2 comments about Visual Basic 2008 How to Program (How to Program (Deitel)).

1. The book is excellent in presenting a topic and then breaking it apart piece by piece so that you gain even further insight into what is being presented.



2. This is a detailed and comprehensive book on Visual Basic 2008. There are many examples and case studies (gradually developed) for a reader to hone his Visual Basic programming skills. He also gets to see how Visual Basic 2008 ties in with stuff like WPF, WCF, AJAX and LINQ. The reader who has worked through and mastered the book will be well-equipped to harness Visual Basic 2008 to develop real-world applications. A much easier book for a beginner is Simply Visual Basic 2008. Both books are highly recommended for anyone wishing to learn Visual Basic 2008.

5 comments about Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET.

1. The book provides a massive detailed walk through the construction of the domain-driven framework creation. It is in Jimmy Nilsson's conversational tone and that makes the book very interesting.
   
   I do wish there were a few diagrams to tie each chapter together, but that is for the reader to do.



2. I like the author's modesty (very ofter his sentences start with "I think"), his rational thinking and his quoting the relevant big guys. He uses a very nice and simple language throughout the book which makes it an easy read. But sometimes, he is dragging on a subject for too long, for that I have to give it 4.5 stars.



3. I have come back to this book after first digging into it when it first came out. At that time, I got bogged down and never really made it very far into the book. Here's why: A reader needs a basic conceptual familiarity with DDD before tackling this book. I'd suggest Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Addison-Wesley Signature Series). You might be able to get a running start by reading the free e-book "Domain Driven Design Quickly" (http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/domain-driven-design-quickly), but the Fowler book is particularly helpful, since it catalogs and explains a number of the patterns used in Nilsson's book.
   
   Don't assume this book is outdated because it uses NHibernate instead of LINQ or the ADO Entity Framework. If you are a true DDD developer, neither product is quite 'there' yet, and NHibernate remains the best ORM framework available. And if the Entity Framework does become a viable ORM product in Version 2, the skills taught in this book should transfer easily.
   
   In short, this book presents a really good nuts-and-bolts approach to explaining how to do DDD, but it assumes you already have a pretty good understanding of what DDD is all about.



4. I really cannot figure out how this text has received so many good reviews. The writing style feels like a stream of consciousness from an old colleague after he's been through a really heavy working day, and as for the contents.. well it's a boring mix and rehash of concepts that I hope are familiar even to any decently experienced .NET developer. Like: since you are using a Object Oriented language after all, do model the business you are trying to help with your software with classes, use design patterns when appropriate, test your model and possibly write your test as a means to develop your domain model more clearly, use an Object Relational Mapper like NHibernate to save yourself most of the trouble in solving the Object-Oriented/Relational mismatch etc etc.. All these ideas have been knows to Java developers for ages. True, .NET is behind in test/patterns/model driven design.. but guess what, why is that so? Because if this is the most introductory , detailed, applied, hands on text dedicated to these subjects, well you .NET guys are in big trouble ... And surely no book can introduce them all like this one aims to do, especially if its teaching style is teaching NHibernate saying: "You will find lots of examples of .config files to copy and paste from the NHibernate site so I won't go into detail here, but I 'll just take it for granted that you have a suitable .config file in place". Well, Jimmy, I can find all the documentation I need on that site, but then why on earth did I spend 50 bucks on your tome? As a door stopper? Next time you write a book instead of filling it with unfocused, "high level", vague rambling give some solid, concrete, practical tech help and tutorial. What pisses me off is that the author of this book is a competent developer and a smart guy, but still can come up with such a fluffy, boring, vague, bs-oriented text, and as a final touch cannot resist the temptation to throw in his N(ilsson)Workspace nth level of indirection when we already have a repository, an ORM ... And I always thought that squeezing one own name into a piece of software was the sure signature of a beginner...



5. I really enjoyed reading this book. Jimmy has a very conversational writing style. He will show some code, talk about the pros and cons, make a change, talk about that change and repeat until he has something he is satisfied with. This was very helpful to me as it demonstrated that he has gone through the same growing process that we all need to take as software developers. He is not lecturing from a tower; he is a common programmer who has be able to develop some excellent techniques through research and experience working with others who also seek to be the best they can. His examples are clear and meaningful. He shows how you can actually use TDD to grow a domain model, which is something that has certainly been lacking from other resources I have used in the past. I read the book because I feel like my dev team needs a better focus and I am now more convinced that DDD and TDD will help us focus on creating maintainable code for our enterprise.

