Facts And Explanations Proving Why Most People Don’t Know How To Write Reviews

It’s very interesting how people comment on things and how they review stuff. Read on.

There is a very famous book on the programming world called The ANSI C Programming Language that is made to teach programmers how to write code using the C programming language defined in one of its standards (ANSI C, popularly called c89).

I was looking at amazon to read what people are saying about this book and I’ve found some very interesting reviews and ratings. Look at some of the reviews:

Hi. I’m studying Computer Science and i have a course that deals with C. The book recommended for this course is this one. Since 90% of my colleagues do not have experience in programming, this book is hard, confusing and nerve breaking. Do not get me wrong, this is a good book, but if you’ve never programmed before, skip it otherwise you will start hating C and programming -at least that’s what happened with my colleagues. I recommend Ivor Horton’s book on C, from Apress – “C. From novice to professional”. The book is exceptional, in my opinion. After you’ve read it and understood the concepts there (pointers, structures etc) than you can pick up “The C Programming Language” by Kernighan and Ritchie. Hope this helps!

It’s interesting how this guy confuses the book with the course he takes. He gave only one start to the book and in the review he says that the book is a good book. Another good point to state here is that no one said that this book should be used as introductory book. It isn’t a textbook to teach beginners how to program, it is to teach programmers how to program in c89. Look at this other one:

I looked at this book in the store, and I have to say that I was very turned off by the poor quality of reproduction. Considering the outrageous price tag, you’d think they could spend some money on decent typesetting. It looks like someone took the first edition and slapped it on an old, fuzzy photocopier. It may be a classic, but that’s no excuse for shoddy workmanship. I would get a headache trying to read this whole book, so I will vote with my dollars and find some other way to learn C. If I’m going to put up with strained eyeballs, there are plenty of tutorials I can look at online for free.

Heh. This one is nice, the person judges the book by its appearance. I agree that the book is old. It was published closer to the time when the ANSI C standard was published (that is 1989). But I really don’t believe any programmer that is going to learn a new language, mainly C, is going to look at the book’s appearance. Another thing is that the product is a book, its value is its content – mainly for informational books (e.g. manuals and textbooks).

Now, prepare yourself for one of the best review:

I’m disappointed that so many people recommend K&R. This text is both difficult to read and out-of-date.

Rather, I recommend “C: A Reference Manual” Fifth Edition (Harbison & Steele). It’s up-to-date and does a much better job of explaining all aspects of the C language. Still not a learning text, but a very solid reference.

I laughed when I’ve read this one, mainly because it says the book is outdated. The book covers a standard that is still used today (2009, 21 years after its creation) and it is the most used standard among the others for the same system (there are two other standards for C: c90 and c99).

Not satisfied, the user goes on and makes a recommendation. The book he recommends is very good, but it is not designed to teach someone C. The book he recommended is commonly known as H&S and it’s a reference for the newest C standard (c99 by the age of this post). This means, one can read H&S, but it’s not made for that (be read from begin to end) – as the name says, it’s a reference manual.

It’s also interesting that beginners don’t look much on what happened on the past in order for things to be the way they are today. Look at this one:

All due respect to Mr. Ritchie (he created the C language), this is a VERY poorly written book. Before you experienced programmers hurl your keyboards at me, hear me out: when you study CS at university, one of the first classes you take is C/C++ programming. What does this mean? It means that C is what you would call a “gateway” programming language. That is, it’s for BEGINNERS. Very few people studying C have prior experience in programming; therefore, writing a C book for “experienced programmers” is like putting Latin phrases in a children’s book. Most people who are studying C are just getting their feet wet in programming, and they take the fundamentals that they learn with C and move on to other programming languages.

This book is written in the most cryptic, undecipherable manner possible. It’s as if the authors are more preoccupied with showing off their vocabulary than they are with showing you how to use C. I know at the time of the book’s initial release, C was being used by programmers who likely studied Fortran or Pascal prior, but things have changed. Knowing that C often the first step in beginning to learn CS, the authors should have revised this book to make it easier for beginners to understand.

Sorry to insult your “Bible”, computer guys, but potential buyers should know that there are much, MUCH better books out there for you to learn C (try Absolute Beginner’s Guide to C, by Greg Perry). My grade: return (0);

This guy limits himself to the academic world in his review. He basically says that C and C++ is a language that is made to be used only by starters in computer science. And, probably, he is supposing that all programmers went to the computer science course before becoming active, which is just a huge mistake.

