1 comments about An Object-Oriented Approach to Programming Logic and Design, Second Edition.

1. This author is imprecise in her use of terminology. She switches between similar terms for the same thing without signaling. She uses the same term for different things without signaling. She even uses incorrect terms.
   
   The author tends to use a concept in a discussion and then, later, she introduces the concept formally to the reader. Sometimes she never introduces the concept, and youstruggle with the text before you realize that a new concept is involved and you must set about untangling the spaghetti on your own.
   
   On a positive note, the author makes good use of analogies to illustrate abstract programming concepts. Overall, however, this text is a monument to mediocrity.

5 comments about Maximum Lego NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains.

1. Got this book for our 12-year-old. Too difficult. Good for those who have studied computer programming.



2. This NXT Java book was useless starting from page 3 on. SEVERAL issues with inaccurate LEJOS directions (installations and even programs). I have a good background in Java (BCIS) and that helps me a ton. Look at variant press and see the errata for this book!!! It is so small that PROVES the author is the only one to blame for this P.O.S. book. You would serve better to simply go to some online sites (.edu) and get the real directions for installing LeJos on your NXT and then look at the sample programs found in the LeJos API documentation (the API sux too but the sample programs are mostly bug free).
   
   
   And the building instructions are almost illegible due to poor print quality. I have used NXT's for about 3 years and it took me quite a bit of time to figure out what parts this guy was using. At least one of his labs are proof of his inability (think it was later in the book) when he mentions something about the project he is proposing doesnt work but maybe you can get it to.
   
   
   Brian B. You need to be a weather man, you are about as reliable!
   
   Bottom line...dont waste your money, Id give you mine for free if it werent in the garbage.



3. Despite the nasty reviews surrounding this book, I strongly dis-agree. I thought this book was extremely helpful. I am a java programmer but my work is in the data integration area. This book really helped me to step out of the box and start programming movement between motors,sensors,etc. I enjoy all of Brian's writings, blogs, books, etc. You won't find a better book about programming NXT bricks with Java. And who expects a 12 year old to pick up this book and understand? It's a book most suitable for experienced java programmers.



4. If you are one of those Java guys, hands on, and a mechanical control lover, this is a book you don't want to miss.
   
   From programming point of view, some very useful topics are Bluetooth setup (both Window and Linux), Serial Communication setup, Vision detection, and Voice Control. You will be amazed of how you can realize those technologies into controlling an NXT.
   
   There are still many other interesting subjects from machanical/control point of view. This includes using GPS receiver(where you can learn NMEA Data format). It also shows you a NXT versioned Rocker-Bogie for rough terrain (I was really amaized how it works once I built a prototype). There is one special section to show you how to build a differencial gear using standard NXT parts. This really comes handy for a new Lego user who do not have an old differencial gear.
   
   This book also includes quite some attractive design like R2me2 (resemble R2D2), Moon Buggy, Beckhambot, Mapping Robot, and number 0.5 (resembles number 5). I do like their 'abstract' concept of the design.
   
   However, there are also negative part about this book.
   1. Some photo pictures is not very clear to follow. Either too small or too dark to see the details.
   2. Some mechanical design does not make it turn well (like Mapping Robot). But I guess this is due to lack of proper parts (such as differencial gear which was not included in the NXT package).



5. Although the book sounds otherwise, it is in fact a good start for advanced programmers. A lot of the code does not work right out of the box, but provides a good starting point for advanced programmers to build on. If you are a beginning java programmer, this book probably is not for you because it deals with concepts that are incomplete as described in the book, but an intermediate-to-advanced programmer can take these concepts and modify them as need be and quickly make easy projects more advanced. Overall, I think this is an excellent book but should be used by individuals with experience in programming in contemporary languages.

5 comments about Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation.

1. I normally don't write reviews. Couple of not very positive reviews could not stop me writing one for this title. In my opinion, this book really presents a breadth of information
   on the subject. If one is considering to buy this book, one should have due background in Discrete Mathematics.



