No comments about Computer Monsters.

1 comments about Automated Music Composition.

1. All Phil Winsor's books have a common theme - the various mathematical algorithms (probability, filtering, shaping melodic lines, etc). One of the books provides C code, the others all provide BASIC code. He discusses such subjects as stochastic composition, development of melody via various mathematical functions, rhythm and harmony using mathematical functions, etc. He doesn't go into more advanced algorithms such as using Markov Chains, neural networks, or AI. His book, "Automated Music Composition" is intended for use with his MusicSculptor package in that the various programs create output files suitable for use with this software. It seems to me that all his books contain roughly the same information, so if you get his latest book "Automated Music Composition", you will have the gist of his previous books. I would say his books are more accessible than some of the more esoteric writings by MIT press. Winsor's books are loaded with code that actually works using whatever algorithm is being discussed. So I am not sure anything is to be gained by detailing each book separately. Winsor's books all cover the same material. "Computer Music in C" is the C language version of "The Composer's Toolbox" which is in BASIC. "Automated Music Composition" is also in BASIC. But they all cover the same material, though "Automated Music Composition" provides more initial coverage of putting together a MIDI system and how his algorithms fit into the overall scheme of music making. It is as if one can see an evolutionary development of his ideas through the span of time over which he has written his books. By the way, if you have a PC and MPU-401 midi card, you will want to consider purchasing his MusicSculptor program and the book "Automated Music Composition". With these two pieces, you can freely explore algorithmic composition and get good results.

5 comments about Visual Basic .NET Threading Handbook.

1. I had no idea what threading was about before buying this book. I'm a self-taught programmer so I missed out on all the good stuff like this that you would have learned in college. This book gave me an AWESOME overview of how your programs are executed, and how you can boost performance with free threading in VB.NET. One reader appears to have given a bad review based on a poor code example. That's his oppinion, but the portion of the code that was important -- the threading part -- worked and worked well. To the authors -- THANK YOU whoever you are. I love this handbook series you are doing -- you should do more of them!



2. I like the concept of the handbook series, and this particular book certainly provides a lot of good information. However, I would have expected this book to give me a good overview over all threading aspects and provide at least a starting point for further investigation.

   While I recognize the fact that a book of this size can't cover everything, I was still disappointed about coverage of fairly basic subjects, such as making Windows Forms thread-safe. I am also disappointed in the coverage about the thread-pool for instance.

   Overall, a nice book, but there are a number of books that have a single chapter devoted to threading, yet cover more ground in that area...




3. I don't hate this book because it taught me some good stuff about Thread. BIG HOWEVER, the examples in this book are SLOPPY. Wrox gathered 7 people to write this thin book. No wonder they went bankrupt. And with 7 people, this is the kind of quality of sample they can come up with? Please... I will take a note of these people so that I won't ask these people to write code in the future. They obviously didn't even try to compile the code before putting it in the book!



4. the people who gave this book 3 starts are very close
   The books does demonstrate the basics very well,
   but when it comes to the interesting pieces the
   download examples were missing



5. This book was sold by Wrox to APress. The code download is available directly from APress at http://support.apress.com.

5 comments about Pure Visual Basic (Pure).

1. I had this book lying around for a while. Then a friend asked me how to create a VB DLL that exports functions, not COM classes that can be reused by other VB clients. So, I gave him the book, thinking that something so obvious would be covered by this book. The topic does not seem to be covered.



2. This is one of a very small number of computer books I've come across that is concise, well written, lucid, and actually useful. No Dummies fluff, no long winded self serving expositions in search of an editor, just a clear and incisive exploration of the intricacies of VB backed by lots of examples in code. This isn't a book for beginners in that it assumes a certain familiarity with the language, yet beginners will benefit from having this resource available as they need to research topics. I wish that more programming books came even close to the quality of this one.



3. Possible the best VB book I own.
   Deail with a lot of subject in depth that most books just touch on.
   The code examples are correct and very efficient, and documented in a way thats simple to undersatnd.
   suited for developers from beginner to advanced
   This boook is a must..!!!



