Personally, I think that a lot of you people complaining are silly whiners, and you're acting like a bunch of kids. I'm surprised that some of you aren't replying with "LOLOL j00 got Own3ed!!!"
Many of your arguments and insults are pretty meaningless. For example:
Quote:
quote:Originally posted by AMeyer
I can't believe what I'm reading here - I bought this book yesterday, really couldn't understand why the exercise answers had to be 'hidden' on a server, and now I'm in total disbelief that a backup of the answer files is nowhere to be found! And you folks call yourself "Computer Experts"?
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Nobody at Wiley Publishing is calling themselves "Computer Experts". Wiley Publishing is a *PUBLISHING* company. Their job is to hire authors to write books, print these books, and sell them. The computer experts are the authors, who in most cases have no affiliation with Wrox Press or Wiley other than an agreement that they will recieve some monetary compensation (a royalties check) for each book sold.
The employees of Wiley Publishing have made it very clear that they purchased the Wrox Press brand name and many of their assets AFTER the original Wrox Press closed down and had their crap sold off at auction in an effort to pay off their debts.
They've been working hard at getting a lot of mangled stuff put together for their Wrox Press customers, on top of keeping the REST of their publishing labels running smoothly.
Consider this analogy: You have a restaurant that you love. You go to it all the time. The restaurant closes down, and a new company buys the building and reopens the restaurant. The original cooks don't work there anymore. Their menu still exists, but the recipe books are gone. Shortly after reopening, customers come in asking for old menu items, which the new restaurant owners can't provide, which means the customers throw a hissy fit and storm out, declaring "I'll never eat here again! I thought you guys were FOOD EXPERTS!"
Does this make any sense? The new owners are BUSINESS PEOPLE. They run a business, and they sell food. The food they sell might be excellent -- as good or better than the previous menu, but since it's not the menu you're used to, you think it sucks.
I have only this remaining to say to you.
There are two kinds of programmers: those that need the answers and those that figure out the answers. If you're of the first type, then go buy another book or ask someone here to answer all your questions.
If you, like me, are of the second type of programmer, then take the time to write a little test script to see if your answer is correct. If it's not, try to figure out why not. Try new things. If you get stuck, THEN ask for assistance.
It might take longer, but I GUARANTEE that the time will be well-spent. You'll come away knowing a lot more about the programming languages you think you're "learning" by reading an intro book.
Here's a news flash: You can't learn ANY programming language in 21 days. You didn't learn how to add by looking at the problem and then looking up the answer -- you learned math by working the problem for yourself, and checking your answer with the answer pages.
The nice thing about programming is that you don't NEED the answer pages! You can just run your program and see if it works as expected. See if the output is correct, whether it crashes or not, whether error messages appear, etc.
You can't learn a programming language by reading a book. The answers might make sense when you read them, but you're sure as hell not going to REMEMBER that when you sit down to write your own applications.
I'm willing to bet that you could've written a simple test application in about as much time as it took you to read through this thread and reply with a useless one-line insult.
And to those of you who made it this far, let me add something else: I'm not trying to be a dick. I may sound harsh, but that's because I CARE about this profession. I don't want people to get into programming because there's good jobs with good salaries to be had. I want to work with people who put forth an effort into what they do -- I have a responsibility to myself and my peers by being the best programmer I can be, and to help other people become better programmers if I can.
The more mediocre programmers that exist in today's workforce, the worse off I look for being just another programmer.
Programming is one of the few fields that someone who buys a $40 book can enter. You can't become a doctor or a pilot by reading a book, anymore than reading a cookbook makes you a chef. You can read the recipes and say to yourself "That sounds easy", but until you get in the kitchen and try out the recipes will you actually learn how to make the dish.
Take care,
Nik
http://www.bigaction.org/