2. During the course this book has been anything but helpful. The introductory part is a laugh as it takes for given you as a reader is very deep into mathematical lingo and proofs. Indeed the poofs are some of the worst written, many of them using statements as "Clearly it is..." and "It is now easy to see...", well, no, it isn't easy and mostly seems like a shortcut from the author to excuse himself from actual explanations.

   Even worse is the examples where solutions reference something form an excercise, here's a hint to Mr Martin, students don't solve all the extremly many excercises unless asked to, so saying something will be clear after a certain excercise doesn't work, how will we ever know if we're right or wrong?

   The educational value is very low due to the authors way of writing, never really getting the point across and always assuming the reader knows exactly what's going on. This is certainly not the way to teach people rather complex things. All in all anyone should look elsewhere to have a chance.




3. As far as basic ideas of automata goes, this book will do. It's not phenomenal, and it's not awful. It is merely sufficient. The main problem is that it lacks elegance in a number of places. In many places, it feels sloppy. Definitions are almost arbitrary, and often lack rigor. Techniques are long, tedious, and not very interesting. (This is nowhere more evident that the finite automaton -> regular expression conversion from Ch. 4, which has a really neat solution that this book does NOT give.) Yet, despite all this, it conveys the important ideas nevertheless.
   
   As far as developing skills for more advanced concepts of theory of computation, things don't look so good. This book's approach can be described as attempting, by sheer force, to make automata problems fit into rather vanilla proof techniques that readers will probably have already learned. The result is likely to do little more than convince readers that the subject is hard.



4. i am currently part of an online course, there is no teacher and all we have to learn from besides this text (which was assigned) is maybe 2 or 3 examples posted on a website for each chapter - almost all of which are entirely too simple to offer any real help. if you have to teach yourself this course this is definitely NOT a good book.
   ..
   -there are no solutions to the problems
   -the writing is not on an introductory level &
   -the questions escalate in difficulty way too fast from the examples
   -the examples are circular
   -the examples actually say "at this point its obvious that"
   -the examples offer little to no help for complicated problems like any of the one's we get on homeworks & tests
   ..
   i think the worst part of this book is the fact that generally after i do a problem i look back just to check if i got the right answer .. since i can't do this i have no real security of whether or not i'm doing anything right. then when i look back through the chapter when i need help i realize that the examples skip the steps that i need and the writing frustrates me more than it teaches me.
   ..
   it's kinda like trying to learn calculus and the very first problem you ever see asks you to prove green's theorem.



5. The material covered in this book, if you expected to prove what you are doing is correct, is challenging. There were several times in this book, where the explanation from the book was not enough for me to grasp the concept. I am not talking about cramming for the test, I am talking about repeatedly reviewing the concept in the book over several days before giving up and going for extra help.
   
   This is surprising, not because of my shear genius, but because the concepts in the book are not all that hard to grasp after the fact. For this reason, I think the book could be better written, by either including examples of more of the concepts or clearer language explaining the concepts.

5 comments about CSS, DHTML, and Ajax, Fourth Edition (Visual QuickStart Guide).

1. I was looking for a book to get better acquainted with CSS and Ajax. I picked up "Visual Quick start Guide. CSS, DHTML & Ajax." From Peachpit Press. The book is a quick read and it efficiently provides a quick start guide as promised. I particularly liked the example based introductions for all topics covered. Also, I enjoyed the brief introduction the book provides on Web 2.0 and the way the authors define it.
   After going through it once you will probably keep it as a quick reference guide, although it is never too hard to find information on web technologies on the web. Overall I could recommend the book if you are not a client side developer and are in need of a brief and comprehensive look at CSS and DHTML. I cannot imagine client side developers being too impressed with the book though.



2. I looked through this book at a bookstore before buying and I was impressed with the idea of working through with visual examples about what could be done with different manipulations of code (something that is hard to quickly get on the web with many many clicks).
   
   In using this guide, I have though become frequently exasperated by the execution because of confusing examples, what I believe to be mistakes in the code examples in the text, etc...