5 comments about MySQL Pocket Reference: SQL Functions and Utilities (Pocket Reference (O'Reilly)).

1. It's handy, but a little old and too brief with important parts left out. It needs to be updated and improved. Ie: The admin commands are poorly covered. Do not use this book to help you use Grant or Revoke. The Grant All section is simply wrong.



2. MySQL has gained a lot of functionality after this book was done, but if you are a infrequent developer and like to have a quick reference into basic MySQL functions this book is great.



3. Reese hits a solid triple to start the inning off and scores easily on the wild pitch thrown by the reader who says that the GRANT section is wrong. This book works easily and appropriately at your deskside. I found the book to be a very simple, easy-to-navigate reference text that presents the most important aspects of MySQL in the quickest, most logical manner. It is very easy to thumb through with every possible random page landing at a topic of interest. In a way, it was like working with a familiar dictionary, you know the kind, where you just kind of naturally crack it open near the word you're accessing and flip a couple of pages either direction to arrive at the exact reference location. In that vein, I'd perhaps recommend that the margins contain "bread crumbs" telling us where we are in the book, but it isn't necessary since thicker sections often obviate themselves with just another page turn. Each page does have the chapter title in the margin, so my point is really one of nit-pickieness rather than a true critique. To its credit, the layout of the book presents the content in a manner that follows the O'Reilly "risen bar" standard. It is easy to scan through the entire reference flipping pages as quickly as possible so that you are able to arrive at your sought information within as much as a second or two. The bold text draws your eye to the page and the size of the page allows one to capture everything in a single glance. In my usage of the book, I found it very accurate and useful. I am a regular MySQL user and the formatting is very familiar to me. I highly recommend this book. If you are already familiar with SQL and the basics of database schema design, this is the perfect reference. I found it amazingly faster than loading the MySQL PDF manual and searching through potentially dozens of hits for the keywords sought. Even at the full cover price, this book is a value-added service at my side. The sections on operators, functions, stored procedures and triggers make this book an invaluable tool for the DBA or programmer who knows the material, but fails to remember every single aspect about the syntax AND who is tired of seeing that familiar: "You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near..." The text also finds welcomed complement from the numerous examples of using commands and SQL keywords. They are invaluable for immediately deciphering the sometimes too-numerous options of a command. I don't know that the book has taught me anything new at this point, but it certainly makes finding the details of what I already know much easier. Because of its brevity and its ease-of-use, it has made me want to play around with some of the various features of MySQL that I do not regularly use. That alone is going to teach me something new sooner or later! If your budget is constrained to a single reference item on MySQL, you can't go wrong with this very portable pocket reference. The back cover says: "When you reach a sticking point, but have to get to a solution quickly, MySQL Pocket Reference is the book you need." I agree completely.



4. George Reese's MY SQL POCKET REFERENCE 2ND EDITION covers Version 5.1 and provides SQL statements, functions, and insights into its variations and utilities. Explanations are accompanied by tables and examples for maximum efficiency.



5. I've always liked O'Reilly books, and this is no different. It's a small no-fluff reference that makes for a good read as well. The book is physically small enough to fit unobtrusively in your laptop bag without causing too much of a bulge.
   
   Since it is written as a pocket reference, it of course doesn't have all the commands or even all the variants/options for commands. What is does have are the commands and syntax that you are likely to use the most with some good examples.
   
   Just know what you are and are NOT getting. It's not a bible, a step-by-step, or a cookbook. It is (as it is labeled) a pocket reference, at which it excels. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Problem Solving and Program Design in C (5th Edition).

1. I have had a previous C class to the one that I am going through currently. While several of the topics seem to be well organized, there are important topics such as pointers that are poorly treated. Instead of devoting a chapter to pointers the author has scattered them over several chapters without an organized effort to insure the reader of this book understands this important subject. Even my instructor expressed his dismay at the poor treatment of pointers.
   
   There is the other problem of inadaquate explainations though out the book. As a student, this is not helpfull when I am trying to learn C.
   
