What's the deal with programming author Yashavant Kanetkar?
March 3, 2013 6:40 PM Subscribe
This comment in a Hacker News thread introduced me to Yashavant Kanetkar. Apparently his C programming books are the worst of the worst. Yet somehow, the Indian education system uses his books pervasively. I tried to find out more about this guy and the controversy around him, but web searches turned up a flat nothing. Anyone read his books or know about the story?
Best answer: As someone who went through the Indian engineering education system, I'm qualified to answer this. The book is extremely popular in India and is often used as a textbook for introductory C programming courses. The book itself isn't "worst of the worst", but anyone trying to learn programming would be much better served by other books. I can see a couple of reasons for why it is popular:
Availability: Because it's by a local publisher, it's available much more widely than something like K&R. When I was first learning programming 12 years ago, the first C book I could get my hands on (in a small town) was Let Us C, while it took a bit of searching around in Bangalore to get a copy of K&R.
Format: The book is written in a format suitable for the exam-focused system in India. It has nice little chapters and each of those has a list of "questions", and "exercises" and what not. This allows a teacher to simply use those questions for the "exam".
Style: It is written in simplified language, perhaps using fewer unfamiliar concepts (K&R for example is written from a Unix perspective). It also teaches C using Borland Turbo C(!) because that's what a lot of schools and colleges still (well, atleast 10 years ago; wouldn't be surprised if they use it even now) use.
Like I said, the book itself isn't that bad, it's just that it is likely to not mention subtleties like implementation-defined behavior and so on. It also won't give you the kind of wisdom that K&R would.
posted by Idle Curiosity at 9:37 PM on March 3, 2013
Availability: Because it's by a local publisher, it's available much more widely than something like K&R. When I was first learning programming 12 years ago, the first C book I could get my hands on (in a small town) was Let Us C, while it took a bit of searching around in Bangalore to get a copy of K&R.
Format: The book is written in a format suitable for the exam-focused system in India. It has nice little chapters and each of those has a list of "questions", and "exercises" and what not. This allows a teacher to simply use those questions for the "exam".
Style: It is written in simplified language, perhaps using fewer unfamiliar concepts (K&R for example is written from a Unix perspective). It also teaches C using Borland Turbo C(!) because that's what a lot of schools and colleges still (well, atleast 10 years ago; wouldn't be surprised if they use it even now) use.
Like I said, the book itself isn't that bad, it's just that it is likely to not mention subtleties like implementation-defined behavior and so on. It also won't give you the kind of wisdom that K&R would.
posted by Idle Curiosity at 9:37 PM on March 3, 2013
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posted by wongcorgi at 7:20 PM on March 3, 2013