Re: searching book tips

[Joel James Adamson]

address@hidden writes:

> Thank you so much for these nice links.
>
>> We learn C# at school... and I'd like to write beautiful free software.
>
> I should have written: "We learn C# at school... but I'd like to write
> beautiful free software."

Right, well C# may or may not be a good language to learn programming
concepts, but I'm glad you're looking to use other languages to write
Free Software.  You /can/ write Free Software in C#, but you probably
shouldn't[1].

I am focusing now on C and Guile, although I may try C++ sometime soon.
I've studied numerous languages over a few years --- with no formal
training, take that as you wish --- and I think C and Scheme are the
best for my tasks and for satisfying other needs, like portability,
freedom, etc.  

I would also suggest learning Emacs Lisp, as it is something you can
learn from and use to improve your workflow on a daily basis.

Books I recommend:
- The Little Schemer[2]
- The Practice of Programming[3]
- The Art of Unix Programming[4]: mainly for history and philosophy,
less so for actual code

Joel

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

[2]  http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/

[3]  http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/index.html

[4]  http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
Servedio Lab
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

FSF Member #8164
http://www.unc.edu/~adamsonj

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