5 comments about COBOL for Dummies.

1. too much attempt at being funny (and not succeeding) useful information but hard to get at



2. from the first page i read, i thought "this is my salvation" i can actually understand what i'm reading and it makes a lot of sense!



3. This book is well worth buying for those needing an introduction to COBOL. If you are getting it to get the Fujitsu compiler, be aware that it is the previous version and that it is available for free download from the Fujitsu web site.



4. If you never had any experience with COBOL, this book is the place to start. Although it doesn't give many full programs for you to see, it does help you understand the way the language works. As I said, this is a great book to start learning COBOL, and you can then go on to the other books to get deeper into the language. The only problem I encountered was the Fujitsu compiler is an expired version. I've been using COBOL since 1982 and this book is on my shelf.



5. I picked up this book before I started my mainframe training and it was nice to have as a reference. If you have never programmed in COBOL before then this book is for you.

   I have passed this book off to a fellow co-worker who is interested in learning COBOL.

   This book only gives you the very basics and that is it. But I would suggest that you read this book before trying to tackle a more involved book. Also, I don't think that this book will help you code very well, but it is good for definitions and simple explanations.

No comments about Mobile Python: Rapid prototyping of applications on the mobile platform (Symbian Press).

1 comments about GDB Pocket Reference (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)).

1. In my opinion, the GDB quick reference that you can download for free is more useful. To go over the basics, this book is OK, but for daily lookup purposes, the quick reference is more useful.
   
   I purchased this book as a "filler" to reach over $25 for free shipping. I'm a software engineer and do use GDB frequently.

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself).

1. I had to learn SQL quickly, given ~ 1 weeks time.
   The book makes many references to using MySQL (cause its free), yet 1/2 of the examples and exercises do not work on MySQL, due to syntax issues between MySQL and the other, "favored" DB's used in the examples.
   Also, it makes the assumption that you've installed MySQL and have it up-and-running, and yet I lost ~10hours fighting with logon credebtials once my MySQL was loaded on my Lunux box...what a hassle!
   I guess if you use Oracle or SQL 2000...you'd have an easier time of it.....



2. I got this book long time ago and never had a chance to read it. I recently got some time and want to learn how to use it, and I still have no idea how mysql work after reading for a few chapters. I end up reading the manual of mysql and found some other helpful tutorials online. If you are a beginner, this book does not provide any help.



3. This book includes a wealth of information for the beginner using mySQL. I sped through the chapters, have the database from the examples installed and I'm using for a contact management system. It's great. Now to branch out and create my own database for my book collection. Thanks Julie for a book that readies the beginner for using mySQL.



4. I find this to be a low level of professionalism from this author: "First, I don't mind negative reviews; this is my 4th book".
   To post a positive review to off set the candid reviews from others, I find that to be very amateurish.
   I have written the author in the past as she suggests only getting some nasty response back from her.
   If you want a great book on MySQL go with the MySQL Tutorial By Laura Thomson, Luke Welling.
   The book is written very well and has a 4.5 star rating with no pump from the authors.



5. I'd like to counter some of the negative reviews of this book because a) many seem to miss the point of the book, and b) because I've found it to be quite useful. I'm not exactly the target audience, as I had some previous experience with an earlier version of MySQL. However, I managed to forget a whole lot and wanted a refresher course. Usually, when I see a book claiming to do anything in "24 hours", I'm pretty skeptical, but in this case, 24 hours is actually pretty conservative. Regardless of experience, I'm sure most readers will fly through the first eight or nine hours (or chapters) much faster.
   
   Lets address some of the criticisms: First, this is clearly an introductory book as the title suggest. Any expectation that this is somehow a reference book will be disappointed. This is not exhaustive, nor is it comprehensive. When first approaching something new, I don't appreciate being inundated with more detail than I can digest. I'd rather get up and running quickly before discovering the details.
   
   I believe the criticism that the book assumes you have MySQL installed and configured already is valid. The book does help you get installed, but it's conveniently not included in the "24 hours" portion of the book. In my experience, the installation and configuration is not straightforward at all and that WILL add time to your learning process.
   
   Overall, I feel that the book has enough information to be useful, but not so much that it overwhelms the beginner. I haven't read every introductory book on this topic, but I don't really feel like I need to because Meloni's book was entirely sufficient. Perhaps there's something better out there, but since I worked through this book quickly and with great success, I'd say it's just fine. Meloni's writing style is simple and concise.
   
   The one recommendation that I might make would be to purchase Meloni's "Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache" instead. You don't get quite as much detail on MySQL itself, but you learn basically the same content, plus integration with PHP, which is what most people want to do anyway. Overall, I can safely recommend either book.

