No comments about C++ in the Lab: Lab Manual (4th Edition).

2 comments about C and Unix Programming: A Comprehensive Guide.

1. I baught this book about 2 months ago and i'm about half way through it. There are many great things to say about this book so i'll start from the beginning.
   this book shows almost everything (minus the ASM) from the ground up, it shows memory and how C uses them when variables are declared, and explains references to memory blocks aswell.. it also as the name states is for learning C in *nix based systems, which helped me with problems i have had in the past with writing programs trying to use a windows C or dos C book for my reference.
   
   the reason why i'm not giving it a 5 star rating is the fact that much of the source code has errors.. usually errors that a beginner in C wouldnt recognize like a missing curly brace or missing semicolon. thats why i say its for someone thats wanting to advance their knowlege in C rather than being just an introductory book.
   
   other than that definately great Highly recomended for those who dont have ADD and have plenty of time on their hands.



2. This is exactly what I was looking for! N.S. Kutti's "C and Unix Programming: A Comprehensive Guide" can be used as a formal text or as a reference. The book covers basic to advanced C concepts on Unix. ANSI and Posix Standards are included. In my opinion, this book is a good model of what a formal college text should be. The book is heavy on theory without a lot of fluff, filler, or baby steps. I would recommend this book to C programmers or former enthusiasts who need a comprehensive review. A comprehensive C programming review can easily be done in 30 days using this book.

5 comments about Professional Visual C++ 5 Activex/Com Control Programming (Professional).

1. The book starts well. The scene is set nicely in the first two chapters and the authors promise you the earth. Then they seem to loose the plot. Not only do they get bogged down with too much detail and not enough overview, but lots of little mistakes seem to creep into the text. It's a pity but it seems that the book was never passed by an editor. For instance, in Chapter 4 on page 136 the authors promise to 'have a lot more to say about threading models at the end of this chapter (see the section named COM Threading Models)'. The only problem being there simply isn't a section named COM Threading Models in this or any other chapter! Furthermore, one might pardon one broken promise in one page but to do it twice is unforgiveable! Later in the same page, the authors refer to the same imaginary section!!

   But such mistakes and omissions are not confined to this chapter. The authors simply leave the reader bewildered and disappointed. I don't recommend it.




2. I'm a very experienced developer who's been programming since most of you were still in public school. Technical books are generally not a challenge for me but this one certainly was. Not because of the complexity of the subject, but because of the overwhelming amount of irrelevant information. Showing countless screen shots of behind-the-scenes code generated by the various Microsoft tools used to create COM objects is a collosal waste of time. 99% of the readers will never need to know any of this nor should they. Their explanation of this code, besides a waste of time, is also limp and extremely incomplete. Countless details are missing even when it's highly relevant (for example, the basic syntax of IDL files is nowhere to be found). Coupled will countless snapshots of COM API calls which look as if they've been copied straight from the compiler documentation, and huge bloated examples that spend more time dealing with non-COM related issues than anything practical (and which can take weeks to wade through), this book is a prime example of an experienced developer but a neophyte author (whose programming skills, based on some of the examples I saw, also need sharpening regardless of his knowledge of COM).



3. After reading Inside Com, I read this book and found it easy to understand and full of useful programs and tips of how to generate files from IDL. One of the best books in market.



4. If you seek a book that provides real solutions to programming challenges, skip this one. If you're looking for ways to impress your friends by baffling them with useless detail and confusing presentation, by all means buy it! Basically, you get the generic plagiarization of COM overview, and then a rambling, incoherant dissertation on the benefits of micro-analyzing binary code dumps while investigating everything of irrelevance. These guys are the type that want to rewrite the world's entire software base in assembler.

   There are some good treatments here, but I'm interested in applying knowledge to solutions, not bit-busting everything down to the Nth degree to prove I'm an MSEE. Soaking up 465 pages of digression to wind up with one control is not my idea of producing results. HTML references, historical treatises of intranets, treatment of security issues, sales pitches, obtuse examples ineffectually explained, and missing imperatives conspire to make this book one of the great paperweights of its time.




5. I am an entry level developer and I am trying to grasp this COM/DCOM stuff. This book was recommended but it just doesn't help. The book starts off with what looks like a nice easy intro to COM and DCOM then jumps to a hole lotta hoopla, what is going on? The code examples are difficult to follow and do not make sense unless you know what you are doing. They jump from topic to topic and mainly confuse the reader. I do not recommend this book unless you have a good understanding of ActiveX and COM already. And if you are not experienced with Visual C++, don't even bother.

