peter@aucs.AcadiaU.ca (Peter Steele) (04/15/91)
In 1988, Addison-Wesley published our book "C as a Second Language". (For people who have not seen this book: It covers programming in the language C assuming the reader is familiar with Pascal. Most chapters start with a preview of Pascal constructs, and then the C constructs are introduced by comparing them with the corresponding Pascal constructs.) We are currently deciding on whether or not to make revisions for a second edition. Some of the changes which we feel would be appropriate are: 1. A complete discussion of ANSI C. (The first edition was published before this standard was finilized and it provides only limited comments on ANSI C.) 2. The assumption that students know Pascal was probably valid in 1988, but now there is as many universities that teach Modula II as the first programming language as universities that use Pascal. The suggested change is to extend the previews to cover both Pascal and Modula II. (Note that if Modula II is used, then the discussion of modules in C is much more meaningful by way of comparison as standard Pascal does not have the concept of modules. There are other constructs that would also lend better towards a comparison.) 3. The addition of programming guidelines to illustrate how C programmers can write more readable C programs. 4. The last chapter of the book contains descriptions of the three implementations of C: MS-DOS (Lattice C), Macintosh (Aztec C and Lighspeed C) and UNIX. The suggested change is to remove the first two parts and expand the third part that covers C under UNIX. We would be interested in hearing from anyone who might have some opinions on what we should include in a second edition of our book. Since we do not read this group on a regular basis, please submit your comments to: solid@aucs.acadiau.ca Thank you in advance for your assistance. Tomasz Muldner Peter Steele Acadia University -- Peter Steele Postmaster peter@auad.acadiau.ca Tel: 902-542-2201 Software Analyst, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS Fax: 902-542-7224