3 comments about Advergaming Developer's Guide: Using Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Macromedia Director MX (Game Development Series).

1. I love playing the games and this book tells the story behind some of the greats! Blockdot has a game site called www.kewlbox.com where you can play all of them!



2. If you are an advanced Flash or Director user this book might be tolerable, but as a beginner it is HORRIBLE. I have spent 3 hours so far on the first tutorial. Not because the concepts are difficult, but the descriptions in each step are so awful. Most simply, they don't explain the basic principles of how to do things, but then just jump into tutorials telling you to do things like " Set up a new layer and type this into the actions panel". How do I set up a layer, where is the action panel? The book never told me.
   
   Even if you are an advanced user, the tutorials are very poorly set up. For example on one step they tell you to place a bunch of items on the timeline. After placing all 15, in the next step they start referring to different layers that the items are on and how to manipulate them. What they didnt tell you at any point before is that you were supposed to put all the items on specific layers and that the layers have to have specific names that they refer to later. How could this book possibly have gotten past any editors?
   
   Conceptually: Great idea. Could be a very handy book.
   In execution: Don't know how it ever got published.



3. I am a Marketing Manager and also a shockwave/flash developer, so this book was one of those books that I "must" have, and the content is interesting... as MKT Manager, some concepts about "Viral Marketing" and Case of studies of success branding campaign using Advergames, the interview with the Big Fishes of the ADgames revolution... was really inspirational.
   
   For developers, is ok too... Is like a novice-intermediate users level of concepts and programing tricks... not bad... at all... of course you can find more advanced Lingo/actionScript books around, but this one, have the concept of the Marketing oriented games, and concepts about Branding and public profile search, that you will find in Marketing books...
   
   In resume, if you are a Marketing Manager, a lingo/ActionScript geek fan, or you are looking to know better whats the latest move of advertisements in the digital era... this book will help you

1 comments about Principles of Program Analysis.

1. As the title suggests the book discusses various approaches to program analysis and it discusses these approaches is pretty good detail, though purely theoretical with small WHILE languages. It would have helped to have used a real live example by considering a small chunk of any of the generally used languages. It has good appendices that covers on some mathematical concepts but be warned you need know your math, the kind described in Glynn winskel or John reynolds book, before you dig into this one.

   I rate it as 4 star as it gives the information on how to approach program analysis from the theoretical side. Also, reading it made my life easy when working with some code on flow analysis. I would say it definitely requires 2 readings for the info to settle inside. The appendix on Partially Ordered Sets is much more comprehendable than in Winskel.

   In simple words, if u r good at theoritcal math used with languages and are interested in implementing and understanding various analysis that can be performed on programs then this is book would be a great aid.

5 comments about Running MS-DOS: Version 6.22 (Running Series).

1. This book is full of hands-on exercises, accurate examples, and a very good starting point for those of us who still have to deal with MS-DOS. Even though many claim that DOS is gone, it is alive an kicking within Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 98, and only true experts of DOS receive a full appreciation of a command line and automated tasks that DOS environment offers over GUI.



2. Best, easiest to understand and fun to read. This book more than any other laid the foundation for my understanding of computer science.

   Thank you Mr. Van Wolverton!

   P.S. Just buy it -- you will be glad you did.




3. I was looking for a fundamental DOS book covering basic and network commands, scripts, and a reference. What I got was a book written before Windows 95 with no updated network Commands and a reference not formatted like a dictionary but more like a written chapter. It is a great first book for DOS but I wish I noticed the publish date.



4. This book is simply the best reference source for MS-DOS. Easy to read and providing in-depth coverage of all DOS commands, this book covers version 6.22 as well as letting you know when a command first appeared and in what version of DOS.

   If you wanted only one book on DOS, this is the one!




5. Thank you for your quick and prompt service the item was as said it arrived quicker than what was implied.

3 comments about LightWave 3D 8 Character Animation.

1. Finally, a comprehensive book on the art of character animation that goes beyond "push this button, now push that one".
   With a background of traditional animation (like Brad "incredibles" Byrd and John "Pixar Honcho" Lassiter), Timothy Albee focuses on how to use the tools within Lightwave to create characters with personality. And it's the character's personality that makes an animation memorable. This is the best book on Character animtion using lightwave that I've seen, and a great resource for learning about the art of animation regardless of your tools of choice.



2. This book is very good for learning animation, regardless of the software package you use. The one think I must say is that its hard to just jump to a chapter and start from where you want. From chapter 9 on is what interested me the most, the book didn't make it easy to just pick up from there and run. Well written, and great to practice from.



