5 comments about Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus.

1. If you are truly serious about game programming then this is the only book to pickup. Mr. Lamothe writes in a very simple tone explaining away everything. He assumes nothing and explains everything.

   This book is not for someone that does not have a semi-concrete understanding of C/C++ and object oriented programming. The Windows game programming book for dummies is not for dummies. It skimps on areas that this book dives into and I am sincerely thankful to Andre for teaching me DirectX programming.




2. This book is THE one to get if you're looking to start Windows game programming fast. Yeah sure it's several hundred pages long but it covers so much with so much detail. From the basics of 2D, AI and other cool things to hard core physics and 3D math (on the CD). Andre even helps build a 2D gaming engine for you to help cut your coding work in half! Now where else can you find that kind of help?



3. excellent book, a must for anyone who's interested in game programming! great for beginners!



4. I love this book. I knew a little c++ and a little DirectX. I read this book and it gave me a great understanding of it all. I have already made a couple of pretty good games. If you want to know how to make games then I would definitly recomend this book to you. If it made me able to make games I am sure it will be great for you.



5. This is a really good book...and I enjoy reading it. I keep it as a reference in the process of creating games...and always gives me satisfactory results. If your planning to buy this book buy it. This book takes from GDI to the fundementals of 2D and 3D programming.

1 comments about Infinite Game Universe, Volume 2: Level Design, Terrain, and Sound (Advances in Computer Graphics and Game Development Series).

1. Ok, this book is a little outdated but I just plowed through this and thought I should do a review while my recollection is fresh.
   
   It gets old real fast to read "But now is not the time or place to cover that topic in any detail" on nearly every other page.
   
   Guy, if you're going to do a third book, please actually make some non-trivial working examples. That's what we're looking for.
   
   I mean, how about create a super-simple Starflight type game with random planets, solar systems, naming scheme? Nothing fancy. I hope your third book in the series will have some, any, meat.
   
   This is such an interesting topic I hope it gets a proper treatment someday.
   
   Asides: Why use the messy realloc/malloc in your examples when stl methods would be so much cleaner?
   
   Why have hard-coded constant numbers littered everywhere, and then spend 5 lines of comments explaining "a real app would never do this". Wouldn't it be easier to just add a #define?
   
   Example bins from the CD do not run on Vista64. Perhaps need to include some support libraries?
   
   Was unable to find an errata section for this book with google, but I know there should be one as I found series errors on the first few pages...

3 comments about Schaum's Outline of Data Structures with C++.

1. That is very good book for new programmer learning. It is very helpfull.



2. Like it says, it's a study guide. Its got great problems if you want to go above and beyond what's challenged of you in class. Author presents each part in a very straight forward manner, but doesnt dive very deep in abstraction.



3. Though a very good book, most programming assignments require
   that the data be entered interactive and not implimented for
   list and trees.

3 comments about Making Unix and Windows Nt Talk.

1. When I first picked up this book I was skeptical that a topic such as this could be covered thoroughly enough to be useful. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did I find the chapter text easy to read and to the point, but I found the source code easy to understand as well. I also found the source code sufficiently complete to use it as a basis for my own work. I hope there is going to be a second edition.



2. This book is for programmers. It contains a ton of C++ code that I used to drop right into my program. To say that it is strictly for Unix to NT migration sells it way short. It contains building blocks for both OS's -- classes that wrap semapores, threads, processes, etc -- that from the outside look the same for both platforms. It then goes into how to use these building blocks in programs that communicate to programs running on other Unix or NT machines on the network.



3. I bought both books by these authors, but wouldn't recommend them both. Get this book if you aren't familiar with system programming, otherwise get the other book. They are good at going into the detail of the different concepts, their code samples are their class definitions, which seem to just be wrapper classes.

   Maybe it is my programming style, IMHO, if you really want to write a portable, non-GUI application on Unix and Windows/NT, get "POSIX Programmer's Guide" by Donald Lewine and a POSIX envrionment (I use Mingw32[POSIX], Tk[GUI] & GNU C/C++ on Windows/XP). "Using C on the UNIX System" is also a useful text because it has very small, complete code samples. The POSIX environment will give you a platform independant layer that doesn't require C++.

