5 comments about Extreme Programming Pocket Guide.

1. In today's world of tech books that are hundreds of pages long, it's nice to see a short, "no fluff" guide to a subject that is actually usable. This book fills that bill nicely.

   Even if you've read about and implemented XP in your shop, there are times you need to review one of the points about how it all works together. Since the author covers all the main points of XP, you can quickly find the information you need. You also get a nice cross-reference at the end of each chapter that shows how each point relies on other parts of the methodology. I find this very useful if you are faced with having to modify XP for your use. It's recommended that you implement XP in its entirety, as it's meant to be more than the sum of its part. But if you have to tweak something, you know how it will affect the other areas.

   I would not recommend this book as your only resource if you were just starting to implement XP. You really need to read Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck. He's the founder of XP, and that book goes into much more detail as to the whys of the process. But this book is one that each member of the team should have to keep the concepts fresh.

   This is a very good book to use as a supplemental reference or reminder guide if you're using the XP methodology. If you were looking for a concise explanation of XP, this would also work for you. If you were looking for a more in-depth explanation of the methodology, I would recommend one of the books by Kent Beck.




2. I think this book should be required reading for anyone exploring XP. I introduced XP into a research lab of a dozen students and professionals, using the original books as reference. However, things would have gone much more smoothly had I simply read the pocket guide. Excellent!



3. I needed a break recently, so I pulled this tiny work off the stack of review books (now 30 books high) and blasted through it in a short hour.
   
   It's short, sweet, to the point, also injected with the occasional XP Dogma Line such as if you don't implement all 12 practices then you're not doing real XP and your manhood will shrivel or your womb will be barren. I get tired of that line, but the rest of the book is truely golden.
   
   It's concise and lays out great sections on why one should consider XP, roles in XP, artifiacts, and a few others. The real wealth is the section on XP practices where the 12 tenets are laid out in concise, reasonable fashion. These practices are clear and understandable without a bunch of mystical handwaving or badly-written example scenarios I've suffered through in a couple other XP books. (Roodyn's Extreme .NET comes to mind as a painful example of that.)
   
   The book's conciseness and focus makes it a perfect tool if you're trying to sell XP to your management, team, or co-workers.



4. I bought this book as a desktop refresher on XP practices. It does that just fine. If you are looking for an in depth book, you need to go elsewhere. This is a reference guide to use as a refresher from time to time on how to implement XP practices.



5. This guide is very concise & straight to the point. Do not be fool by its size. Team and project managers along with business analysts should find this guide very useful. This pocket book is an easy read that packs enough meat to get you going with Extreme Programming. It is written for anyone who is interested on knowing about XP.
   
   By the end of the book you'll have a clear understanding of why use XP programming, practices, events, roles, code principles & style. Best of all, it provides you with clear examples and suggestions on how to adopt this methodology.

5 comments about Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming, An (3rd Edition).

1. This text book is one of the worst text book I have been forced to read. Having to read this text book as part of the University requirement, I found it very confusing, especially when explaining any concept. In short, there is was no simple straight forward explanation of any topic. The book is filled with complicated sentences through out. Some times you would read a bunch of paragraphs under each topic/section and would still be wondering , which part actually talks about the topic.... I would never recommend this to any one who is new in learning OO or to anyone is already buried in Structured Programming and trying to make a transition to OO.



2. I had a great opportunity to know the author of this book in person: I took Dr.Budd's course on Object-oriented programming in Oregon State University in Fall 2000. We used this book in class throughout the term, and thus all of us were compelled to read this book from cover to cover.

   The principal point I would like to emphasize is that the book really is about the Object-Oriented Concepts. It is not a "guide how to aply OO-principles in C++", it is not an "Object Pascal OO-programming". No. The book is about general concepts of Object-oriented Programming not bounded to any particular OO-language. Although sometimes it was really difficult to understand some of the ideas, the good point was that the author did not try to make the things simpler. If something was difficult to understand - this only meant that it was that Real Blue Thing whose perception makes you a cool programmer.

   However, the illustrations in the book (at least in the edition I obtained) were not very good, but rather poor. Had they been made by a profeccional designer, I would have rated the book with 5 stars. So far, it's only 4.