4. I have been a visual C++ programmer for 5 years and needed to write my first VB app. I bought this book for a reference and another for more of a "how to". This book serves its purpose well. Just like the cover says, it's a reference for the professional developer. I wanted a book like "Visual Basic for Visual C++ programmers" but none exists (does it?).



5. A good solid compact reference. I keep this one close at hand.

No comments about Programming in True BASIC: Problem Solving with Structure and Style.

5 comments about Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with Visual Basic.NET.

1. I have been a fan of wrox books in the past, but this is not one if their better ones. The writing was poor overall, and there were times where I read the infomration three times before I eventually started to search the internet for a better explaination. The chapters on xml were useful, but could have gone into a little more detail with simple ways to data bind instead of focusing on datagrids as a single solution. As a resource, the index is useless and no glossary to organize key concepts to reference was a disapointment.



2. The book is well outdated (as of mid-2004).

   I'm just finishing the Begining ASP.NET with VB.NET 2003. This was Wrox's suggestion as the follow-on book to really understand website database development. A real waste. The Begining ASP.NET provided the same level of detail.

   The book did use SQL Server -- a plus -- which the Begining ASP.NET book lightly covered. But, not enough to justify the expense of buying the book and even more importantly the time to wade through it.




3. This book does not look like from Wrox, it got only the bad side of Wrox books - put code on dark background to damage readers' vision.
   
   The usefulness of this book are the examples, while the explanations are not all good. There are 13 authors for this book, the quality of each part of this book differ a lot. Unfortunately, the most importance parts for me: the OOP part and Control part, got the lowest quality. The technology used in these two parts is: put some words there but no real explanation on many important points; simply repeat the sample code to fill out the pages. This is more damaging because of readers' trust on Wrox books, I invested lots of time on this book without questioning, then I found I wasn't going anywhere.



4. I have read almost all the chapters of this book. I have been programming with intermediate ASP for past 5 years. The reason I picked up the book was for the easy transition from ASP to ASP.Net and this book help me do that. The book explains ASP.Net 1.0 at the novice level. For serious developers this book can serve as an introductory book for ASP.Net. I have now moved on to Professional ASP.Net book by wrox and many times I have to go back to this book to look into introductory details of the new features of ASP.Net.



5. The book was an excellent book for beginners. I found that it walks through each section step by step with excellent examples. You start out with the basics and proceed into more complicated designs such as using xml and databases. I would definitely recommend this book for someone who is starting out with asp.net as it gives you a good footing into the language.

5 comments about Web Database Development (Dv-Dlt Fundamentals).

1. It is a general discussion on setting up a web but very little on the web database programming.



2. This was very helpful book, full of examples. I like the writer's style, which is concise and moves right ahead. However, I wish that Jim used an increasingly popular method to reference the code-- with colored numbers or something to help call out which line he was explaining. His explanations got bogged down a bit by the way he referenced his own code blocks. Visually beefing this up, would have been welcomed.

   I found his brief notes and tips to be useful advice- delivered from an experienced programmer to a beginning to intermediate coder. The majority of these were useful points. Authentiction and ADO stuff was good, but I needed more sources as well.

   It took me some effort to find this MSPRESS edition. I do hope that MSPRESS hasn't discontinued this and that a new revision is in the works. Reccomended.




3. I was a little mislead with the title. I was expecting a help with a web-oriented database design. I was looking for info on secure design, user management, multi-language support, database clusters, etc...

   But it does not. Actually it only talks about databases in 2-3 chapters and those are on a real basic level (create tables in Access en simple SELECT statements).
   All the other stuff is the use of visual studio, Visual Basic, how to drop components, etc.

   I do NOT recommend this book to any one with some programming expercience. If you know a little VB, made basic ASP(.NET) pages and played around with Access a few times then this book will not teach you anything new. You will be more with this book: Microsoft Press book "ASP.NET programming with Visual C#.NET", ISBN: 0735619352. All my collegues (8) just loved it.

   How ever if you have no to very little programming experience, new to dynamic webpages and still in the learning curve of (basic) database use. I would recommend this book.

   --Wout

   Web experience
   * ASP 1.5 year
   * ASP.NET 3 months.




