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I am referring to this question: Good Literature for "Object oriented programming in C"

However, I have seen question like Is there a canonical book on design patterns? And Is there a canonical book on parallel programming with focus on C++ ?

  • are clearly ok.

So my question is, is literature/book requests by itself wrong? or is three something specifically wrong about my question?

One of the comment also mentioned that :

"If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much."

I am not really asking anyone to write a book right here -but I do want to find references which are credible which I can suggest to relatively new poeple.

To be honest most book shelves really take you to C++ books which are not what i am asking.

Is there any possibility to improve the question and get it open?

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I'd just like to go on record as saying you can't make your book question on-topic by simply adding "canonical" to the title. – Robert Harvey Oct 16 '12 at 18:38

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote

Given some of the top voted answers in the last discussion about resource requests and the close votes and flags from other members of the community against your question, it appears that people want to see a bigger emphasis on questions about problems rather than resource requests (even a request for the "canonical reference"). Questions should be about solving a problem, and links to resources should be part of good answers, along with experiences of other users.

However, prior to closing (as I mentioned in my comment), I did a Google search for "object-oriented C" (without quotation marks) and received numerous results. A precursor to asking a question should be to search for an answer, using your favorite search engine and on any relevant Stack Exchange sites. A question should address why these resources aren't sufficient for solving your problem.

From the FAQ:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.

Below are two excerpts from the answers that are tied for top answer in the question I linked to above. As of now, both have 8 up votes and 0 down votes from members of the community.

From Mark Trapp's top answer in the linked question:

The problem with these questions aren't that they are asking for a book, it's that they don't describe anything about the problem the user is having, or rather why the user is asking the question, to afford a useful response. They're like asking, "tell me what book will teach me everything and anything about Java." Where to begin? Questions must narrow the scope down to a specific problem, otherwise, they don't belong here.

From Robert Harvey's top answer in the linked question:

While I begrudgingly accept the idea that resource requests are on-topic if they are specific enough, people should really be asking "how" questions, not "what" questions

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Dear Thomas, as regards to doing google search, I myself know various resources which are not even in top 30 search engine. This is something I have done for many years. I am looking at organizing clearly defined outline for new comers and hence asking for references which other people would have also come across. – Dipan Mehta Oct 16 '12 at 13:46
@DipanMehta It doesn't matter what you know if you don't tell us what research you've already done and why it's not useful to you. – Thomas Owens♦ Oct 16 '12 at 13:49
Regarding the argument based on Mark's answer, please let me tell you - this is not a category where I am asking for "Best book on PHP" or "Top book for JAVA". If you search Amazon, it does comeback with either ONLY general OO books - or OO with C++. There is simply not a list. The only thing I came to know about it was the answer by Graham Lee. That should tell you the value of the question. – Dipan Mehta Oct 16 '12 at 13:49
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I thought that work I have done - is bookmarked which wasn't handy. By the time I add things here, the question is closed. The real issue for me was that I was searching for something which is more theoretically structured - and that helps new comers to connect back with original principles of OO. I guess this literature is out there but there is a great bias here about this question. If you let people answer this, you will know. – Dipan Mehta Oct 16 '12 at 13:54
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@DipanMehta None of that matters. It's not a good question because it's asking for a list. Describe your problem, prove you've done sufficient research, explain why the results of your research aren't useful to you. – Thomas Owens♦ Oct 16 '12 at 13:55
@DipanMehta now that question is closed and thus protected from receiving answers that could make changing its content conflict with invalidating answers, you can edit and clarify it with details you just provided to help re-opening it – gnat Oct 16 '12 at 13:58
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The fact that it's often the case in disputes like this that one person's "this is a narrow topic with a targeted scope that could only produce a few possible candidates" is another person's "this is a hopelessly broad topic" is probably the best argument for banning book recommendations entirely. – user8 Oct 16 '12 at 16:27
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@gnat - I have tried to re-write the question. Let me know if this suits the criteria. – Dipan Mehta Oct 17 '12 at 4:44
@DipanMehta I revised it further and cast a vote. With just introduced reopen votes queue it is now easy for community to make up their mind whether question has been improved sufficiently for reopening – gnat Oct 17 '12 at 7:22

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