Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Well "no longer relevant" and "out of date" don't mean precisely the same thing.
How could it be? Technology advances. The state of the art system is what's sitting on an engineer's test bench. What you buy is obsolete before you take it home from the store.
Software and programming are likewise. I have a few computer texts that are relatively timeless, but most date very quickly.
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Dennis
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"Old" is relative; old computer texts can date from the '70s and be about assembly language (hex code is hex code), whereas old literature can date back hundreds of years. Borland C++ programming books were around in the early '90s (almost a lifetime ago for many programmers around today) and while I don't think they'd be a first choice for someone learning C++ for the first time, they
could be for someone who's broke and gets stuff from Goodwill. They'll end up learning substantially the same thing as someone in the local community college studying the same thing.
Pretty much anything UNIX-based (especially Linux) is similar; you'll understand the basics if the book is a day old or a decade. The only people who would look askance at you for using sed are those who have never used a terminal window and provincial BSD snobs who use something different entirely.
Hell, anything that was taught using Win XP would qualify and that heap is pushing 10 years old itself.