5 comments about Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Programmer's Guide.

1. If you are a programmer and looking for a good guide and/or reference, do not buy this book! The examples are few and not very good. The book does not go beyond VB in explainations, or lead you to additional reference material. Don't waste your money.



2. I started doing VB back on Win 3.1 and had lost touch with it after severals years. I had to begin to relearn the new improved versions of VB now for a summer job i had received. I picked up this book, and for the most part the information was very good. However the main problem i have with this book, is that if you are ever looking for more indepth information into it, the book refers you to "the Language Reference" or one of the other reference library books. I understand that you cannot have all the info in this book, but being refered to another MS book just bugged me. I mean the knowledge being online, they could have given the exact URL to find the info, instead of trying to get you to buy a 70dollar reference manual.

   THe information in this book is more of an overview of all the different components, and have helped me out of a lot of binds over the time. This book is not for someone new to VB or to programming in general, there are plenty of books and online refs for those.

   I have since bought the reference library, and without that as an accompanment to this book, it would have been very difficult to get most of the knowledge I have needed for my programs.

   If you are looking for a good standalone VB book, look elsewhere, if you are looking for a good reference book for a outside assistance, this could be your answer.




3. This is a good step-by-step book for learning Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition. There are some minor mistakes in this book but overall it is a very good book. If you follow along, you should not have a lot of problems. Please note, this book is geared toward the "Professional Edition", you will need to have a strong understanding of the features of "Enterprise Edition" in order to pass the certification exams. Subjects such as the Visual Component Manager, Visual SourceSafe, MTS/COM+ are not covered or bearly covered. You will need other books in order to get a more thorough knowledge of these subjects. Visual Basic Professional Edition and/or Visual Studio Professional Edition are excellent for SOHO (Small office, home office). I have Visual Studio 6.0 Professional Edition installed on my home PC and I use this book to solve some of the issues that arrises.



4. If your a newbie to Visual Basic do not buy this book! This book in geared towards the intermediate to advanced programmer I have been using VB for several years and take it from me, don't buy it. Even for the intermediate programmers this book makes numerous references to the Library Reference, If your serious on vb then get it too otherwise don't bother, try a website.



5. For 90% of the VB questions that I have I can find the answer in this book. It is a great programmers reference. Of course it is just about the Visual Basic language itself and really doesn't delve to far into using VB to program databases or anything like that. Just a good solid reference to the basics of the core language itself.

1 comments about Object-Oriented Program Development Using C++: A Class-Centered Approach.

1. I am not sure who the intended audience is for this book. In some examples he seems to writing to people who have never programmed. But by the way the topics are organized chapter by chapter makes you think otherwise.
   
   The book starts off talking about classes in chapter 2 (constructors, getters, setters), then in chapter 3 it goes more in depth with class methods (overloading, parameters, encapsulation, abstraction) but since he hasn't talked about declaring variables yet, he throws that in that chapter. He hasn't even talked about functions, variable scope, selection structures, or any of the basic stuff, but he finds it necessary to talk about advanced topics first. ????
   OK, now on to chapter 4,5,6-the basics; he talks about the basics but leaves out information about classes (which is the title of the book). I am confused by the direction this book is taking me the more and more I read. I have taken a handful of other programming classes and have an understanding of basic programming techniques. This book takes those understandings, shakes them off the tree, and rearranges them making me wondering if I actually learned anything.

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself).

1. I came to C# in 24 hours with a background in programming and management of the software development process. The book is easy to read, is well organized with helpful exercises for each hour (chapter). It contains essential information about the language that is missing from the core reference works. I will keep it on my bookshelf for ready reference.

   I asked James Foxall a few questions via email and he answered them promptly and with excellent care.




2. This is a very good book if you have no previous C# experience. I decided to read this book after reading Sams Teach Yourself C# in 21 Days and I found that all the programming concepts were review. I did like this book's focus on the Visual Studio .NET IDE and Windows forms, though. It shows you some basics on using list views, tree views, etc. which Teach Yourself C# in 21 Days completely skips. If you're looking for some simple Windows form concepts or if you're looking to learn C# with no programming experience, this is a good book, but people with C# experience and some Windows forms experience can definitely skip it.



