1 comments about Interfacing with C, Second Edition.

1. I first picked this book from the book store because I wanted to learn how to read I/O with C, but this book is more orientated on the processing of signals. The book actually became my introduction of digital signaling and this all with the nice tie into the actual application of digital signaling with C programming.

No comments about Writing Open VMS Alpha Device Drivers in C, Developer's Guide and Reference Manual.

5 comments about Palm OS Developer's Guide.

1. Using code (and Active Server Pages) the book presents, I was able to write code that retrieves documents (word, excel, images, palm stuff too) my PC.

   Accessing my home PC was easy (no firewall). I changed the Active Server Page code some to work in the firewall environment at my office.

   Good stuff. The apps port easily to other handhelds such as the PocketPC




2. The book showed me how to send faxes from my Palm OS device--within applications and Web clippings ... Very easy ... I'm using the capability in several Web pages for my sales folks.



3. If you create Web clippings, this book is filled with tons of code that will save you time.

   I am making great use of the code that lets users create their own "custom" PQAs on the fly!




4. The title and book description are both misleading, and frankly, I think deliberately so, given that the book does _NOT_ even attempt to address Palm development. This is _NOT_ a Palm OS developers guide at all, it is a Palm Web Clipping develoepr's guide. If that's what you're looking for it's not a bad resource.



5. This book covers web-clipping and related topics almost exclusively. It is in NO way an overview of Palm Programming. I had to return my copy. The Palm OS Bible is vastly superior.

5 comments about Practical Algorithms for Programmers.

1. I bought this book 3 years ago. I learn a lot from it. I still use it. It's worth the money.



2. This book has the singular benefit of doing complete implementations of algorithms, not just code snippets nor pseudo-code. (The code is in C.)

   The book also covers lots of the algorithms other books forget: searching for multiple strings at once, searching for regular expressions, complete calendar routines, arbitrary-precision arithmetic, phonetic searches, most data-compression algorithms (including the one used by Microsoft in its product distribution), etc. Plus all the traditional sorts and data structures that appear in other books. As to data structures, it's one of the few books that implements an ISAM routine using your choice of red-black or B-trees.

   (By the way, although there is a coupon at the back of the book for a source code disk, the code is made available here for free download: http://www.pacificdataworks.com/bookdownload.html The authors update the codebase intermittently.)

   A good book, which has no direct counterpart.




3. "Practical Algorithms for Programmers" fails to deliver what is mentioned by authors as "The purpose of this book is providing a practical compendium of algorithms for use in applications" and "Most algorithm books today are either academic text books or rehash of the same tired set of algorithms". This book goes over that tired set of algorithms over again (B-Trees, bubble sort, shell sort etc) and is filled with long code listings with little comments and faux paus code practices (if column > 61).
   
   Almost all of the algorithms discussed in the book have already been very well described in various books of the same genre, notably "Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein" which has better explanation and examples. I see that "Practical Algorithms for Programmers" has good description of algorithmic efficiency, B-trees, AVL trees, phonetic comparisons, soundEx and metaphone along with excercises, but as an overall study for a CS grad and/or skilled developer, it's repetitive and meaningless. If authors' idea was to provide a cookbook for algorithm implementation, due to lack of component oriented thinking, this book lack this prospect as well. As mentioned, it's not a text book and therefore I don't see a reason of having about hundred pages of printed source code in the book? If the intended audience are software developers, why not highlight the important code segments and let the rest available via CD/FTP and use remaining pages for practical industry implementation discussions like the title suggests.
   
   As mentioned by other reviewers, this book might be a short & quick review or refresher course but I believe that it doesn't add any valuable reference to existing set of books available in this niche. Especially in the current development era when underlying software architectures and programming languages provides the built-in complex datatypes and memory management, algorithm world now belongs to exploration of binomial option pricing, naïve Bayes filtering and normal distribution approximation style studies.



4. We have this book in our lab and many times I've been able to refactor my own implementation after reading the code in this book. The chapter that deals with dates is very well presented and doubles as a history lesson since it covers all the adjustments that have been made to our calendar over the centuries. The source is writen in plain C so it should be easy to port to other languages.



5. There are numerous well written books on algorithms. Those by Sedgewick and Knuth come to mind, for example. But some students find these too hard. Binstock and Rex aimed their work at this need. This book has very little in the way of fancy maths. It emphasises examples with complete code listings. Not unlike "Numerical Recipes". Hence, you can also treat the text as a cookbook for your needs.
   
   The code is in C. If you are using another language, you can get some practise in seeing how well and accurately you understand the book's code.

No comments about Learning C: Programming Graphics on the Amiga and Atari st.

5 comments about C Programming for the Absolute Beginner (For the Absolute Beginner (Series).).

1. Deftly written by software engineer and applications developer Michael Vine, C Programming For The Absolute Beginner truly lives up to its title. No previous familiarity with the art of computer programming is required to understand and learn from the lessons provided, all of which revolve around simple game creation in a learn-through-doing process. Basic C Programming tasks such as initializing variables, creating two-dimensional arrays, manipulating strings, and using compound if structures, are among the many core building block abilities taught by this superbly written and presented introductory guide. An accompanying CD contains a gcc C compiler and the Cygwin free UNIX shell makes Michael Vine's C Programming For The Absolute Beginner and absolute "must" for anyone wanting to learn C Programming from scratch.