3. I really enjoyed this book. The author covers all the important oo concepts in several languages. This allows you to get an excellent perspective on each concept without being distracted by each language's implemention of that concept. I also appreciated the writing skills of the author. He was always clear and precise. A lot of information is packed into a relatively slim volume. Of several introductory oo books I've recently read, this one easily tops my list.



4. I've been using classes more as a means of organizing and improving the maintainability, understanding of various applications I've built over the past 3 years (VB). As I am about to develop solutions using the .NET platform (C#, VB.NET), I thought it would do me good to formalize my understanding of OOP/OOD. After reading this text (3rd Edition), I not only formalized my understanding, but was able to see OOP as clearly as I could structured programming (Code Complete). In my opinion, all should use this as the first book before trying to participate/apply J2EE or Microsoft.NET as it will allow you "properly" communicate, design and code systems from abstraction to detail.



5. I've read a number of introductions to object-oriented design and programming. This one is the best all-around introduction that I have seen. It starts in the real world, with a discussion of how one plans and organizes a task (sending flowers to a significant other) that requires more than a single person to get done. That's a pleasant change from texts that begin with Dauntingly Dry Definitions ("encapsulation", "inheritance", and my favorite, "polymorphism").

   To the author's credit, he avoids launching into inheritance until Chapter 8, by which time he has laid enough groundwork to reduce the concept to common sense. Other concepts are presented in a similar manner.

   Note that this book is a survey book, not an in-depth programming manual. You won't learn C++ or Delphi, or any of the other half-dozen languages used for the book's examples. And the book focuses on concepts, rather than implementation. you won't learn how to implement a Singleton pattern in C#, although you will learn what it is and why it is useful. Finally, the book assumes familiarity with traditional, procedural programming. This is not a Programming 101 text.

   I would recommend this book enthusiastically as a starting point for anyone making the transition from traditional programming to OOP. If you are moving to the DotNet platform, I have created a list ("So you'd like to ... Transition to DotNet") with some other recommended texts.

1 comments about Expert Visual C++/CLI: .NET for Visual C++ Programmers (Expert's Voice in .Net).

1. This book pretty much assumes you have some basic C++/CLI knowledge.
   But, if you are like me, you will pick that basic knowledge on your own from the web and then you will probably buy this book :)
   This book has just the right piece of advice for all the coders who can learn the basics on their own but at the same time need to make sure they are doing things right.
   This book will give you that extra confidence and will take you to the next level.

5 comments about C++ Distilled: A Concise ANSI/ISO Reference and Style Guide.

1. +AH4-I was asked to review this book, and I ended up buying a copy for myself. If you already know some C+-+-, this is a prefect book to have. It is so concise, that often single sentences talk volumes! Therefore if anything seems vague, it's a good hint to look into it further.

   One nice feature for the intermediate programmers is "Dr. P's Prescription". These are suggestion (or often rules) at the end of each section. In a way, they add to the applicability of the book without any+AH4-+AH4- material getting lost in excess verbiage -- much like Scott Meyer's Effective C+-+-.+AH4-




2. Just like one of the reviewers below, I defected from C++ to Java a long time ago - before the advent of namespaces, STL, etc. Recently I had to do some C++ work and this book was all I needed. It is literally the only C++ book I own. The author's mastery of language (both C++ and English) allows him to cover every important C++ topic without wasting any space. His writing is brief and to the point. This book helped me learn STL, re-learn C++'s terrifying I/O, and re-learn operator overloading. It's a refresher course and a reference. It's tiny, and great.



3. Pohl has managed to strike a very nice balance between reference books that are too concise (and thus leave you feeling confused unless you already know a feature very well) and too verbose (and thus make it difficult to do a "quick lookup" on something). I wish there were more reference books out there that struck such a balance.

   The book is short enough (~200 pages with good amounts of white space) that you can read through it in a few days for a quick review if you've been away from C++ for a while (particularly if you've been away since before all the new C++ features were added!). Note that even though it came out in late '96, it does seem to have all of the new C++ features in it -- including STL (although the STL chapter is pretty cursory) and all of the other new language features (namespaces, new casting methods, etc).

