Michael Lucas is the Best Tech Author

tommiie said:
About the Perl book, I think I'll skip that one. I rather focus on Python (as it's extremely popular) and simple shell scripts (a good book for this one would be appreciated).
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I'm mostly writing Python these days. When I worked at Sun many of the engineers praised Perl, so early on when I deciding what to do for fun Perl was the obvious choice. I've not really done any Perl since maybe 2015.
I kinda clicked with Perl, it felt like shell++. Python still jars with me a bit.

For shell scripting, I generally use a mix of man pages and UNIX in a nutshell which is showing it's age a bit! @freebsdfrau on Twitter has started putting together a book on gitbooks called Serious Shell Programming. I can't comment on it personally, but I've seen some good feedback on Twitter a while ago.
 
If something an author does bothers you, then you'll probably start looking for faults, rightly or wrongly, that's just human nature. So, for those who got offended by that, they're probably better off looking elsewhere, but that's just my opinion. I thought it was a joke, and for me, most of Mr. Lucas's writings hit that balance between getting the complex stuff and allowing me to understand it.
I would say there are probably 10 or more (that's a joke, I'm sure there are thousands) of places to discuss sexism, and its friends, and that if we keep this to a technical discussion, I'm just going to say, (or type) Thanks, Mr. Lucas and keep on writing your books, lots of things in them have been very useful for me.
 
forquare said:
As for other recommendations...
I really got on with Learning Perl, after spending a few night shifts reading it between railway signalling tests I was really surprised how easily I could jump in a create useful Perl scripts.
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Learning Perl is an EXCELLENT book. It's what taught me Perl back in the Stone Age. Highly, highly recommended.

I cracked my copy open to remind myself of a couple stupid basics ( curly braces, not parenthesis, ya daftie) when writing the scripts for the new edition of the sudo book.
 
Michael W Lucas said:
The "Ed Mastery" prank was specifically aimed at the people who send me email telling me to not use female pronouns in tech books. Every few months, I got a coordinated flood of email telling me that mixing male and female pronouns in a tech book was wrong. Many senders claimed that women have no place in technology. Those people, in particular, are the ones I'm hitting back at.
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mixing male and female pronouns in a tech book was wrong.
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Cthulhux that's a misquote, and it makes it look like he said something he didn't convey.
Cthulhux said:
Mixing male and female pronouns is wrong in anything that tries to remotely resemble an English text as long as there is no neutral pronoun.
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As long as it's not intentional for the intent of being discriminatory (in something that applies to everyone), it doesn't matter one bit. In grade school, we'll use, either they, he or she, and nothing is meant by it. Then in college, they'll tell you to write "he or she" together or one or ones. I'll continue to use the same pronouns I used in gradeschool unless it's for a formal paper or conversation.

PMc said:
Hm, it seems You don't get the idea of ridiculing a reactionary viewpoint not by futile discussion, but by action: by adhering to it to the point where it gets laughable?
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He explained his action in reference to someone's doubt, and that's good.
- edits
It is funny; it's college or the Onion type humor. Putting out an actual book of the joke, looks like a joke taken far. Some are going to be in doubt whether the intent is meant as a joke, or not be satisfied by jokes. It would also be funny to have the reasoning for the book about the emails in the forward (maybe it does, I can't see it), and on the book page, but then again, that could create hatemail from those feeling called out, so that type of additional joke may not be worth it.
 
tommiie said:
Tip: don't get The design and implementation of the FreeBSD operating system by McKusick. While it might be a superb book (I wouldn't know) I found the contents way too advanced for me, being just a FreeBSD/programming noob myself.
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I just took a pic from the book :

6663


Is this a smalltalk WhatsApp-group here and not the BSD-community ? ;-)
 
I'm glad Michael W Lucas showed up and feel we're fortunate to have (dare I?) him. Too bad it's to defend (I dare!) himself from petty attacks on grammar, style of writing or sense of humor.

I doubt the people who think it's discriminatory for someone to use gender specific terms have ever been discriminated against in real life. If so, please put me in touch with your attorney. If she took your case I know she'd take mine. If it's a guy forget it. I want an intelligent female attorney defending me in this matter so she can dress up like a Daemon in court.

I'd be in my ivory tower but I'm slumming as a permanent lifestyle choice. Save the elephants!
 
I wanted to refrain from elaborating on the distractions that people have induced to my off-topic post. I felt that it would only feed the trolls. Any reasonable adult would see that Michael Lucas brings value to the BSD community. It is funny, it seems like the people who are so "offended" just want to virtue signal or feel warm and fuzzy inside by calling out what offended them. It seems as though they are locked into the mindset of an adolescent. I refuse to feed these trolls and will ignore them. They and their opinion are meaningless to me.

As for everyone else! Thank you so much for your contributions to my topic. I decided to join this forum because of my love of Unix and FreeBSD and the BSD philosophy in general. I hope to contribute to this community greatly and I'm highly enthusiastic about bringing what I can offer to the table. I will never shut anyone out and hope to make many friends on here.

As for your recommendations, Please keep them coming. Also I am very happy that Michael commented on my post. How cool is that!
 
At least, it was pointed out that it was humor.

I wonder who buys the book, people who believe women don't belong in tech, or women and those who believe women belong in tech. The former wouldn't like being laughed at, and wouldn't buy a book that contributes to a woman's cause, unless they don't realize it or they think that suits their ego. Maybe its for the ones who see it as a joke.
 
I hate it when someone says to me, "I know you were trying to be funny but..." which I reply with, "Well, if you knew I was trying to be funny, what are you upset about?".
 
Oh, I remember when I first got my hands on FreeBSD. I don't recall exactly if it was 4.7 or 4.9. I do remember though I had this book, Absolute BSD 1st edition. It was a book that really helped me progress fast. I loved everything about it. Since then I got handful of Michael's books and each and every time it was money well spent.

I feel almost starstruck that I can say it here: Michael W Lucas many thanks for your awesome job.
 
sidetone said:
I wonder who buys the book, people who believe women don't belong in tech, or women and those who believe women belong in tech. The former wouldn't like being laughed at, and wouldn't buy a book that contributes to a woman's cause, unless they don't realize it or they think that suits their ego. Maybe its for the ones who see it as a joke.
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I've never been of the opinion that a female was any less competent to use a computer than a male, or at anything else for that matter. Most of my Supervisors have been women and I never felt it a blow to my ego to do what was asked of me.

There was a female on our laborer crew at the iron foundry that worked right along with us scooping sand all night. She got as dirty as us, worked just as hard as us and harder than one guy who would stand around and watch us work. She didn't put on muscle like us and was doing good if she weighed 120lbs at 6 foot but that didn't stop her. We all respected her.

The guy she outworked moved to Kansas City to work construction. That didn't fly out there, but he did. Off the top of a building from what I was told.
 
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