Introduction 1, philosophical (Предисловие 1, философское)

Author tell how he wrote this book, what difficulties he had and how crowdfunding project helped him to write this book.

With crowdfunding project author can live and write book, without spending time on other jobs. In total author spend 2200 hours (he tracks time somehow) to write 3 volumes of this books series, books wasn’t written from scratch (previous works and lectures was used). Later author refer to this situation, any great work can’t be done without some financial and moral support.

Author also doesn’t like current situation with publishers, which make money on books, seems with bad support of author.

I think this preface is like historical reference, how he wrote this book. Also was told which topics was touched (Pascal, NASM, C, OS, paradigms, etc.) and reworked during writing this book, who helped author and other aspects of writing process.

Introduction 2, methodical (Предисловие 2, методическое)

You can study programming only by yourself (maybe too categorical).

Learning programming by writing GUI applications first is bad idea.

Main tool of professional Unix user is organized (like data structure?) CLI.

CLI is better than comlex GUI. Command line interface is more powerful and flexible than GUI, you can work with it faster (remembering commands as keywords more natural) less stress on hands, operations are easier to remember and so on.

You can write CLI program much easier than GUI program. This open new learning opportunities and customization of OS (hobby programming).

Reasons why Unix is the most suitable OS for learning programming are described in next books sections.

Mathematical reason (Математическая причина)

Any computer programming is a record of algorithm on some programming language.

On very fundamental level no-one knows what algorithm it is, that’s why we have computational problems, and theoretical computer science.

Algorithm make transformation from set of words (chains of symbols over some alphabet) into the same set. For this transformation can exist more than one algorithm (countless) or not exist.

Algorithm is such a “thing” which read input word, do something constructive and return another word.

The same way works many programs from Unix family. STDIN → transformations → STDOUT (filters) and you can combine them using pipes.

Psychological reason (Психологическая причина)

Programming can’t be learned in traditional ways, it’s more craft than knowledge and need you do a lot of practice which solve real world problems (not just write code to learn some algorithm or theory). This is why pet projects are important, some pet projects can be transformed into very useful projects (GNU/Linux, open-source projects, etc.). And when you get real users of your software you are established as programmer and can congratulate yourself.

Ergonomic reason (Эргономическая причина)

You can’t replace CLI usability and flexibility with any graphical UI. And you must learn CLI as soon as possible (I use it every day, but still not very effective).

Pedagogical reason (Педагогическая причина)

Is good idea to educate someone, when you haven’t enough experience and when you’re even not trying to use proven learning materials?
Don’t need to learn someone programming if you don’t know what is in fundamental level. And if you really want to educate someone find good proven education path. Bad teachers can mislead a newbie student, for example start learning programming with making GUI (focusing on UI, not a program logic), which is bad idea. It can traumatize student mindset (brain damage), and he will have many problems to relearn programming in future (if he can do it) and think programming is boring process (actually not, he will not know what he lost).

Language determines thinking (Язык определяет мышления)

Why need to learn form “simple” languages, instead complex one, which providing basic concepts and not too complicated?
Start to learning programming from complex programming languages (like Java, C++ and even C) is bad idea, newbie learners will have hard been understanding their concepts and not really will learn programming.

Knowing data structures is important, if you’re not understanding difference (and in result where they need to be used) between vector and list in C++ and you won’t understand it this is bad sign.

Mixing C and C++ is bad idea (maintainability reason).

Why learning C as first programming language is not so good and can be hard?
C as first programming language is not suitable, you need to understand pointers first and work with them (and it’s hard).

Why knowing programming language on fundamental level (how it’s really works) is important?
Understanding code as “magic commands” is not good for good programmers, you need to understand code on very low level to create truly effective programs.

In C you haven’t procedures, only functions. For example assignment, increment are arithmetic operations and in C formally any actions (which is core of C) are creating side effect.

Side effect this is arbitrary change, which occurring only when evaluating expression and then can be somehow detected.

Unlike C, C++ and functional programming languages, in Pascal there mostly no side effects (questionable).

Why you should not write code like this?

while((dest++ = * src++));

To avoid side effects and make this less cryptic. Yes in C you can’t avoid side effects anyway, but in other languages you can.

When knowledge of C can be useful?
Writing in C is requirement, you need to understand how computer and operating system is working on subconscious level (closer to hardware) to write really quality programs.

Learning C, here are some requirements in understanding pointers and recursion, which can help some another language, we choice Pascal:

• language fully support pointers
• you can use language without pointers
• using pointers you can extend your capabilities (real necessity)

Is deep learning Pascal, in every details is needed when you learn general programming?
Not really. You learn not Pascal, you learn programming by using Pascal, and you can omit some Pascal specific features.

Why need to learning Assembly language (at least basics)?
Big role in understanding programming is taking Assembly language. You can never write programs in it (prefer C), but you must understand how it works to understand what you are really doing, understand OS kernel, how to interact with it, understand system calls, deeply understand data structures, etc. And you need usually also learn it before C (but after Pascal). You can use any assembly to learn, need to get understanding how to work with registers and memory areas, understand stack frame, interrupts, etc.

So authors chain to learn programming is: Pascal (basics of programming) → Assembly → C → C++. (special author’s vision), OS, I/O, processes, sockets, multithreading, mutex objects and semaphores, critical sections, etc.

Introduction 3, parting words (Предисловие 3, напутственное)

First who created things which works on their own (automatically) are watch mechanics. XVIII century - Jaquet-Droz automata (most complex is penman, containing 6000 details).

Jaquet-Droz The Writer Automaton From 1774 In Action

He not only invented these automata machines, hi also spent a lot of time to make required tools and details, so making some complex automation system was combination of many different skills, finances and physical labor.

With programmable computers you can avoid material requirements to make something useful and great. Program itself is finished product. Programming is the most creative profession in engineering and technical professions.

What is 2 main things which are important for programmer (to improve as programmer)?
Self-education and practice is requirement to be programmer.

Author also tells you need to use CLI to learn something from this book (I use it daily), which give you abilities to write simple programs and find users for your program.

Programming requires maximum intellectual tension and not everyone can withstand it!

Book structure (Структура книги и соглашения, используемые в тексте).

Here mostly general information about books and volumes.