His logic is this: if C is for beginners and the book teaching C is for expert, then it’s like trying to teach something out of the context. That logic makes sense, in its general format. However, C is not designed for beginners. C was made somewhere in time closer to 1969 (after it, but closer to it) to re-write the unix operating system. So …

1. It wasn’t designed for the academic world.
2. It wasn’t made for beginners. Its designer, Dennis M. Ritchie, is a very experience programmer and mathematician and he knew how to put together all the functionalities a programming language needs in order for it to succeed.

Not hard to see, the reviewer logic has a fundamental problem.

He says that the book is hard to read. Without even knowing English very well I’ve read it when I was 16 and I am no genius. I have a polish friend that have done something similar and also another brazilian friend that has done the same.

It’s interesting because he thinks he is insulting the book. Basically he is insulting himself by showing that he doesn’t think too much.

C is only used in the academic world today because it is simple in the sense that it doesn’t have many functionalities. If you are a programming, you have probably already noticed that the most complex data structure that C has within it is an array (basically an indexed collection of elements). Thanks god that is changing because of new languages such as python, which seems to suit better the academic needs for beginners.

It seems that this reviewer thinks that C was made specifically for the academic world and not that the academic world have chosen C after its creation to fulfill some other need.

What is most interesting are the suppositions people make. Look at this other one:

this book is useless anyway! you can not understand this book unless you are already an expert. but, then why do you need a C book!? except maybe as a reference. don’t buy it.

He is supposing that experts have no reason to use C. He have forgotten that almost all GNU software is written in C, Linux is written in C in its most part. That covers the most used softwares in the free software world. C is also used in areas related to hardware and games. If you have any experience in programming, you know that all those areas that C is used are ones that require quite a lot of experience that you don’t learn in a course.

I think that this next one’s writer is a kid.

This book was really bad! There were no examples at all! I couldn’t understand a single page form author. It is obvious that Kenighan has no idea what he’s talking about. The book should be titled C The Hardway… I prefer and recommend C For Dummies. That book was easier to read and I was able to start programming really quickly. Do not get this awful book… there were no examples, and the explanations were really terse. I wasted my money on this book, I hope nobody else does…

Heh. The book is filled with examples, I’d risk to say that one third of the book are code samples. And he makes a really sad recommendation. For dummies books are really superficial and won’t teach you anything that you can really go and use to do something useful.

All those reviews were giving one start to the book and I’m giving only one start to those reviews because they doesn’t make much sense.

One of the advantages of communication over the Internet (such as e-mails, commentaries and reviews on the web, etc) is that you normally can think twice before communicating. Heck, you can wait hours (or even days) before replying most messages you receive. If you don’t use that advantage, things like these reviews happen.

This post wasn’t only for people that browse the web for reviews of products. A lot of systems are relying on user generated content. While that can be a good thing, stuff like this can happen. Amazon probably already have lost some sales because of poor and non-sense reviews. I’m not here to talk about how the good reviews sometimes are way too much exaggerated, but I have something to say.

The reviews on this post are all the ones have given one start to the book and 100% of them were non-sense. Most of the 5 star reviews are not non-sense because normally for someone to go there and say something good about the book, this person have already read it and have already had success with it. Of course there are affiliates on amazon that give 5 stars to the book, but these normally don’t justify the review – which makes the review something like “this product is good, it helped me” and the reader ignores it. Sometimes these affiliates will give reviews that are the description of the book’s table of contents, which makes sense and there is nothing wrong with it. Anyway, the result is that way less reviews that are good rating reviews will be non-sense when compared to poor rating reviews. Since the visitor haven’t bought the product, he/she cannot tell if the review makes sense or not.

The conclusion to be drawn from this post is that old and true advice, don’t believe in everything you see on the Internet. It’s a warning for buyers that are searching for reviews, for people that read news and personal opinions on the Internet and also for people that are willing to use user generated content to do something.

All due respect to Mr. Ritchie (he created the C language), this is a VERY poorly written book. Before you experienced programmers hurl your keyboards at me, hear me out: when you study CS at university, one of the first classes you take is C/C++ programming. What does this mean? It means that C is what you would call a “gateway” programming language. That is, it’s for BEGINNERS. Very few people studying C have prior experience in programming; therefore, writing a C book for “experienced programmers” is like putting Latin phrases in a children’s book. Most people who are studying C are just getting their feet wet in programming, and they take the fundamentals that they learn with C and move on to other programming languages.

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