It was used for my programming class, however the professor recommends K.R for experienced students who are new to C.

Really, downmodded for politely asking an honest question?

Had anyone used both? Will I get downmodded for asking another question?

Kneejerk downmodding has become somewhat epidemic recently (in the last few months?). Most of the time more thoughtful users tends to correct this problem later on, though.

It probably helps that downvoting is only possible for newer posts (at least from my perspective), while upvoting is always possible.

I usually compare on what I think a comment is worth and what it has at the moment, and then vote to make the `is' closer to the `should'. At least for upvotes. In generally I only downvote stuff that lowers the quality of discussion.

It would be interesting if we had a voting system, that worked a bit like eBay's `bidding agents'. I.e. a system where you vote by setting a target score, and the system casts an up- and downvote as necessary. Of course we would need those base-votes to be recastable (but only automatically).

The current system is a special case of this, where the target score is either plus infinity or minus infinity, and you can't change the target score once set.

P.S. Please forgive my off-topic ranting in this discussion about K&R.