   Would also highly recommend Meyer's _Effective C++_ for those just getting into C++ or returning to it after a long absense. Also, something like Josuttis' _The C++ Standard Library: A Tutorial and Reference_ for a more in depth look at STL and the string class.




4. Everyone seems to love this book. To each his own. Having programmed since 1982, I've learned my share of languages and used my share of references to look up the feature I know is in there and just need to know the way to type the syntax or what the specific command is. This book has confounded me time and time again. It has 'part' of what I need to know, but never all of it, so I'm constantly forced to seek other sources.

   The most recent example that prompted me to finally write this review after having had the book for a year: I want to use a priority queue to do something. Easy enough to find in the Containers section, it lists the operations you can do on a priority queue in a table - they are the basic queue operatoins. Whats missing is the key constructor syntax that explains how you define that all important 'priority' to the priority-queue. I know a comparision operation must be supplied somehow, somewhere, but I'll be damned if its anywhere near the description I'm looking at.

   The stuff that I find in this book is the stuff I can remember. Whats missing for me is the stuff I forget, or those things that are more specific to an implementation.

   I find this book useless as a reference. When I learned C++ in a course, our instructor swore by this book, saying its a much smaller book to have to carry around than Stroustrup. That is is, but it never seems to have that thing I'm trying to look up - that aspect I'm having trouble remembering about the syntax. Thankfully I have a copy of "The C++ Standard Library". Thats a big hardback textbook - but it has all the info and since I'm not developing code at a cafe over lunch, but at my desk, lugging it around is not an issue.




5. This book is an easy read for someone already having exposure to C++. It's a reference book where one can just look up stuff they don't quite remember. But it's a little more than that because the author includes very concise advice in the form of bullet lists under "Dr. P's Prescriptions". It works great for me because I now only write C++ programs every couple of years.
   The book also provides an introduction to the basics of the Standard Template Library (STL) which is used by many C++ programs these days.
   It is the perfect book to refresh your memory on C++ before an interview because it covers a lot of ground in its 200 pages.

5 comments about A First Book of ANSI C, Third Edition.

1. I had to have this book for my first C programming class and it sucks. There are only about 5 examples per chapter. They show the code to make something, but you have to guess what its output will look like. This book tells you that you can do stuff but not how to do it!



2. Students in my class really agreed that this was a well written book. The many code examples were great in that they reinforced the reading material. Any of the source code errors in the examples that might have occurred during the printing of the book were easily fixed. You also have the complete source code available to you from the book's website, thus allowing you to clear errors in the examples.

   The text goes into the details of the code examples and into the details of the topics. For someone knowledgeable in C or with past programming experience, it might seem a bit wordy. But as in introduction to programming, it's wonderful. Excellent for self-study or for an Intro to Programming classroom environment.

   All in all, I thought this book was great.




3. This book is a good guide book for beginners. It is great for classes in ANSI C, but not necessarily for independent study. It provides simple visuals, shows common programming errors, and has a great reference. In fact, for the lightly seasoned C programmer, this book does work well as a reference.
   The down falls of this book are the occasional editing errors, but if you can accept the few mistakes, then this book is okay.
   This book follows the ANSI C specifications and introduces common programming practices. If it were not for the slight aforementioned mistakes, this book would perfect.



4. Im Computer engineer ,,iv finished bs degree,, this book was my starting step to build my knowleg in computer field,, this book is used in our university for first year programming subject,, im still keeping this book its meens alot to me, i visit this site to view what the people r writing about this book and i was really dispionted i saw 1 star!,i think its desirve more , im using the 2nd edition this book include 14 chapters but i think the new edition include more,, its includs the data types,logical operators,loops,functions,arrays,pointers,strings,structures,data file,and other additional topics and introduction to c++,class,,in end of each chapter there is common errors,summury,exercises,, this book done the job and more for me,if u want to study go for this book,,this book can be learnd byself study,,dont waste time and money on other books this book is the best,,,



5. The book follows a very good style in which it teaches you some concepts, demonstrates some programs, and then gives you some problems. Sadly no answers were provided for the questions. Most of the programs demonstrated do not follow the usual syntax of ANCI C, for example the book uses the notation void main(void) { } while other books stress that the standard specifies the use of int main(void) { } . Another noticeable problem was the use of function prototypes inside the main function rather than outside.