   I do hope that the fifth edition will better organized. If it weren't for the college class requireing this book I would be more dis-pleased than I am. Are you are looking for a book to learn C from? My advise, look some where else.



2. I found this book to be rather elliptical in its description of fundamental aspects of C. As a beginner, I was mainly looking for instruction on how to do some particular task. Hanly and Koffman strive to place simple ideas in larger contexts. Clearly this is a defensible approach. Once I understood what was going on (frequently from other sources), I was able to read the book with some degree of appreciation. However, I still believe that this book is not a suitable introduction to C, at least not for a novice programmer. Its verbosity finally becomes too frustrating. I have one other complaint: How can the publisher charge so much money for a paperback?



3. Complaits about the verbosity of this problem solving wonder are not waranted, unless they have read the book from cover-to-cover. Top-down design with functions is the primary programming paradigm inherent in C's structured procedural setup. Selection structure and repetition/loop statements are next discussed. Modular programming - followed by data types and arrays - is central to getting real systems up and running in C. Passing input/output and arguments is easy...that is until pointers come along. Strings aren't as daunting as made out to be; longer sting concatenation and conversions to numbers are the lone murky area of string processing. Mathematical recursion is the idea of fracturing whole ideas and problems into component solutions, then repeating elementary algorithms as many times necessary to derive the desired output or variable storage. Structures and union types are a little sketchy, and are probably better presented in Deitels introduction to C. Text and binary file processing is simple, just be prepared for 'flags' and 'EOFs' (end of files). Queueing a linked list and database programming and the accompanying source code is available in later chapters. All in all, 700+ pages leave much to be desired in terms of ANSI C libraries and pointer arithmetic; character sets settle themselves. Four stars because of the solid intro writing - would have rated five-star had it given several large real-world systems to program.



4. This is a very good book for a person that has no idea what they are doing in program coding. It starts out very simple, and although the code is written for unix, it still is pretty much the same for windows compilers.



5. For those of you undecided about this book keep in mind that for some reason Amazon.com has decided to keep outdated comments posted on earlier editions of this item. This edition of the textbook was published on July 15 2006. There is only one comment that was posted after the date of release of this book. Why Amazon.com has kept the outdated comments I don't know. I do know that authors normally attempt to improve upon their work when publishing new editions - usually based on direct feedback from users, and also in the case of this subject to make the reader aware of techniques based on newer technology. So before making a decision to buy or not to buy this book, discount all the outdated comments posted here....they were made on older editions and don't reflect the improvements made on the newer material.

5 comments about Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API (Pro).

1. This book is very well written. Everything is explained in a simple manner. It gives you a good understanding of JPA.



2. Anything that requires getting a bunch of jars on the server classpath was deemed unsuitable for automated deployments. I wonder how people manage automated deployments and configurations, especially in a multi-server clustered environment.



3. Pro EJB3 is a great book. Having been using it for over last 6 month on my recent project, I can definitely say that this book is invaluable.
   
   Have been worked on EJB 2.x for many years and on several projects with different application servers (Weblogic, JBoss, WebSphere), I understand the basics of EJB. So I want not only understand the basic how-to in EJB3 and JPA, but also want to understand the in depth explanations on transaction, persistence context and different behavior in the new system.
   
   The book explain all these topics very well. I had brought other book (hibernate in action with JPA pdf version), but found that book was too focused on hibernate (even I was a fan of the previous edition of hibernate in action book). This book is well focused on JPA,and I really likes JPA APIs.
   
   The book author is really nice and accessible. I have emailed Mike questions and he consistently replied promptly.
   
   This book worth the money !!!
   
   Chester



4. This is the best book out there that explains in detail how JPA works with some good examples. I found the book to be well structured and easy to read.
   
   I would recommend this book for anybody who is looking to work with JPA.



5. This book is a joy to read. Object relational mapping is explained in a very simple manner. What I like about this book is that it explains a certain concept and then immediately talk about the specific use-cases when that concept/design may not be the best choice. The authors then give excellent suggestions and alternatives.
   
   Very good reading material, simple examples used to explain complicated concepts. Writing style of the authors is also very engaging.
   
   A very good buy.

5 comments about Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8.

