2 comments about Analog and Digital Filter Design Using C.

1. I used this book for a recent class in Analog Filter Design. This book is an excellent reference and learning tool for filter design. Overall This is the best textbook I have used.



2. Working with numerous analog circuits in the day to day workplace, I found that this book was very helpful. A nicely written and understandable reference.

No comments about The Visual Guide to Visual C++: The Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Windows Programming Language (Ventana Press Visual Guide Series).

5 comments about Visual C++ 6 Programming Blue Book: The Complete, Fast-Paced Way to Master Visual C++ 98.

1. What a lousy book. After giving it three tries, I trashed it. The book didn't help me one bit in using VC++. Coming from intermediate VB6 experience with experience in Win32 Perl programming and a rusty and casual knowledge of the C/C++ language, I was looking for a book that will teach me how to use VC++ IDE. What a waste of time. I hate books like these. You're in, say, chapter ten and the example application you're supposed to have done several chapters ago *with the stupid wizard* is needed. First, I don't want to use the damn wizards. What ever happened to building applications from the ground up? Anybody can use the wizard. But what about afterwards? What if you don't want to? Second, I don't care about what was taught several chapter's ago. I want what's in the present chapter of interest! I want to build an interactive UI, like I can do with VB so easily. Perhaps going through ALL the chapters *in sequence* I would have learned *something*. If I were to do that, I might as well take a class instead. I tried the first five chapters in sequence and then tried to skip around and learned that this book [isn't for me]. Look for a another book if you're the type who likes to use books like a reference guide. If you're the type who reads cover to cover and don't mind doing every example and exercise so you can continue onto future chapters, then this book is for you.



2. I just finished reading the first five chapters of this book. And I already got a pretty good grip on What Visual C++ and Windows programming looks like. The only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because the authur gives only minor explanation of the steps he asks the reader to do. I had to try and figure out myself why he did a certain step and what the code does exactly.

   If you want a quick introduction to Visual C++, its a good starting point.




3. I really enjoyed this book. I am an AS/400 programmer with 11 years experience and want to become more familiar with Windows programming. I started off with a Sam's Teach Yourself Visual C++ in 21 days (which I also liked) and followed up with this one. The authors presented the material in an easy to read and follow format. I only had two issues with the book. One, the authors would occasionally pull a function out of nowhere and use it with little or no explanation as to why. And two, I thought they dragged out the examples on drawing too long. I would have preferred more time spent on the database chapter rather than the drawing examples. But, overall an excellent book and I highly recommend it.



4. It does a pretty good job concerning how to write user interfaces, but it falls a bit short on back end programming.



5. Unless you have the IQ of a chimp this book just won't move quickly enough. I honestly can't figure out who this book is for, if you are just learning programming/C++ the book assumes too much knowledge but if you are moving on from another language or sharpening your skills the book takes soooo long to teach a point that you'll end up wanting to shoot yourself. Don't know how these 4 and 5 star ratings happened *shrug*, for me it got to the point where I just had to pitch it.

3 comments about NetWarriors in C: Programming 3D Multi-Player Games in C.

1. It's easy to understand and perfect for beginners. One MAJOR problem that will stop you from buying this book: A program REQUIRED to make games on the CD is missing a REQUIRED file. It also acts like Windows isn't even in existence, they don't even touch programming in Windows. It's CD is very whack and doesn't have things on it the book says.



2. I thought the book was easy but a little out of date. It is a big help and fun to play with. Buy this book if you wanna learn something.



3. Well, I didn't read this book but I give it one star because of a sentence on the book's review:
   "But who wants to do it from scratch?"
   Well, I do. If I'm going to build a realy serious game I will make it all mine and use my own engine as that is the way I could change everything and use all of it's features.
   I am not going to use someone's else engine because maybe it won't be able to do everything i want it to do, and that will make some problems, because it's not mine and I wouldn't know how do I change it.
   When I'm learning to write a game, I want to learn how to build an engine because this is the only way I could succeed.

No comments about C/C + + for Expert Systems: "Unleashes the Power of Artificial Intelligence.".

5 comments about Introductory C.

1. It really upsets me that nobody out there has placed a review on this book. First off, I have read many books on C programming, and I think that this book is definitely the best one. This book has thorough explanations on pointers, arrays, structures, linked lists, I/O controls, functions etc..(All the basic elements of C programming). The best part of this book is that the author explains the use of pointers through all the basic structures of the C language. This book also includes several chapters on the basics of the C++ language with the same accuracy and thoroughness. If you think that you'll find a better book than this one (which I doubt will ever happen) then feel free to drop me a line. We just have to thank the author for writing this great book (I wish there would be more books like this one).