3. Oh My God...
   This book is a giant read me for visual studio.
   It is impossible to read this book when you are anywhere but on your computer because everything you do involves using Visual Studio which the author annoyingly calls "C#" hence the book title.
   This book is of no value to people who want to learn ABOUT c# and is a waste of money.
   
   Buy Programming in the Key of C# if you want a good book for beginners.



4. Too much tutorial for VS.NET, not enough on C#. If you know something about C++, then steer clear from this book. It uses confusing terminology in wrong context. For instance they inaccurately refer to an "object of 'type'" as "Object derived from class". Derivation in OOP has a very different meaning. Also they repeatedly call a class as a "template" for an object. There are more similar confusing wordings and terminologies. I understand they wanted to be illustrative but IMHO they fell over the fence and rather confuse the reader.



5. I've read some of the reviews and I'm confused: why would you get a "learn blah blah blah in 24 hours" book and think you were going to learn C#? With '.Net' plainly written in the title, I knew exactly what I was going to get; a tutorial on learning Visual Studios .Net with C#. The book served it's purpose for me, now it's time to learn some in-depth C#. Definitely an excellent book for those who are familiar with OOP and want to learn what Visual Studios .Net has to offer.

5 comments about C Primer Plus (4th Edition) (Primer Plus).

1. C Primer Plus by Stephen Prata is a well-paced book to learning C. It has examples of the concepts in every section, and he doesn't gloss over important topics that are key to further your learning such as pointers. I would like to give this book 5 stars, but it suffers from quite a few errors. Not just errors in the descriptions, but errors in explaining code and errors in the examples. They aren't critical errors, and makes for a little bit of fun finding the errors.

   An example of errors in 4th edition:

   While explaining two-dimensional arrays, here a a glaring error:
   ---
   #define COLS 4
   int sum2d(int ar[][COLS], int rows)
   {
   
}

   You can use it with any of the following function calls:

   tot = sum2(array1, 5); // sum of a 5x4 array
tot = sum2(array2, 100); // sum of a 100x4 array
tot = sum2(array3, 2); // sum of a 5 x 2 array
---

   The last example function call is incorrect, and he goes on in the next chapter explaining how the sum2d function would required to be changed to support more rows. There are 3-5 errors per chapter like this.

   Solid 'B-'.




2. This book is simple enough for the beginning programmer and advanced enough to get you a very solid base in C. It is the best programming book I've read. I cant tell you how helpful it is. In my book all errors have been fixed and since I bought it a few months ago so there should'nt be any errors left anymore. The code for the book is easily attainable through Sams online website www.samspublishing.com too. Excellence!



3. I am relatively new to the subject (Having purchased K & R's programming c, second edition prior to this--no success) and I have to admit, after only three days I'm already into chapter five and have a vast understanding of the language. What I like, personally, is that they go about explaining the code in a no-non-sense way, being that they relate the practice code to something you can remember (i.e. explaining code using everyday words, such as using days of the week for enum). The only problem I have with the book is that they like to repeat information over and over...I suppose it is a good teaching trick but after a while this becomes rather tiresome. Overall...I'd give it 4 stars.



4. When I was 15 and teaching myself C, I read many books to include "Teach Yourself C in 21 Days". Those books were extremely unhelpful and it wasn't until I found this one that I really became a good C programmer. This is the best book that I have found on the C Programming language. It takes you from a beginner to regular C programmer. It covers enough of the language that you will have a firm understanding of programming and the C programming language. I highly recommend this book.



5. I picked up this book from the library about a week ago and have been reading it since. The book is a whooping 750 pages long and consists of 17 chapters. Unlike other books [if you have read the C programming language] this one gives you the information right away and explains it in a clear and thrall fashion. Although I did have some issues with the book's presentation of certain topics concerning grammar, spelling, and code It's advantages far outweighs the disadvantages. Probably, however, its biggest drawback is not having answers to the programming exercises except for the short questions. I would recommend this book to anyone who is serious about learning C.