1. This is a good book. It teaches many useful techniques and how lots of "how to" ideas. However, the faux site that is created isn't goal oriented which left me feeling like the book was just a collection of random things to do. It seemed disorganized at times when you would or wouldn't create another page from scratch vs. revamping one you had already made. It was not always clear why you would be better to take one approach vs. the other. Setting up the localhost environment was somewhat confusing, though not too bad.
   
   I will definitely use it frequently. Good information, good book, good deal.



2. This man makes a promise of a written format that can be followed. The writtng is NOT CLEAR and leaves much to the readers imagination of to what exactly the format should be. There is no CD so that you can see how the step by step process works. He names his files but does not show the real differences between how he is set up and how you can set up to fit your needs. I waisted my money. He claims in the book there is support which at best is terrible.
   
   The worst book I have ever bought on coding. If I were you try another writter.



3. This is a very good book for learning PHP, and surprisingly, most of the examples work right out of the book as he's written them, which seems rare for a programming book these days. The projects that he has you complete are highly relevant to what you'd actually be doing with PHP, and that makes it even better.
   
   The only trouble I had with this book was that he sure packed a lot of information into each chapter, and he didn't use the sidebars as much as I would have hoped. It's easy enough to follow along with the examples the first time, but if you want to go back again and figure out how he programmed a small detail, you'll never find it unless you reread the whole chapter again. All it would have taken was a few little bullets here and there in the margins to point out some of the off-topic stuff that was going on in the examples, and the book would be much more functional as a reference. As it stands, I probably will have to get a whole new book for that purpose.
   
   Also, the support on this book is phenomenal. I missed a small detail in Chapter 6 that caused my script to fail, and when I posted on the book's message board, I had a reply from the author in less than a day. That's a really cool added bonus.



4. I am a frontpage user that has set up static pages in a web site. I needed to move from static pages to dynamic pages using a database. I couldn't use PHP with FrontPage so I switched to Dreamweaver and needed a book that covered both dynamic pages and Dreamwaver. This book walked me through setting up the environment to have Dreamweaver work with Apache, PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin. I am completely non-technical so these areas were beyond my comfort zone but the book walked me through it very successfully. It then took me through CSS styles, setting up an online feedback form, setting up my first database and tying it into Dreamweaver. It also showed how to insert, delete and maintain records in order to keep the database up to date. This was an excellent book for a non-techie as it didn't take any knowledge for granted.



5. This book is written very clearly and is really easy to follow. I've learned a lot of other really useful stuff than just the PHP content, things that I now realise I should have been taught by the official Dreamweaver 8 book, but weren't. The PHP content for which I bought this book is fantastic - much better than another generic PHP/MySQL I have read, as this is tailored to the Dreamweaver 8 environment which takes a lot of the guessing out of the equation. This book is written by and for people who use Dreamweaver 8 in a practical situation. I'm still less than half way through my book and already feel like I've learned much more than I expected. Highly recommended. I'll be checking out Mr Powers' other books when I finish this one. Thanks David Powers, you're a genius!

5 comments about JavaScript: The Complete Reference, Second Edition.

1. The text is a very good and complete explanation of JavaScript. It describes the best usage of JavaScript with the latest common browsers at the time of writing (early 2004). There are numerous examples which express the programming ideas in a simple fashion.
   
   If you have programmed in other languages, JavaScript should be an easy learn with this book. Programs written in it tend not to be very long, as they are associated with a single web page. While JavaScript deals nicely with the various objects in a browser, like a window or document, the programs tend to have a procedural flavour.



2. This is a fairly comprehensive book. This is not the best "beginner" book. The "beginner" info is in there - but it's mixed with so much advanced stuff that it can seem overwhelming. If you have previous experience, there's a lot of good stuff here. This is an excellent "second book."



3. The future is Javascript. Being a Microsoft technologies fanatic, I always wanted to make use of the AJAX library. My javascript needed some brusing and this was the book I went after. The complete reference, and a good companion to HTML/XHTML Complete Reference. David Flaganan's book is good too. Both deserve 5 stars.