3. A great book for beginners as well as a good reference tool for programmers as well. I bought this book for my 14 year old son who used it to teach himself. He said it was well laid out and has used it quite often.



4. This is a great book for learning CSS, DHTML & AJAX. I needed something quick to pick up this language and the book worked perfect.



5. While this book (Fourth Edition) appears to be another quality release from Peachpit, it is unfortunately plagued by typos (rather unusual for this publisher). Code simply will not run properly due to occasional errors (often replicated in both the inline code and the illustrative tables/diagrams) and filenames are frequently incorrect. In addition, the auxillary red spot color is a nice visual break from the typical black text at first but isn't always implemented properly and eventually feels distracting. However, the major concepts and methods are addressed and presented well in the text.
   
   Overall, probably not the best book to start off with from unless you also enjoy debugging the author's code as you go along. I'd wait until a 5th edition corrects all the typographical errors.

5 comments about Professional ASP.NET 2.0 XML (Programmer to Programmer).

1. I would recommend this book to anyone working on ASP.NET 2.0. XML is the integral part of .NET framework and used widely on all projects.
   Book explains XML classes, Data Validation, XML transformation, XML and ADO.NET, Web Services and use of XML in Web.Config and Configuration files.



2. This book was very useful. It covered a wide variety of topics and explained most topics very well. I would have liked the book to get into some more subjects a little more in depth, but when you are covering so many topics that is a little difficult to do. This book did cover a lot of the new XML classes in the 2.0 framework. I would have liked some more info on the sql server 2005 xml stuff, particulary xquery. The book talked about OPENXML and even made the statement that you should use .nodes for these types of queries now. But it made no mention of how to do so. Overall, this was a very useful text.



3. This is an excellent book covering the XML features of ASP.NET. It is very professional but, not for any beginner. It has the first 2 chapters which pretty much cover the basics but, throughout the rest of the book you need to know what you are doing. It is very detailed but is not really "step-by-step" like 1-2-3...It will walk you through how to do something through reading; so if your not one of those people who don't like to read, I wouldnt fully recommend this book to you. It shows a many screenshots in there so it makes it fairly simple to follow along. The book has almost 500 pages that are completely dedicated to the XML features of ASP.NET. If you are willing to take out the reading glasses and read a little bit. Overall, its an outstanding book!



4. Thiru Thangarathinam is one of the few authors out there who truly know how to teach and convey the knowledge they are presenting. The manner in which he approaches and expounds a topic should be formulated and used in all books. Most books these days simply show how to do the simplest of tasks and never provide real world scenarios. But guess what, in the real world your tasks are never that simple.
   
   Thiru does a great job in not only showing "how to" but also provides best practice tips so that you know "when to", "when not to", "when you do be sure to". These are the things I need to know in the real world. Without a doubt this was one of the best technical books I have read in a while. I will definitely buy any future books that he authors. Glad to see he's a fellow Phoenician also!



5. This is an excelent book. The section about MsSQL server and XML is excelent. I highly recommended

5 comments about Advanced CORBA(R) Programming with C++ (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series).

1. Don't wish to wade through book after book? This book would be the one to buy! The concepts are clearly defined and the code examples are fairly easy to follow. (The thermostat example grows too complicated at the end of the book to even comprehend all pieces - authors could use other smaller constructs to show the concepts.)

   The authors are well-versed in the topic and it shows in every chapter. There is no hand-waving on topics, as I have seen in other treatments of this subject.

   I've been a Corba programmer for the last 3 years and this has been my bible...

   Can't wait to see a second edition of this book from the authors!




2. Good book. Worth the money. There is a a lot of material here and it is pretty well organized. Some of the examples assume to much - they would be better if they showed complete code segements. If you needed to get one book on C++ and CORBA, this would be the one.



3. As the title states this is a book for advanced programmers. Not the kind of book I would recommend to someone looking to pick up a book and the learn from it. Might serve as an excellent reference source.



4. For my money, this book is worth every cent and more. The authors are knowledgable and articulate. If you know of a
   better book on CORBA, please let me know.....



