CSE 374 Programming Concepts and Tools - Textbooks - Spring 2010

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Are the textbooks required?

There are three books listed for the course:

1. Linux Pocket Guide by Daniel J. Barrett, O'Reilly, 2004.
2. C: A Reference Manual (5th ed) by Harbison & Steele, Prentice-Hall, 2002.
3. Programming in C (3rd ed) by Kochan, Sams, 2005.

Although these are listed as "optional", additional explanation will help...

• The first two books are reference-style books (not textbooks) with reliable, useful information related to parts of the course. Much of the information is available elsewhere for free, but the time you save by having this book in your hand is probably well worth the cost. It is also good practice to learn to find information in professional-level reference books.
  
  
• Many of the topics covered in the course are not covered by any of the texts. However, they are covered well by free resources such as man pages and web pages.
  
  
• Having good reference books should prove useful in many parts of the CSE curriculum and even after you graduate. So these are excellent books to have even if much of the information is available elsewhere.
  
  
• If you would like even more information about Linux, shells, emacs, etc. in your hands, Linux in a Nutshell published by O'Reilly has about 900 pages of useful stuff. (Apparently the nutshell is for a rather large nut.)
  
  
• The Kochan book has longer, tutorial examples about C programming. You may find it useful if the other books and online reference materials are too terse for your tastes.

Bottom line: It is possible for some students to get all the information they need in this course without the textbooks since they will only occasionally be referred to. However, they are good books with lots of information and alternate explanations, so not getting them and making the course and your future endeavors more difficult may be a bad idea.

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