4. Arrived in specified time, no issues. Use the book all the time. Pretty good reference.



5. I think the line tends to fall between the programmer types and those of us with less of a comp-sci background on this book. I stepped up to this from Jeremy Keith's DOM Scripting after a wild self-teaching binge and enjoyed reading it. It's considerably less dry than you would expect from a book of its size and I thought the author did a good job of explaining more complex JS topics. That said, some topics were starting to show their age and it's overdue for a new edition.
   
   Overall it's a great introduction to people who want to pick up tricks across the entire gamut of JS and I found myself running into a number of objects and methods I wasn't very familiar with. When I'm looking for new JS ideas I would go to this one and start browsing sections I hadn't read as thoroughly. When I want to know exactly what is up with a given facet of JS, I go to O'Reilly's version, the Definitive Guide.
   
   My copy was from the library unfortunately and I miss it, but I'm still holding out for a third edition as it's getting a bit long in the tooth in some sections, but this is usually obvious (like pre-ajax coverage of the XMLHTTPRequest object).
   
   There is definitely room for both the definitive guide and this JS book on my bookshelf, however, and I personally thought it did a great job on prototypical inheritance for doing OOP-style JS.

No comments about ActionScript 3.0: Visual QuickStart Guide.

2 comments about An Introduction to Programming Using Alice.

1. For non-programmers who want to learn an object oriented language, Alice is a nice choice. At least as a pedagogic vehicle. As far as I know, there are no actual [or few] actual jobs for Alice programmers. But at the primary or secondary school level, Alice gets the main concepts common to many commercial OO languages across to students.
   
   Herbert introduces these concepts at a deliberately slow pace. Suitable for most of the targeted audience. The screen captures of the user interface are quite pretty, and help to hold the reader's attention. As compared with learning C++, say, where there is no intrinsic GUI. Plus, the mapping of conceptual objects to graphical objects in Alice is its main attraction. Very intuitive.



2. Not only did I save money from buying from Amazon, it also arrived in time for my first class. Excellenct service.

3 comments about Fortran 95/2003 for Scientists & Engineers.

1. This book is a good reference for programmers to have on hand and also a good book to read cover to cover to get a full understanding of fortran and its latest capabilities.



2. Well, I liked this book very much and therefore I want to write a short opinion/review on it (although I am short on time here and have never written an opinion on amazon before!). To put it concisely, this is a 'must have' book for any Fortran programmer. If you are shopping for a good Fortran book, this is what you are looking for! It takes you from the very first step and drops you off at a fairly high level around chapter 9. (And from where, I guess, instead of a book, you would like to consult your compiler's documentation!)
   
   My background is in financial engineering, and I was looking for some specialized number-crunching language to write my code in (real-time models). A friend suggested Fortran, and after consulting some serious people in physics/engineering, I decided to settle on it. My problem was that there were only a handful of Fortran books here, and only that many reviews on them. So I picked this one along with METCALF/REID/COHEN's 'fortran 95/2003 explained'. And I must say that a lack of quantity was compensated for by an abundance of quality.
   
   Chapman has also incorporated a lot of example code in this book, and that makes it worthwhile to cheat a bit before tackling a new chapter! He also stresses a lot on good programming practice, and his background makes us take his suggestions seriously. Those who work on mission-critical industrial strength code in financial industry know what I am talking about. So, if you are a newbie to Fortran, and want to learn it correctly the first time, you should consider this book. If you have a higher budget, consider METCALF et al. as an additional aid.
   
   my 2 cents!



3. This is a very nice book for someone learning the basics of Fortran (or even the basics of Fortran *and* the basics of programming, although nowadays I doubt there are many people having to learn Fortran as their first programming language). The pace of book is slow, with number of examples and useful programming advices scattered along the way, which makes it perfect for use in introductory courses, as well as for self-study for someone learning programming. For more experienced programmers, however, mentioned pace will be too slow; especially distracting is the use of both flow diagrams, and pseudo-code (often even in several, gradually more detailed, variations), for the solution clarification, before actual Fortran code presented. However, seems like there is no middle ground here - some of the other good Fortran books, like Fortran 95/2003 Explained (Numerical Mathematics and Scientific Computation) read like language manual, without much examples; thus Chapman book still well deserves recommendation for anyone that is learning Fortran for the first time; for an experienced Fortran programmer looking for reference text, it's probably better to search elsewhere.