2. This books give you the inside out of the C programming language. The book explains all the features associated with C in a very easy to read style. The beauty of the book really comes into play when it explains the pointers concept in C, that is the heart of C programming language. A must read if you are scared of pointers.



3. It is an unique and excellent book. It explains in details the pointer concept. However, I think some of the codes can be better written. The examples in the book are written in such a way sometimes it is difficult to get get the points cross to its readers. For example, the examples can use more printf statement to let readers see the result.



4. This is the best book on C language that I have ever come across. Pointers, Data structures and file management are very well explained. I would advise any one looking for in depth information on C , to go for this book. I really hope that the author comes out with books on C++ and Java.



5. The language has been around since the early 70's. Hundreds of books have been written about it. It took more than 20 years for someone to get it right. If you want to use C productively, you can't memorize syntax and start tossing code around. It will bite you every time, and you will spend endless hours trying to debug your programs by superstition. "Hmm. Maybe if I put a semi-colon there. . . ." When you understand it, you see why it's so powerful, and why it's been so popular. You might actually get to the point where you like C!! This is the best book about C that I have ever read, and I've read a number of them, if you want to get to the point where you understand the language. It's a shame that so many people had to learn the language without the benefit of this book.

5 comments about Object Oriented Artificial Intelligence Using C++.

1. The authors didn't take the time to learn proper C++ programming before writing this book. There are lots of mistakes (even taking into account the time when this was written, there was no ANSI C++ standard...it is still bad C++ code). The book does a very poor job of describing how to use the object constructs to program agents. The examples are also very poorly designed. Many of the questions ask you to implement algorithm in language X, then in language Y. A book devoted to one language (as specified in the title) should solidly focus on the implementation of that language for the topic. I would give this book negative stars, but amazon doesn't allow that...yet.

   Save your money. There are better AI books.




2. The book is intuitive for researchers. The content is coherently organised.



3. For Instructors for course in AI: I have tried to use it as main referrence for a master level course in AI. It can only be a support book. It gives a lot of interesting exercises; an overview of all the topics. In important contexts it is too sketchy; But the metaphor ` OOP IS REAL AI' is a questionable position. It is not established in the book. For Instructors for course in OOP: I used the book for defining a group projects for an undergraduate course. Majority of students picked interest in their respective AI themes. Two groups reported that the downloaded code could be run with some small modifications. Other gruops had trobule in making the code run. The exercises defined in the chapters gave easy motivational contexts for the students. Some observations: The chapter 6 on Logic should have been more comprehensive to discuss the theorem prover ( which presented in sec 9.6). In OOP point of view, the chapter on Knowledge Representation was ideal, it worked for the group which worked Semantic Networks. The key need is that the auther should have explained better about the way the code is constructed in the chapter on heuristic search. It will be interesting if the authors show how the case study Interactive Intelligent Kitchen helper as discussed by Timothy Budd is implemented in the framework developed by Kim Tracy and P.Bouthoorn.



4. This was the main text whilst studying AI for my final year, and the instructors had a damn near riot on their hands from myself and my fellow undergrads. Even the seminar leaders were remarking on how 'Damn awful, horribly messy, downright nasty' the code was. This book conveyed precious little useful information in the main. I think my university will very soon find another text for AI in c++, or go back to teaching lisp.

   I'm sure the authors are good at AI, but one thing they aren't good at is writing books. Stick to what you know, guys.

   One previous reviewer commented he would to award minus stars - can I make a request for minus to infinity? Yes, it is THAT poor.




5. I agree with the reviews about the code problems but if you go to the website of this book you can get corrected code, samples and errors found. You cannot find a bunch of books in this field of object oriented artificial intelligence so I considered to be a unique. Of course a WIP but a valid foundation, it works.

No comments about C/C++ Mathematical Algorithms for Scientists and Engineers/Book and Disk (Programming Tools for Scientists & Engineers).

4 comments about Learn Java by Association with C Cobol Fortran Pascal Visual Basic.

1. I am a VB programmer who wants to learn Java. This book is nothing it claims to be. One can't learn Java using it. Basically book is just a series of code examples with almost no comments and no clear and full explanations. It might be used as a quick reference but many examples of incorrect VB code I found in the book prevent me from trusting Java code examples. I wouldn't recommend to by this book: in my opinion it's a waste of money.



