11 Resources for Learning Unix Programming 10 Feb 2012
Recently I got an email from a reader of WWUP asking how I learned about all this stuff. Here's what I told him.
I personally get a lot from reading source code and from piecing together different resources. I have very little experience with C programming, and learned everything I know about Unix programming w/o having to write C code. Besides the resources below I learn a lot from experimenting with little bits of code and writing my own software.
Here's a brain dump of some stuff that helped me:
- http://unicorn.bogomips.org/. Lots of good info in the included files like DESIGN, PHILOSOPHY, etc.
- Any other piece of software by Eric Wong (author of Unicorn) http://rubygems.org/profiles/normalperson
- https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/
- http://tomayko.com/writings/unicorn-is-unix
- https://github.com/TwP/servolux
- I'm also a frequent reader of manpages
- https://github.com/defunkt/resque
- http://pic.plover.com/UnixReader/
- Anything by Russ Cox (http://swtch.com/~rsc/)
- http://cat-v.org/
- The Linux Programming Interface http://nostarch.com/tlpi
- The Art of Unix Programming http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/
- USP Ruby mailing list http://bogomips.org/usp.ruby/README
The truth is that there are a lot of really great free resources out there, but they're not cohesive and most are written for C programmers.
I tend to steer clear of the thick reference books and go instead for books that give me a look into how smart people think about programming. There's lots of good thought in the history of Unix and its programmers.
Want a cohesive guide to Unix programming written specifically for non-C programmers? Have a look at Working With Unix Processes, a brief book for precisely that.
I'm sure there are other resources available for learning this stuff. What am I missing?
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