2. The book is easy to follow, and can help a non-programmer pick up the basics. The problem is in the code examples. The code examples in this book all compile, and the binaries run, but if you enable warnings on your ANSI-compliant compiler before compiling any of this code, you will see a whole host of warnings and error messages. Don't think that you will learn C from this book and then go get a job somewhere as a C programmer. Your code will be as non-ANSI compliant as it could possibly be while still working. This makes it even more difficult if you progress to a more advanced C text after this, as you will likely have to go back and relearn quite a bit. I give it 5 stars for ease of use, but it loses 3 stars for not "teaching good programming practices" as it claims to on the cover.



3. I think C Programming for the absolute beginner is fairly well written and contains some good examples. The challenges aren't all games, and some of them will probably be uninteresting to the reader. It is the best book I've read so far for learning C, and would certainly recommend it to others who want to learn it as well.



4. If you have never programmed before, then this gentle introduction to C might be suitable for you. It explains the syntax. And how to code in a procedural, top-down manner. It also points out the advantages of designing for code reusability. Something that is probably not high on the awareness of a new programmer.
   
   You can learn the importance of flow charting. Why you should do this before coding. Time well spent, that can really help your program, instead of just winging it and pounding away at the keyboard.
   
   The book does have a drawback. The figures which are screen captures of terminal windows are blurry. A little offputting.



5. This is heavily focused on C programming in the Windows environment. The information is decent, but if you want to use Unix or Linux, etc., you will need something else to supplement.

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.

4 comments about Topics in C Programming, Revised Edition.

1. This is an excellent book in advanced C programming techniques. Although it is an advanced text, the author explains each method in detail and strengthens understanding of key elements in C programming. A number of weaknesses prevent this book from rating 5 stars: the last chapter is number 9 (which makes it harder to use in a 16 week semester), the second chapter is really about four chapters (structures, pointers, linked lists, other topics), the chapter length ranges from 4 pages (chap 1) to 82 pages (chap 2), and it hasn't been updated since 1991. This book is relatively easy to read, but sometimes runs into awkward sentences. The awkward sentences can be directly attributed to required nomenclature (returns...returns...returns...) which can leave the reader wondering if returning to that sentence will improve understanding of the concept. The examples and exercises are wonderful. The examples build a base of programs that should be useful to every programmer. The examples also show the differences in methods achieving the same result and explain the reasoning behind methods that are better (fewer clocks, more efficient use of memory, etc.). I really enjoyed reading this book and wish an updated edition was available, which led me to this website and book review.



2. This is a GREAT book. The book starts off with pointers and arrays none of this "intro to variables" you get in other books. Definately not for beginners but if you know C then this will help you leap to the next level.



3. This is the perfect book for those who have grown beyond the infantile "printf/scanf" stage. Most of the books on C I have seen before dwell on needless details of trivial stuff that few people would use anyway. Kochan gives all the intricacies of C illustrated with higly educational examples.



4. I would reccomend everything this cat writes, but especially this tome. For some scary reason every page of this book address topics that are exactly relevant to my CS coursework in school, and which other books dont address or explain poorly. This guy can make any advanced topic easy.
   

   
   1. Pointers to pointers, arrays of pointers, pointers to structs, and function pointers are all covered better then anyone.
   

   
   2. Dude Unix system calls and process control made easy. Great for OS classes.
   

   
   Even now in 2003 this remains my favorite code book of all time. A great writer.

3 comments about Learn Encryption Techniques with BASIC and C++.

1. Enough money and time applied to a long enough message will break almost any enciphering job. If you LEARN ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES WITH BASIC AND C++ keywords, phrases or pseudorandomly sequenced characters, you should see a longer work week for interceptors. Author Gilbert Held's book locks arms with William R Cheswick's FIREWALLS AND INTERNET SECURITY, Marcus Goncalves' FIREWALLS: A COMPLETE GUIDE, Scott Oaks' JAVA SECURITY, Kaustubh Phaltankar's PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR IMPLEMENTING SECURE INTRANETS AND EXTRANETS, and Bruce Schneier's E-MAIL SECURITY.



2. If you would like to see really poor programming style buy this book. Information about the encryption techniques could have been summarized in one chapter. Not worth a penny.



3. On finit par dechiffrer tous les codes, suffit-il a profiter de l'argent, des messages plus longs, et du temps. Mais le travail peut couter cher and fatiguant a ceux qui interceptent. On n'a qu'a lire le livre LEARN ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUES WITH BASIC AND C++. Et puis que l'on se serve des caracteres, des mots et des phrases - secrets, mis au hasard, cles - qui s'y trouvent. Mais gare a ceux qui interceptent et a ceux qui les engagent. Car les deux sont des lecteurs, eux aussi!

2 comments about STL for C++ Programmers.

1. This text was a great introduction to the use of STL, but it lacked depth in that it only covered how to use STL not how STL works, or how a programmer may derive their own STL classes from the base. It would have been very informative to get a look at a set of overridden classes such as a special iterator, a variant of an allocator class where a constructor with parameters is called instead of the base constructor, etc.. I haven't been able to find such an in-depth book yet. This book never claimed to explain these sort of questions, but it would have been extremely useful, say as the last chapter.



2. Mr Ammeraal writes in a clear, easily understood style. He light on theory but very clear on application. However the book does not have the depth to be a refernce manual. In fact, he doesn't even cover the entire STL. The String class isn't even mentioned. The index is minimalistic. If you need to get a basic understanding of the STL and do not plan on manipulating character strings, this will get you started. If you need to understand the string class or are looking for a useful reference manual, stay away from this book.