2. A good reference for programming languages. Also, helped me learn Java from my Pascal familiarity. I found the tools on the CD also very useful. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Java.



3. This is a good reference book. I know several of these languages and I can quickly look up the syntax in the book. In my opinion, the book is more useful as a dictionary than for learning Java as the title suggests.



4. I found this book an interesting attempt to teach the Java language to those developers who know C, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, and Visual Basic.

   With little text to explain anything, what you find is a guide that shows how to do 50 things in six different languages. So, if you are trying to go from say COBOL or FORTRAN to Java, 80% of the book is of no use, as that percent of the book shows you how to do things in the "other" languages.

   While I can't vouch for the code in the languages other than Java, the Java code looks to be well written and correct. You'll find examples of doing things like getting the date, working with math functions, or dealing with arrays.

   The way I see the book is if you are trying to translate code from another language, this book would help as a guide. If you don't know Java, you'll pick up some syntax but you'll need to get another book if your overall goal is to learn how to program in Java.

   The CD is full of some nice things, but you can pick them up for free off the web. Its funny that if you want to learn Java, you're better off with the free copy of Thinking in Java from the CD.

5 comments about Visual C++ .NET: A Primer for C++ Developers.

1. Managed C++ is a very difficult area and there is not a lot of books in this area. Most of the books seem to concentrate on C# or VB.NET. This is sad because it seems like a lot of the current work to be done in .NET has a lot to do with taking the existing millions of lines of unmanaged code and COM code and making it work/or port to .NET. This can only be done with Managed C++. The book does not pupport to be a complete reference in this area. It states in the Introduction that "At heart, this book is pragmatic: its purpose is to tell experienced C++ programmers what they need to know about Visual C++.NET" and for the most part, I do believe that this has been accomplished.
   The first chapter is quick overview on what's new in Visual C++.NET. This didn't do much for me but is a quick glance. Chapter 2 "Introduction to Managed C++" is quite good, IMHO. It takes all of the .NET concepts and shows the Managed C++ keywords to perform it. Chapter 3 on Assemblies is pretty good but does not drill down far enough. A tie to PE files is not made. I did learn quite a bit about Resources though which I did not understand before. Attributes and Reflection, Chapter 4 is excellent. These features are very important in .NET. Chapter 5 on .NET Framework utility classes, I felt was a good overview on something that could easily fill 1200 pages. I especially liked Chapters 7 and 8 "Managed and Unmanaged Code" and "COM Interoperability." I feel these are the heart of Managed C++. In Chapter 7, the authors do a fine job of presenting the differences between managed and unmanaged code and the IJW mechanism. I do feel that the example class chosen to be warpped, an integer linked list could have been better and doesn't cover all the cases. The P/Invoke discussion is quite good. The COM Interop chapter is excellent - it has good examples. All in all, I think that the authors did a fairly good job in writing about a fairly complex area.



2. In case you are considering buying this book, be aware it was "written and tested for the final release of .Net v1.0". According to authors, many features on the final release of .NET v.10 were not working properly and therefore the sample does not work. The technical revision of this book was poor and the obvious errors in the code make me wonder if the code was ever tested or if one author read the previous chapter written separately by another author. Examples to illustrate this fact can be found on page 373, 396, 423 and many others (I only start taking notes about the pages by the end of the book when I decided I needed to write a review about it). The errors, added to the limitations on the final release of the product, disturb my reading more than if no spell checker was used.

   Nevertheless, the book has some very good chapters and given that at the time I could not find any other book available on the subject, I read until the very last page. Hopefully now that .Net is out, the authors will do a second and carefully revised edition of the book.




3. First, I am a professional Visual C++ developer and bought this book to learn the new .NET extensions. After working myself through the first two detailed chapters I am left with a lot of definitions but am wondering how or why I would use this information. Perhaps this might make a good reference book, I have no idea how accruate the informaton is, but it is not a "primer" in he sense that you buy this book as a self taught learning aid. I'm bored out of my skull.



4. with one or two other .net C++ books would be perfect.
   Very good explenation of unicode strings and how they relate to BSTR strings.



5. This book will inform you about the changes (ahem improvements) to the C++ language under .NET. Although some of the examples have bugs, it does not deter the authors from teaching you C++ under .NET. It is a very good introductory book for experienced C++ developers interested in moving to .NET.