5. This has to be one of the best CORBA books that I have read. It has helped me debug code and fix some really knotty problems. I found the exposition clear and easy to follow, and the index a useful tool. I don't think the authors intended it to be read cover-to-cover.
   
   If I am working on a CORBA project I alway like to have this book to hand.

5 comments about Mastering Perl/Tk.

1. This book tries to be all things to all people. "Learning Perl/Tk" needs to be reworked to be more of a tutorial in the same spirit as "Learning Perl." "Mastering Perl/Tk" needs to be split into two works--one like "Programming Perl" and another like "Perl in a Nutshell." It's hard to master Perl/Tk when you have to try to swallow it all in one gulp. It can be done, but you may suffer with a case of indigestion for a while.



2. This book is heavily redundant to Learning Perl/Tk. I would say about 1/3 of the book is new content, of which the majority is poorly organized.

   Textual content is written in a teaching context.

   In the examples there are a lot of things being done implicitly, and comments are lacking. This defeats much of the teaching functionality of the textual content that references to the examples.

   The custom widget section, is some of the most disorganized technical writing I've seen. Things that should be footnotes are left as content. In my copy of chapter 14, if you were to couple the X'd out superfluous language with the pencil notes in the margin used to decipher the remaining text (after referencing _Programming Perl_, the POD and usenet) you would nearly equal the content of the author.

   They appear to have been stretching for length like a freshman year term paper, Noted by the 75 pages of options tables in the rear that are redundant to the core widget option tables in the front, or otherwise straight out of the POD.

   This book leaves a lot of room for a competing title. There is however none at this time to my knowledge. Therefore buy it anyway, if you plan on working heavily in Perl/Tk.

   To use the word "Mastering" in the title is begging criticism. If you are looking for a definative work, this isn't it. But it is available, and will get you through the first half of your head scratching while developing with Perk/Tk.




3. This book has so far given me all the information I've
   needed to write usable GUIs. However, I share the concern
   expressed by other reviewers that the the titles 'Learning
   Perl/Tk' and 'Mastering Perl/Tk' can be misleading. While
   it's reasonable to assume that the 'Learning' volume is
   introductory/tutorial while the 'Mastering' volume is for
   advanced techniques, this is not the case. The 'History of
   this Book' section of the preface describes it as an
   expansion of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not a sequel or supplement.
   There is no need to buy both books.



4. I'm a big fan of the O'Reilly Perl books. Most of them are very well written, and can really increase your knowledge about a topic. But this book is an exception. Simply put, it's horrible. Don't buy this book. It's poorly written, has a bad style, and provides nothing that you couldn't easily get from online documentation.



5. This book provides a lot of information about Perl/Tk, but in a somewhat scattered fashion, making true mastery of the subject an intensive process. It is an excellent learning tool, but the reader should be aware that there is much to learn beyond what is presented here.

2 comments about Pro Java 6 3D Game Development: Java 3D, JOGL, JInput and JOAL APIs (Expert's Voice in Java).

1. There is some overlap between this book and the author's other book on Java game programming, "Killer Game Programming in Java", but overall there is enough new material to make it a worthwhile purchase. The author starts out trying to explain Java3D. His explanations are OK, but the best explanation I have ever found as an overview of the API is "Java 3D API Tutorial" on the Sun Microsystems website. It's old, but the basics haven't changed. For the specifics of working with Java 3D in the modern era, come back to this book. The author has done a good job of putting together some programming examples that show how to program in current versions of Java 3D including a 3D version of Conway's game of life. He then modifies the program to show off some of the features of Java 6 such as its ability to communicate with scripting languages. Further chapters show how to build creatures with operational limbs that demonstrate Java 3D's TransformGroups, how to handle physics and Java3D using a specific physics API, multitexturing for more natural looking outdoor scenes, and finally how to deal with level of detail problems using mixed mode rendering. In each case, the author just doesn't talk about how to do something, he produces working code that gets the job done and provides a blueprint for the reader to go further.
   
