From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Dec 22 11:34:44 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA13284 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:34:44 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from pau-amma.whistle.com (s205m64.whistle.com [207.76.205.64]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id LAA13218 for ; Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:34:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dhw@whistle.com) Received: (from dhw@localhost) by pau-amma.whistle.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id LAA25417; Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:32:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dhw) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 11:32:20 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill Message-Id: <199812221932.LAA25417@pau-amma.whistle.com> To: eddie@silk.net, grios@netshell.vicosa.com.br Subject: Re: FreeBSD and C Programming Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <367F0754.12665B76@netshell.vicosa.com.br> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1998 00:43:32 -0200 >From: Gustavo Vieira G C Rios >if you wanna be a real programmer you should know the hardware you are >programming to, right ? I respectfully disagree. Consider, for example, that Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" uses an reference machine that doesn't really exist (though I'm sure folks have written emulators for it... after he wrote the book(s)). Best suggestion I have is to find a problem that you need to solve, and for which a (set of) program(s) written in C might reasonably be considered a viable approach to solving it. Look at good code as a starting-point; try /usr/src/*, for example. Often, I've found that starting by figuring out how to make a least-intrusive change to an existing program can be quite instructive. (Then again, sometimes what the program really *needs* is to be gutted & re-constructed from the ground up. Experience can help you distinguish the two cases.) Start small; build on that. Revise your building-blocks until they're reliable. Caveat: I don't write code for a living (usually); I do sysadmin work. I have written code for a living, though, and have been known to do so somewhat recently. david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message