4. This is a terrible book. It is neither good for learning ASP.NET or learning Web DB application development. The author is not all that knowledgeable about .NET. He makes some completely wrong claims like where he says roles are not used in forms based security or .NET can't do comparisons against null (he means DB field nulls but doesn't make that clear). A third of the book itemized code "the 17 steps to upload a file are..." Just padding. Put in the relevant code and refer to the source on the CD.
   
   If you want to build web DB apps with ASP.NET and ADO.NET, first get a book on ASP.NET which will include some ADO.NET anyway, then, when you master that, get an ADO.NET book. And get a book on VB.NET or C#, whichever you prefer.



5. This MSPress publication is an excellent resource and bridges a rather wide gap. There aren't a lot of books that have its goals, although I believe SitePoint and Wrox have some offerings. This is the best of what I've seen. I gave it 5 stars, although maybe 4.5 would be more accurate. I notice that several reviewers gave it fewer stars, but I think they expected a different type of book. It's more for people who are newer to the topic, or relatively light users, but who may have a little background in the subject. It's not exactly a hand-holder, but there is a safety net (no pun intended), and that accounts for its ability to cover a lot of material and still be an introduction. I used the earlier pre-dotnet version for a course I taught on web-database connectivity, and found it very helpful. Upon returning to this topic recently, I found the dotnet version also to be very useful.
   
   I like this book partly because of its systematic approach and because it focuses on coding instead of the .net ide. A bonus for me, although probably not for more advanced users, is that it is based on Microsoft Access databases (others are mentioned, and of course much of the code is the same). This puts the entire book within the realm of usability by an average person who is more likely to have Access, a PC-based web server (like XP Professional), or a host that provides Access support with the lower-tier service plans. This is probably also one of the reasons that some reviewers don't like the book. There is a lot of emphasis on understanding the processes rather than being a cookbook. The author, Jim Buyens, introduces a topic, then walks through the main code snippets, and finally gives the whole code behind a page. You can download the code from his website, and it works fine (at least all that I have tried). That alone is worth it. Consider the very first chapter. In it, he provides something very useful right away: a web page that connects to a database and shows the entire contents, organized in a table. Because of the broad capabilities of the asp.net datagrid, this code can easily and rapidly be applied to other databases. Some of the other features include a nice photograph gallery, a section on forms and form validation, a full chapter devoted to updating databases through web forms (insert into...), and a very useful section on generating emails.
   
   The book could use an update, since it was written maybe 5 years ago, and is focused on asp 1.0. But all the code still works and is highly useful. Hopefully, MSPress will spend one of their nickels and have it updated.

No comments about Building With Basic: A Programming Kit for Kids/Book and Disk (Alpha kids).

5 comments about Professional Visual Basic 6: The 2003 Programmer's Resource.

1. This is a very thorough compendium of essential information for Visual Basic 6 developers. All of the authors are developers themselves and understand their subject matter thoroughly. You'll find a wide range of helpful information including SQL, COM+, XML, SOAP and much more. You'll even find step-by step information on how to deploy your Visual Basic applications using Visual Studio Installer and Wise Installation System. A great reference book that you'll pull off your shelf again and again...



2. Being a fan of the Wrox series, I was not disappointed with the latest Professional Visual Basic 6 book. Even though .NET technologies carry the current industry momentum (for MS-based development), there will always be a place for VB 6 within the Enterprise. In my case, for example, I will always have a need to use VB6 for certain clients who are either unwilling or slow to adapt to the newer technologies (namely, .NET) for any number of business reasons.

   The authors of this book have done a very good job of bringing together some of today's hottest technologies under one cover. Experienced VB developers will find the chapters within a practical reference (if not a valuable introduction) to modern APIs, such as ADO, COM+, MSMQ, XML, and SOAP. In the short time that I've owned this, I have already pulled it off of the shelf to reference the text and examples on several occasions.

   Having said that, though, there is only so much that can fit into any one book, so it does not serve as an absolute reference manual for any single technology.

   The book comes with a CD that contains the usual source code from the book, plus 10 Case Studies and 5 Wrox titles in PDF format. Just a technical note, though: I couldn't open the PDF files using Acrobat Reader 4.05, but a simple upgrade to the latest free version resolved that problem.