1 comments about Teach Yourself Mac C++ Programming in 21 Days (Sams Teach Yourself).

1. Bought the book , only to find out the thing is based on a lite compiler that doesn't even come with the bloody thing! Then you have to mail aUS certified check to the US to order the bloody CD. Talk about a waste of time! AAAARRRRGH! I'm staying away from SAMS books for life!

No comments about Embedded Systems Programming in C and Assembly/Book and Disk (Computer Science).

2 comments about Schaum's Outline of Fundamentals of SQL Programming.

1. Are you a new database administrator? Trying to be one? Or needing to pass a certification exam in one of the main proprietary databases, like Oracle, IBM's db2 or Microsoft SQL Server? And you need to prepare for that exam. Well, there are third party books devoted to each vendor's exam. You should probably get an appropriate one and study it carefully. But you can also improve your chances of passing any of those exams by tackling the problems in this book.
   
   Mata-Toledo offers some 400 problems. With the answers to half of these in the book. He tests virtually the entire syntax of SQL; an industry standard. Everything from arithmetic functions to group functions to making complex queries, and more. Of course, it will take you time to go through these problems. But that is the point of the book, after all.
   
   Also, the book is cheap compared to the other books that specialise in a given database vendor's exam.



2. Good affordable Schaums's outlines book. If you have MySQL installed, upload the sample data from the URL given in the book...before you know it, you have learned the nitty-gritty of SQL fundamentals.Schaum's Outline of Fundamentals of SQL Programming

5 comments about Designing Object Oriented C++ Applications Using The Booch Method.

1. This is the best book I ever read in practical OO/C++ programming, it give the code instead of the text for the principle of the OO design and implementation.



2. this is the very good book i found till no



3. Best software book I've ever read. And I've read quite a lot of them



4. Even if you don't know C++ or use the Booch method, this is the best work I've read on how to engineer software systems. The principles presented in this book apply regardless of computer language or design notation. And, while the book is geared to O-O, those priciples, I think, apply to software design in general. When you finish this book you will think "Of course! Why would you do it any other way?!". Despite over 20 years experience is software design and programming (including 10 in O-O), this book was the "Aha!" moment that made me truely understand how to design and build software systems. I can't reccommend it highly enough. Now, if Martin would just do the same book using Java and UML...



5. Of course, anyone up on the world of software development can tell that this book is long-in-the-tooth just by the title. Even Grady Booch doesn't use the Booch method anymore.

   Robert Martin includes one of the best sections on software metrics you are going to find anywhere. His discussion of coupling is clear and usable. He was a little too zealous when he "defined" representational objects as "not-OO" because they didn't fit on his "main sequence." His main sequence analysis is useful, but he's a little too rigid about it.

   His definition of the famous "Open-Closed" principle is obscure, but he makes up for it with copious examples.

   I really must praise his Security System example as one of the best thought out examples in the literature. His use case analyses, though, are really not up with the times, and were not very well explained in the first place.

   Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of folks writing better books in the time since. For use cases, Check out Alistair Cockburn. For modeling, pretty much anything post 1999 from Rational Software will give you better method introductions. Read this book, though, for examples of how even big projects can be done well.

3 comments about Object-Oriented Programming in C++ (2nd Edition).

1. This book is concise but clear. I think the typesetting in this book could be redone better to give it better readability.More diagrams & few more example would make it perfect.The authors explains many subtle points of C++. This book is good for academic settings if you already knows C & Data Structures. Overall, a good concise book.



2. A lucid traversal of basic OOP concepts and the C++ language. Lots of exercises, at a rather low level of detail. J&K focus on the basics, avoiding the trap that others (e.g. Lippman & La Joie) fall into of trying to cover too many advanced topics in an introductory text. A scattering of typos and minor errors should not confuse the perceptive reader.



3. This book covers the important aspects of OO approach as well as the STL for C++. It is definitely not suitable for those who have no programming experience in C, and indeed, I find that one actually even needs to have a little knowledge of C++ to benefit from the book. The first two chapters let the C programmer make a transition to C++, and explain clearly on input and output in C++. The next three chapters then strive to explain the OO features in C++.
   Generally, the book goes at lengths to illustrate classes in C++ and their workings, and offers many tips and traps as well as certain programming styles and approaches which would produce robust programs. The worked examples were also quite comprehensive. However I feel that the concepts of OO were not well illustrated, and from my experience, a thorough understanding of OO concepts help very much in being able to manipulate classes and using the methods in C++. The chapter on MFC was not very useful, it really looked as if it was just there to fill in space. It does not teach much about MFC.
   All in all, however, I would still consider it a fairly good book to keep as a reference.