3. This book is 482 pages long, and the second half of it is not Lightwave-(or even 3D)-specific: general concepts of animation like follow-through, squash-and-stretch, etc. Everything in this section has been said before, and more eloquently, in many other books on the topic of animation.
   
   The first half (which IS Lightwave-specific) is a step-by-step tutorial for building a rather esoteric IK rig for a humanoid character. I didn't find it helpful--nothing in the exercises seems designed to expand the reader's understanding, it's just a recipe for reconstructing Albee's rig. I suspect any reader without a previous understanding of how bones work in Lightwave will be completely frustrated.
   
   If you're a beginner looking for a technical resource to animating in Lightwave, this is definitely *not* it. Any potential buyers should browse through a copy before buying this.

4 comments about Java Software Solutions, AP Version.

1. This book should be called Java Software Solutions for a Complete Idiot. This is, for example, how they introduce some of the OOP concepts (p. 58):

   "A data type defines a set of values and operations -- what we can do with those values"... [a type does not define a set of values!] ... "An object is defined by a class, which is like the data type of the object." ... "Once a class has been defined, objects can be created from that class." ... "Classes can be created from other classes using inheritance. That is, the definition of one class can be based on another class that already exists. Inheritance is a form of software reuse. We are taking advantage of the ways some classes are alike. One class can be used to create several new classes. These classes can then be used to create even more classes."

   And so on, the whole book. "This book is written by a robot. This book should be read by you. Commas are not used in this book..."

   Here is how they introduce algorithms (p. 123):

   "One basic design issue is defining the algorithms to be used in the program. An algorithm is a step-by-step process for solving a problem. A recipe is like an algorithm. Travel directions are like an algorithm. Every program uses one or more algorithms. Every software developer should spend time thinking about the algorithms before writing any code."

   Every software developer should spend time thinking before buying this book!

   Actually, the introduction claims this is an AP textbook:

   "This book is designed for both A and AB exam by identifying what material is required for each exam."

   That is exactly right, "identifying." But not teaching! I took the AB exam last year; here the whole AB stuff is crammed into two last chapters, 70 pages, including silly review questions. Not even close.

   Speaking of review questions... Question 1.3: "What happens to information when it is stored digitally?" Answer: "the information is broken into pieces, and those pieces are represented as numbers."




2. This is a hastily done book, since AP Comp Sci just switched to Java, which in itself was a bad decision ( I should take that up with CEEB)

   For example, before talking about variable scopes, it starts using the idiom - for ( int start=1; start <= MAXLINES; start++ ) { .... }- which in my opinion is bad for a beginner high school student.One can really get into trouble if one doesn't know what one is doing, especailly for high school students. One student that I know, spent all night working on the Stars program given in the exercise, unsuccessfully.

   On the other hand, Java Methods by Maria Litvin & Gary Litvin, clearly state this problem in their chapter 6 - "...But declarations inside nested blocks can lead to elusive bugs. We recommend that at first you avoid declaring local variables inside nested blocks unless you know exactly what you are doing."

   Don't get me wrong, I do like their other Java S/W Solutions by JLewis, et al - which is for a much more mature audience.




3. I am basically a math teacher with a lot of bright computer science students. Of all of the books currently available in Java for AP Computer Science, this was the hands down winner with the kids, especially amongst the one semester students who were taking the A test.



4. I was asked to teach an AP CS course and thought this looked like the safest bet - the kids hated it! It is clearly a hacked down version of the authors other Java books. Explanations are not clear and the book simply could not have been written in a less engaging manner. I will not use this book again and will avoid titles from this publisher.

3 comments about Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Second Edition.

1. I was forced to buy this book for my App Dev course. Im a begginner so im happy that there are plenty of easy to follow tutorials but im not so happy that there is no reference section. The index is really really really poor. You would think that because of the thousands of instructions in VB that half the book would be an easy to find reference. But no!..Diane makes you trudge through the tutorials step by step slowly building your knowledge. Its frustrating! One plus about this book is the included version of VB.net on 6 cds. I guess i saved money in that respect.



2. This book is very poor for teaching students new languages and I would never recomend it to fellow teachers. I had more problems with students trying to do problems from the book than any other. The author provides a nice example problem in each lesson, however she does not explain the purpose of any of her steps. Basically, she says copy this code and it will work. When the students went to do the exercises in my online class they had no idea becasue her one limited example did not give then enough practice or explanation of the concepts. The actual content of the book is not bad, just never use the book for an online class. The author needs to revise and have a number of different examples as opposed to just one.



3. I purchased this because it was the required text book for a class. I am not at all impressed with it and told the teacher to find a different one for next year. I find her style hard to follow and learn from.