No comments about An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics).

5 comments about About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design.

1. This follow up to About Face is a good overview of the critical concepts to improve software usability. Cooper and Reiman know their stuff. Reading this certainly provides you with the grounding you need to make good decisions. At a tactical level, the book could certainly do more to help with real-world examples.
   For that, you may want to take a look instead at Jenifer Tidwell's Designing Interfaces : Patterns for Effective Interaction Design. Where About Face is strong on theory, Designing Interfaces is all about practical ideas, demonstrated through graphical examples.
   If UI is an important part of your world, buy them both.



2. I have 7 years experience and I wasn't able to get any value out of this book. Based on some of the reviews on this site I thought that the book would be worth buying but unless you are in school or right out of school then your $35 is better spent elsewhere.
   
   I suggest that you put your $35 towards "The Usability Engineering Lifecycle" by Deborah J. Mayhew. Don't let the $64.95 price tag scare you away. This book is worth $100.



3. I think this guy has a book about how the inmates are running the asylum...well this book suffers from what happens when the subject matter experts (SME) are allowed to write books. BORING!!! SME's always seem to forget to include compelling examples. Yes there are little screen shots, but IMO in order for a book to be compelling that has to do with design...it needs to show LOTS of examples of good design. The bulk of the book should be about breaking down those designs. I need to hear why a specific design is effective. Take a hint from Steve Krugs book "Don't Make me Think". That book is extremely effective without inundating the reader with jargon. Lots of examples with meaningful visual breakdowns. Afterall...isnt UI design a VISUAL communication form?



4. How to design a application from a designers perspective. Cannot say I agree with everything, but the writers are probably right.



5. This book not only defines a "layman user" but also answers the question of how your application can educate a layman user step by step.

3 comments about Practical Ruby for System Administration (Expert's Voice in Open Source).

1. If you've encountered Ruby primarily through Rails and know it chiefly as an elegant tool for writing web applications it's easy to miss its longer history as a tool for systems administration. Before Rails made Ruby the language-du-jour sysadmins bore much of the responsibility for keeping it alive, with the result that it has a suite of libraries helpful for server monitoring and a range of other administrative tasks.
   
   Author André Ben Hamou is clear that his book is not an exhaustive guide to using Ruby for systems administration. Rather than try to cover every possible context he provides an introduction to the language and some of its key libraries intended to give a feel for how it might be used and why it leads to succinct and expressive solutions. A number of the more important libraries for working with network protocols and files are covered, and there's a good introduction to rubygems and how they can be used and created.
   
   Having not done much work with Ruby on the command line I found the first couple of chapters, which cover command-line switches that can help with one-liners for file processing, particularly informative, though I suspect I'll be referring back to them for a while until the different options take hold. As with the book as a whole those chapters are clear and to-the-point, helped by a presumption that the reader has a good understanding of the problem space and some experience with using scripting languages to simplify their life.
   
   Don't go into this book expecting to come away ready to work as a sysadmin. That's not its intention. Nor is it a comprehensive guide to ruby, and you'll probably still want a good language reference to go with it. But it provides a number of helpful hints and a good sense of how robust scripts can be built quickly and simply with ruby, and there are likely to be a few helpful tricks for most readers.
   
   Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.



2. I thought this book would be great for me since I am a Unix administrator still relatively new to Ruby. I was right. This book covers a wide variety of topics, from ActiveRecord, to parsing XML and several other normal administration tasks. (network programming, ssh, monitoring) The depth of the coverage is more than adequate in most places. I learned quite a bit about using Ruby to automate some tasks, and of equal importance, I learned about the infrastructure behind ruby. He reviews performance, documentation, rake, rdoc, gems and more.
   
   The book is a great length for system admins who are not hard-core developers, but looking to expand their skillset and get some real benefit quickly. The coverage of XML-RPC, and ActiveLDAP, I have already put to use.
   
   Besides having some really strong content, the delivery in this book is great. The author commonly sounds like a system admin just talking to his buddies at a bar. The quotes and fun sayings are numerous throughout, but this was my favorite.
   