   The section on non-standard input devices deals with interfacing devices such as webcams, game controllers, game pads, and the P5 Virtual Reality Glove to your 3D worlds and games. He mentions parts of Java that are seldom well-explained such as JInput to describe how to control these devices. In the section on webcams, the author talks about JMF and an alternative method of interfacing to cameras. This is good, since for all intents and purposes JMF is really a dead API with very little useful capability. One of the more interesting chapters in this section really has nothing to do with input devices, that being the chapter on JOAL, which is a wrapper around OpenAL, the OpenAudio Library. This is very practical since there are bugs in Java 3D's sound interface that have been there from the beginning and show no sign of being resolved. This chapter provides a practical way for Java programmers to get actual reliable 3D sound into their games and applications.
   
   The final section of the book is on JOGL, which is a Java wrapper for the OpenGL graphics library. The author explains and illustrates the use of JOGL by first implementing a very simple application to clearly illustrate all of the steps needed. Next, a 3D world is written using JOGL that includes a floor with a checkerboard pattern, an orbiting earth, a skybox of stars, a billboard that shows a tree, overlays, and keyboard navigation.
   
   This book, along with the Sun tutorial, is a good education in how to use the Java 3D API in general, and also how to build virtual worlds in Java as well as how to write 3D Java games, which was the book's original purpose. Highly recommended.



2. If you are new to 3D programming in Java then this book is not a very good place to start. That's not to say this isn't a good book its just that you will need to be somewhat comfortable with Java3D before reading this book. Like the previous reviewer said the sun tutorials will help to understanding the examples used in this book, just don't think that this book will hold your hand.

5 comments about Web Development & Design Foundations With XHTML (3rd Edition).

1. It was greate doing business with you. I received the book as you promised. Thanks, Nader



2. Ive taken the online course of this class and while over all the book is very imformative, there are several HTML errors every now and then which for me really has no excuse as this is the 3rd edition. The author DOES correct these errors on a website she maintains, but as this is a text book for a subject that requires exacting work, it can be quite a hinder to the learning process when the students are forced to check the professors own work when the coding does not work for them even after following the example to the letter. I highly recomend this product none the less, but you may want to have a friend on hand to double check the text if you are experiencing a problem with no reason.



3. The errors in this text annoyed me to the point of wanting to drop my course. I took this class online so it was difficult to get feedback from professor. The case studies were helpful, and despite it all I have learned a couple of things about web development.



4. Comments from reviewers of this book:
   
   "The layout of Felke-Morris's text is excellent. I have always
   disliked texts with crowded pages, distracting sidebars, and many colors. Felke-Morris' text focuses the student on salient content and uses color, text boxes, and the like to enhance and emphasize, rather than distract. Felke-Morris' hands-on exercises are something my current text does not even have. I really like these exercises because they give students a chance to learn and practice small chunks of material before applying the knowledge to a larger project."
   
   "Great coverage of web accessibility standards! Glad to see a tutorial on File Management. Many students coming into this course struggle with those
   concepts."
   
   "Great inclusion of ethical issues and accessibility tips (these are areas that I do find myself supplementing with our current text)."
   
   "Superior aspects of Felke-Morris include:
   --Inclusion of web site pages and/or addresses that have been referred
   to in the text as either examples of techniques, or places to find more information, or used as a part of the end-of-chapter section on Web Research. These are a real strong point of the text.
   --Use of the same four example sites through the text as end-of-chapter Cases. As each chapter is completed, each site is enhanced using the current chapter's skills and concepts.
   --The inclusion of Hands-On Practice and Web Research sections."



