Excellent Book, Misleading Title

This book is an excellent read. The material is presented completely, concisely, and in an easy to understand manner. However the title of this book is misleading. It really should be "Write Portable code in C". There is some limited discussion of C++, but mostly to discourage you from using it. All other languages are dismissed out of hand, or just completely ignored. As long as you understand this caveat there is much to learn from this book.

This book is really focused on writing software that will run on essentially any platform that has a C compiler, which today is almost all processors. If you need to write software that will run on embedded 16 bit processors as well as the latest 64 bit ones, then you should read this book. However, there are large classes of software that have a more limited notion of portability (such as running on most 32 bit Unix or Windows platforms, or any platform that g++ can target) where Standard C++ or Java are the way to go. Unfortunately the book does not adequately address the tradeoffs, design, and implementation decisions one should make in these cases. In particular, I am puzzled by the total lack of Java solutions.

Since the book emphasizes C programming, there is minimal content on GUI programming, Web programming, database programming, and similar areas where C programming is rarely used anymore.

Other Reviews

• Excellent Book, Misleading Title
• I need this book
• Packed with specifics which lend to both an overall understanding of concepts and the ability to troubleshoot common problems
• Good Book for C/C++, Interesting For Others