I wouldn't consider Csound 4 to be too old to play around with. There
are a lot of new things in Csound 5, but if you can get a version of 4
to install and run properly there should be more than enough to
explore and compose with.
Everything in Csound 4 is maintained in 5, a few opcodes might have
been upgraded to new and better ones, but I am fairly certain that all
steps are taken to make sure Csound is backwards compatible and you
could run any .orc you write in 4 on a 5 install.
Also the book is less an instruction manual as it is a collection of
essays about 1) what Csound is and how it works and 2) ways to explore
particular types of sound synthesis. It's great and I'd recommend it,
but don't consider it to be utterly comprehensive. Also important, you
should get familiar with the manual, which is online on Csounds.com
that just explains the syntax and uses of every individual opcode
which is a little bit more like an instruction manual.

A

On 2/26/06, Panos Katergiathis <lists@protocol.gr> wrote:
> Peter Kryszkiewicz wrote:
> > I'm also a programmer (long experience) and new composer, and am going
> > through chapter one of the Csound book online at the moment. I would
> > say the material you need to absorb to get through this first chapter
> > would never become obsolete. As an experienced programmer in several
> > languages, I suspect that only after having mastered the Csound book
> > will I have to worry about what's obsolete or not.
> > Peter
> Sure... the 'obsolete' was reffering to the possibility that the book
> could be about an old-no-longer-maintained version of CSound. Remember
> that i am a newcomer: i saw that version 5 is about to happen and that
> the book is several years old. Never mind, point taken, i will order the
> book immediately.
>
> Panos
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