5 comments about C# Bible.

1. I'm new to C# and this is my first book on it, I've had some experience over the past several years in C/C++ but am new to C# and .net in general. This book is a good read, and the first several chapters give you a clear understanding of how to do tasks in C#. It doesn't spend a lot of time going over the basics that you should probably already have learned from other languages (controls, variables, etc.) but has gotten me up and running with C# in no time flat. I wouldn't say it's 100% comprehensive and I have purchased other book to accompany this one as I finish reading it, but it is definitely a good read for someone who has some knowledge of other C languages (some background in C++ OOP is definitely helpful, the author starts in talking about object oriented structures from the beginning and assumes that you know what he is talking about) will do fine with this book.



2. This books is poorly written. It tries to be a book for beginners, which is fine with me, but it then mentions complex topics in passing without elaboration. For instance, it talks briefly about structures. It assumes I know what/how/when to use structures vs. classes (until much, much later in the book). What's the difference between a structure and a class? It just assumes that I know. That may not be the best example, but it's one of MANY examples.

   Another qualm I have with this book is it is too much "what" with very little "why". It pays very little attention to best practices. For example, it will tell you how to implement an interface, but what are the best ways to implement an interface. Granted this gets into more esoteric OO design concepts, but still, give me some ideas on HOW to do stuff, not just WHAT I can do. Most other programming books have more of this HOW kind of discussion.

   Finally, there are the annoying typos. It clearly shows that this book was just thrown together. The quality just isn't there.

   I can't recommend a specific alternative, but go with something that has better reviews.

   ***********************

   OK - I'm revising my review as of 5/21/03. The above review still holds, BUT I have now read 2 other C# books, and to my utter astonishment, they are worse. So - this is the best book I have found yet, though it has some serious issues, as I mention above.




3. I praised this book on a Mircosoft newsgroup... But the more I read this the less I like it. I wanted to share some thoughts here. After comparing this book to a few others on C#, I feel this has one a more comprehensive table of contents. You get a full 9 pages on XML commenting while others give a paragraph or two. There are some cool chapters such as "Building Mobile Applications", "Working with COM", "Working with COM+ Services" and ".NET Remoting". These are topics that my 1600 page VB.NET book (Francesco Balena, Microsoft Press) didn't cover.

   However, there are a lot of typos, a lot of fluff, explanations are sometimes very poor, and organization is pretty bad.

   It hasn't been very thoroughly proofread. Take this for example: "Abstract classes are also, by definition, virtual methods..." Still not sure how a class can be a method. There are a lot more like this, but re-reading the paragraph you can generally figure out what they're talking about.

   By fluff, I mean that they do things like give an example of operator overloading for each and every unary operators (come on, do I need an example for unary plus AND unary minus?) Or how to cause about 6 different exceptions (OutOfMemory, StackOverflow, NullReference, etc) and how to catch each one. It's a good way to pad the page count, that's about all.

   The overall organization of the book doesn't make it a very good read, either. It really skips around a lot. For example, talking about overloading members and virtual members BEFORE talking about classes seems like a poor choice to me if you're really aiming to help novice programmer.

   It claims to be written for novice and experienced developer alike, but I'm not sure it makes a great first book on .NET. Although, if you are a veteran programmer, you'll fly through the first 11 chapters since they are written more so for the novice.

   If you already know VB.NET and want to transition to C# (like I'm doing) then this book will get you up and running with all of the important things. However, the WROX books have gotten some good reviews on newsgroups, so I might give those a try instead.




4. The Bible series is one of my favorite series of technical books due to it's usual great presentation of the data and the sheer volume of information presented. I'm a very careful shopper and usually research the books I'm going to buy. However, due to the high quality of many of the other books in this series I purchased this one on faith. This turned out to be a big mistake as this book is poorly laid out, covers some topics to a depth that seems ridiculous and other topics are just barely touched. There are not nearly enough examples and the chapter on ADO.Net is woefully inadequate. The book works as a high level overview, but there are much better books out there that work even better as a high level overview. If you want a better book then look at Wrox's "Beginning Visual C#" ISBN: 0764543822 or Wrox's "Professional C#, Second Edition" ISBN: 0764543989.



5. It was frustrating from the first set of codes i tried to follow.
   The beginning of the book indicated that it was also written for begining programmers but totally lacked basic instructions and explanations.

No comments about PC Magazine C Lab Notes/Book and Disk (PC Magazine Lab Notes).