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Add to SafariWhen comparing The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R) vs The Design of Everyday Things, the Slant community recommends The Design of Everyday Things for most people. In the question“What are the most influential books every programmer should read?” The Design of Everyday Things is ranked 3rd while The C Programming Language (AKA: K&R) is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose The Design of Everyday Things is:
This book isn't focused on recent trends or properties specific to a certain field, and thus applies to all design. It provides a broad view and allows focusing on the fundamental goals of the user experience, rather than being limited in scope.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Well known classic
This book is so well known that it's affectionately called "K & R", after the authors.
It's been cited in many other books and is familiar to most, if not all, CS students.
Pro It's excerpted from the idea of its creators
This book is written by Dennis Ritchie, who was one of the main people behind the development and design of C and UNIX.
Pro Creative, challenging exercises
The challenges at the end of each chapter do a great job of requiring many of the skills learned up to that point. Completing the challenges is a great way of insuring you understand the material.
Pro This book set the template for programming language books
Pro Transcendental principles
This book isn't focused on recent trends or properties specific to a certain field, and thus applies to all design. It provides a broad view and allows focusing on the fundamental goals of the user experience, rather than being limited in scope.
Pro Focused on the user
Whatever that's being designed, for whatever purpose, it always has the same goal of being used by someone. This book is focused on that interaction and on why users make mistakes. These principles still apply directly to web design, when design leads users to make mistakes, it will ultimately drive users away.
Cons
Con Out of Date
Some commands and practices are out of date, so errata and googling is needed while going through the book.
Con Teaches bad style
The K&R style works for old Unix mainframe command-line programs that exit after a simple task and leave the cleanup to the OS; where input is only from trusted experts; and most functions are only called internally to the program. The environment is very different today. This style will get your server owned by hackers, or crash it due to a memory leak, etc. You will have to unlearn what you've learned from this book to use C correctly in the real world today.
Con Not for beginners
Assumes familiarity not only with programming concepts but some C language specifics.
Con Quite dated
Examples are quite old, as are the illustrations.
Con A lot to read
It's quite a long read, there is a lot of material to be covered, if you compare it to similar but more concise books, like The Non-Designer's Design Book.
Con Not specifically for web design
This book challenges the reader to think about the design of all objects, and their user-friendliness/usability. It is not specifically targeted towards web designers, but will help web designers think in a way that benefits users.