5. Web Development & Design Foundations With XHTML (3rd Edition)
   I used this text for a college Web design class. The lessons were easy to follow and laid out in a logical sequence. The case studies that are built upon as new material is learned are useful. I appreciate the attention paid to accessibility issues. I do have two major complaints though. First: There are far too many errors for a third edition, as noted by others. A great deal of study time is wasted before a student realizes that the text is wrong. Coding solutions provided by the publisher in the "Student Data Files" don't always validate, for example, and there are several mistakes not yet updated in the "erata" sections on the publisher's web site. Second: the extensive "Hands On Exercises" at the end of each chapter are less than helpful at the college level without at least some sample solutions. College instructors don't usually waste time on going over this type of material, so it's often a waste of time doing them. Suggestions for the publisher: Fewer "Hands On" exercises, more solutions and please fix all those text errors you've been hearing so much about!

5 comments about TCP/IP Sockets in C#: Practical Guide for Programmers (The Practical Guides).

1. Did you ever just want a book get to the point and tell you what you need to know? This is that book. If your new to winsock, this book will get you rolling quickly.



2. I think this book is very good because es simple, explain clearly and go directly to the matter.
   
   Juan Ramon Divison



3. This book is a good intermediate to somewhat advanced book on TCP and UDP protocols using Sockets in .Net - all examples of-course as the title suggests are in C#. It does show some interesting examples and was able to get me started using Sockets in .Net - however it didn't go as far as I had hoped. But if you're needing something to show you how to start using Sockets it is a very good book.



4. This book gets very high ratings on both amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. I've given it a slightly lower rating than some, although still four stars, and will explain why...
   
   The subtitle on the cover of the book is "Practical Guide for Programmers" which suggests it is going to be good even for experienced developers. It is only when you read the preface (page X) that you find that the book is aimed "primarily at students", and even then is "intended as a supplement, to be used with a traditional textbook", which seems a bit of a contradiction when it then says that "we have tried to make the book reasonably self-contained".
   
   Anyway, what are the good points of this book? Well, it does mention most of the bits that a developer using sockets will want to consider. It has everything from blocking sockets, through non-blocking sockets and the select model, through to overlapped I/O. It also mentions threading, the use of thread pools, broadcast and multicast. All good stuff. Even includes example code for each.
   
   Where the book falls down is that having skimmed over all of those topics it (a) doesn't provide adequate information about how to choose the model (synch vs. asynch, blocking vs. non-blocking, 1 thread vs. fixed number (> 1) of threads vs. thread pool, etc) to use for a particular project, and (b) falls short of being self-contained, doing the blah-blah is beyond the scope of this book thing.
   
   I have seen many projects developed using the wrong model, resulting in poor performance, lack of responsiveness, inability to shutdown cleanly etc. I'm pretty sure that the authors of the book will have seen projects like that too. Books about using sockets really need to advise on this area.
   
   It is understandable that a book of this size and price will say that some things are outside the scope of the book, but not something as basic as socket options (p52 refers the reader to the MSDN). Again, socket options are an area where well-meaning developers or support staff set values that are little better than guesses, and which sometimes cause adverse effects. If there's going to be a second edition of this book, please include advice on such matters.
   
   So, all in all, good for students or people new to sockets, but not quite great. It tells you the basic techniques, but not how to use them to best advantage. Having said that, I prefer this book to C# Network Programming which rambles, uses language that is ambiguous in places, and contains a significant error (if being very generous, it could be very lazy English causing an unintended meaning) on the very page I opened it on.
   
   It's probably best for people who already know sockets really well, but who are switching from one language to another (e.g. C++ or Java to C#). Those people probably know what model and options to use, just need to see how to do it in C# - something the book does do well.



5. I have a technical book collection that rivals most libraries and this has to be one of the best programming books I've ever purchased. I'm very new to Sockets programming but I am familiar with C#. Therefore, all I needed was a way of familiarizing myself with the fundamentals of sockets programming, not a full-on long-winded lecture of everything-C#. The structure of this book is amazing. It starts each section by providing a brief description of the classes and concepts the authors are about to present. It then presents sample code illustrating the topic followed by an analysis of the code at key points by line number. It then follows up with a detailed summary of each class used in the sample along with its methods, constructors, and properties. Each example gets progressivly more complex which keeps the reader from being overwhelmed with the complexity of the subject matter too quickly.
   
   Quick, concise, and very well written, these authors did a fantastic job!