https://wozniak.ca/blog/2018/06/25/Massacring-C-Pointers/index.html

I'm taking a break from debugging books to talk about a calamitous shitshow of textbook writing: Mastering C Pointers: Tools for Programming Power, by Robert J. Traister.

I learned of the book through a talk by Brian Kernighan where he refers to the book as probably “the worst C programming textbook ever written.”[1] He doesn't name it but with some help I was able to track down his obliquely accurate reference.

This book has become my white whale. Since I started reading debugging books, and especially now that I'm digging through older ones, I find bits of advice that simply don't work today. While some of it could be construed as useless or idiotic, I've always found the authors come from a position of earnestness, attempting to draw the best conclusions based on decent principles and what they knew at the time they wrote it. In some cases they may not have known much, but they're honestly and humbly trying to impart some wisdom.