   When talking about the confusing terminology use with ldap, (cn, ou, dc etc) he takes a two step approach.
   1. Use Wikipedia
   2. (Direct Quote) "Whenever anyone suggests continuing use/support/deployment of LDAP solutions, laugh in their face with such explosive force that your response may be easily interpreted as an act of war. "
   
   Disclaimer, the author thoroughly covers LDAP, and clearly understands it, it was just funny.
   
   I laughed out loud reading this book no less than a dozen times, which is rare with a technical book. If your interested in Ruby, check it out. You won't walk away an expert, but you will have a better understanding of Ruby and its usage.



3. This isn't a bad book! There is coverage of LDAP, database processing with ActiveRecord, XML parsing and a number of tools that sys admins and developers who administer their own dev environment routinely use. The section on network monitoring as well as the Chapter on single liners for Ruby Sys Admins are worth the cover price for the book. However, I was a bit disappointed with the lack of coverage in some areas where the author introduced a basic concept at a level too basic for experienced users and then palmed off the user to a reference site for some more reading. There isn't a problem with this approach it is just that it happens a bit too much throughout the book. Perhaps the coverage was a bit ambitious and some of the more in-depth material was left out?
   
   Anyway, that's pretty much the reason for me not giving it 4 stars. However, do take a look at the one-liners, they are definitely going to save you time!
   
   Oh, the actual writing style is quite fresh and informative. You are not likely to get bored with this one... Overall I am still happy to have got my hands on it, but it wasn't exactly what I was led to believe from reading the other reviews.

5 comments about Web Development with JavaServer Pages.

1. Several months ago I was tasked with building several web applications using Java Server pages and had practically NO time to learn and even less help from peers.

   I purchased this book and Core Servlets and Java Server pages and for the first 7 months trying to use this book just resulted in pissing me off.

   HOWEVER, now that I've become relatively fluent in Servlet/JSP applications I find that this book DOES have some very useful information and I use it more than I use Core.

   I recommend that if you're new to JSPs and can only buy one book, buy Core, if you can get two..and are intent on building complex dynamic server side applications BUY BOTH, you'll need this one later!!




2. This book can also be used as reference.

   Great care is also shown in providing lot of code examples that are on the point in each chapter.

   My favourite chapters are "Filters and listeners", "design choices in case of an enterprise system"(whole chapter is dedicated for this) and "how to build custom tags".

   Authors approach not only enriches a programmer's mind with JSP details but also in a way that is longlasting.




3. This has been a very good buy for me. It explains all the JSP concepts well and also has very good information on javabeans. If you're a beginner with little or no knowledge in JSP, then this is a great place to start with.



4. This book is subtitled, "A practical guide for designing and building dynamic web services". Yeah, right. Although the book is aimed at beginning to intermediate JSP developers, the authors fail miserably to communicate to their target audience. Basically, you'll find yourself re-reading section after section, wondering what the authors are trying to say, and why the book is so chock full of Java code listings, with only a smattering of JSP. Other books handle the learning curve of JSP much more effectively. In fact, you're better off just using any of a number of tutorials on the Internet for learning the basics and intermediary aspects of JSP. What the authors should have done is follow the lead set with 'PHP and MySQL Web Development'. In this case, the "practical guide" was practically useless.



5. This book is exactly what I *didn't* need. I have a project due in 2 weeks, I don't know JSP and need to create something Yesterday. This book seems to want to tell me everything I don't want to know upfront and saves anything useful for chapters 16+. Reading the first 10 chapters, I don't know if I can make it through the next 6 in order to get to something helpful. Don't buy this book.

2 comments about Algorithms: Sequential, Parallel, and Distributed.

1. I am just starting the book. It seems to cover a lot of information I am concerned with.



2. Used this book for a master's course in algorithms. This book very in-depth and covers many new age algorithms dealing with the Internet. We did not get to these topics in my course (we only went through chapters 1-8 out of 27).
   
   The book is mostly concerned with the mathematical analysis of algorithms, and not so much the implementation, which was unexpected for me. Not for the faint of heart, this is a very difficult book, especially if you're not up to date on your mathematical induction techniques, limits, and summations. However, for the scholarly individual, this is a great text to learn new things from. Enjoy, I know I did!