topics he/she doesn't fully understand. There was a link to a thread where the author of a book on C was wrong about one of the fundamental aspects of the language.

Again, I don't have the slightest idea whether there is wrong information in any of the author's books, but I can also see why one would be wary trusting a book written by someone who has shown a serious lack of mastery on previous occasion.

I believe the person I was replying to misunderstood the cause of concern as being one where a person is taught poor or suboptimal practices as opposed to one where a person is taught things which are just flat out incorrect.

[wyclif]

So IOW, you don't actually have a valid criticism of LCTHW. Got it.

[rifung]

Indeed. No idea why you thought I was attempting to criticize it, validly or not. I was just trying to elaborate on a previous comment that someone else seemed to have misinterpreted.