3. I saw the title of this book and picked it up - we are trying to build web services via SOAP at my company and we are not migrating to .NET for a while yet. The book proved worthy of it's title. This book covers modern implementations with legacy technology. Thank you to the authors. I suspect that there are quite a few companies out there that, like us, need to see VB6 references for a while yet (Microsoft has seemed to replace their VB6 documentation with VB.NET documentation on their site).

   I recommend this one!




4. I saw the title of this book and picked it up - we are trying to build web services via SOAP at my company and we are not migrating to .NET for a while yet. The book proved worthy of it's title. This book covers modern implementations with legacy technology. Thank you to the authors. I suspect that there are quite a few companies out there that, like us, need to see VB6 references for a while yet (Microsoft has seemed to replace their VB6 documentation with VB.NET documentation on their site).

   I recommend this one!




5. This is a decent Wrox book. Not the jumble of pages stacked together that you get most of the time, but a well rounded compendium of nice to know things for the casual VB Developer. I say "casual", because when it comes to professional programming, you really shouldn't have to read (again) about doing some basic ADO stuff or creating an install package. Three stars for this book because it's good, but not written for a professional developer...

5 comments about ASP.NET and VB.NET Web Programming (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series).

1. I am an experienced HTML, PHP and Javascript developper.

   I recenctly decided I would like to pick up VB.net for web development and maybe pass 70-305. I just finished VB.net Step-by-Step and was pretty happy.

   I bought this book based on the reviews and I have to say I am frustrated and disappointed.

   First off, most of the book is spent making console applications, not web applications.

   Second, there are no clear tutorials or labs that allow you to practice or apply what you have learned. Lots of code snippets and incomplete programs that aren't terribly clear. Lots of theory, not much application

   Finally, the author assumes knowledge that hasn't been demonstrated in the book to date when giving examples or using terminology. For someone who is unfamiliar with the MS programming world, it can very confusing.

   All in all I'm not impressed.




2. Over all this book is covering a lot of topics and should be good for beginner. Too much explanation of the code and stuff that's obvious for intermediate / senior levels. I did encounter couple problems. COM+ part does not go into details. The sample that I made (downloaded) for this chapter did not work. It might be the operation system problem, but I did not find any references in the book that you can't do this if you are running on WIN2000. Also, web services did not work with my components, again, no references in the book what do you do if web service looks inaccessible.



3. Disorganized....ADO.NET example in chapter 7 doesn't even make any sense if you follow it....Errors throughout...download of examples doesn't even have the examples from the book....



4. The author's writing style is not only extremely poor, but confusing as he uses terminologies that a LOT of beginners may not be familiar with. You'll find yourself going over to webopedia.com for explanations for a lot of his terms which he simply mentions or just glosses over.

   I was forced to by this text for a college course and have found much better beginning asp.net and vb.net texts since buying it.




5. .NET technology is specifically tailored for internet applications and the title of this book includes Web Programming. In fact there is very little coverage of web programming. The entire section on VB.NET covers only console applications. We are almost half-way through the book (if you ignore the 140 plus pages of appendices and index at the end) before a step-by-step guide to creating a (very simple) web application is given.
   Most of the book consists of tedious listings of available controls and their properties/methods - is not that what the user manual is for? Code samples are almost childish, like displaying a message stating which check boxes have been selected. In the intro Crouch states the book is aimed at software developers. If so, why spend so much of the book explaining the simple in detail and skipping over the difficult concepts that are new to VB.NET. OOP is not new or exclusive ot VB.NET so why should it be covered here? And why having covered OOP, does Crouch then proceed to totally ignore the concept in his samples? Nowhere does Mr Crouch explain how to use his code samples, which are usually separate HTML and VB code, in the .NET framework. Loads of topics covered come without any code samples at all (yes, you've guessed it, the complicated or difficult parts).
   The book also covers ADO.NET. Why? If I wanted a book on ADO.NET, then that is what I would buy. Ironically, the code included with the section on ADO.NET is much more practical than in the rest of the book. Pity the same standard could not have been applied throughout. I strongly recommend you buy something else.