5 comments about Exceptional C++: 47 Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions (C++ In-Depth Series).

1. This book is a collection of silly, unusable tidbits. The author discusses unimportant issues that most programmers have no need to know in order to create excellent c++ code. If this is how one becomes a C++ Guru, then count me out!



2. There seems to be a bit of confusion about what level this book is at. Based on some of the reviews I've read, I was a bit concerned that much of this book would fly right over my head, exploring advanced and obscure features. So let's get one thing straight: this is pitched at the same level as Effective C++, and has a similar structure and style.
   
   And it's not just a 'puzzle' book - although it does highlight some tricky issues to do with templates and name lookup, which might conceivably appear in an unimaginative job interview.
   
   And it's not just about the language feature of exceptions. All aspects of the language are covered, but the section on exceptions is particularly good.
   
   Nor is it 'advanced' in the sense that many practitioners of C++ would consider, e.g. template metaprogramming, or non-portable hacks that take advantage of memory layout of compilers. Instead this is advice at an intermediate level, assuming you know the syntax and purpose of C++, but exploring their most appropriate use.
   
   The structure of the book does involve a series of posed questions, but they differ wildly in how specific or general they are. You can see them more as a rhetorical device to frame the subsequent discussion, rather than questions you must answer (unless you want to retrospectively crown yourself guru of the week, of course).
   
   Each question is followed by a significant discussion of a particular language feature, and summarised advice and recommended principles. Therefore the book is similar in structure to Effective C++. There is some overlap between the books, although even where similar material is included, there is differences in how much detail is given.
   
   To some extent, this book is a victim of its own success. A lot of the advice given here can now be found in other books. But its legendary status means that like Effective C++, this is still essential reading as soon as you've graduated from introductory tomes.



3. This book presents advices more or less in the same format than books from the Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) serie. What is similar is that topics are divided in 47 small items of few pages each. The difference is that the author first ask questions to the readers or propose exercises and encourage the reader to put down the book and to take the time to think about the problem and then come back to read his answer. This format is more or less original as I have seen something similar in Tom Cargill C++ Programming Style (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) book.
   
   I have read this book pretty fast which is a good sign of my interest in a book but in the same time this book did not leave me a strong impression that will make me remember this reading for a long time. It is hard for me to say exactly why but I think that it is because most items focuses on very small details of C++. Some of these problems are very hard and probably is an indication that the book targeted audience is advanced C++ users which is not a bad thing by itself but I am not convinced that mastering these small details actually has a high impact on someone programming skills. It is probably just a matter of topic choices as I really appreciate much more the sequel than this book.
   
   My review will probably not affect your decision to read or not this book. You will have to read it to find out if you like it but hopefully I have been helpful to let you know what to expect from this book.



4. Just finished it. It may not be so apparent at first, but definitely you need it to find how to write a "perfect" C++ code.
   Of course, before reading this book, several intermediate books demand reading, such as "Effective C++", "More Effective C++", "Effective STL". Some system programming book may also need to be read. Otherwise, you may have no idea why you need this book.



5. This book and exceptional c++ series are the best book series, I have ever read. Its language and presentation of material is exemplary. I learned a lot from this book and suggest to anyone to leverage his/her knowledge.

5 comments about MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation.

1. When I started the wiki DharmaFlix.com, I had no experience in administering a wiki - just a hope and a prayer. For the vital information on wikis, which is in the details, I scoured the large amount of information available on the web, especially at the mediawiki website: http://www.mediawiki.org/. This was certainly helpful and got the site started. But I really wanted a comprehensive Bible of Wikis, that would allow me to grasp the full potentiality of this web development platform. I looked for a book to serve this need, and lo and behold, MediaWiki Administor's Tutorial Guide had just been published. Well I immediately bought it and read it cover to cover. It is very readable and I would think a current must-read for anyone desiring to found a wiki. DharmaFlix.com is flourishing very much because of this book and its author, Mizanur Rahman.



2. I think this book sells purely because there is little in the way of alternatives. The documentation in the MediaWiki wiki itself is patchy, jumbled, and confusing to navigate. I wanted a more 'polished' reference book, and this is the only book on Amazon devoted solely to MediaWiki.
   
   Content-wise it is _OK_. There is very little in here that isn't already available on-line, but at least it is presented in a more logical manner. The first half of the book is really aimed at contributors to MediaWiki, such as creating and editing a page, uploading and inserting images, and creating tables. True, Administrators will also need to know this, but it's probably safe to assume that anyone purchasing an "Administrator's Guide" already knows this. Certainly, it didn't teach me anything new. The second half gets more useful, covering administration of access rights, creation of skins, managing namespaces, and so on. That said, it does include huge swathes of code, which take up a fair bit of room - if you don't want to add the 'page rating' the author provides, then it's just a waste of space.
   
   The book is also missing some key information. There's a section on thumbnailing images, but the book neglects to mention that the functionality to deliver this isn't included in MediaWiki and has to be installed separately. (At least in the version I installed, but as there's no information provided on the different versions of MediaWiki there's no way of knowing whether this is why...) It's also vague on some tasks, such as "Figure out how to run PHP scripts from the command line."
   
   My biggest problem with the book is the quality of the writing. This is absolutely appalling. Maybe I'm a bit more sensitive to these things, being a Technical Writer by profession, but the amount of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes is absolutely shocking. I found almost 100 errors just whilst I was casually reading it - I'm sure there would be many more if I looked more closely. Most of these would have been detected by using a spellchecker, and many of the rest would have probably been picked up by Word's grammar checker. For the most part this is just annoying and distracting, but some, such as repeatedly misspelling the HTML HREF tag as HERF, are just unforgivable. It hardly puts ones faith in the author - if they can't get this right, what's the chance of the sample code being correct and actually working? But what is really shocking is that the book lists five editors, two reviewers and a proofreeader in the "Credits". None of these people deserve any credit whatsoever, as the quality of this book is below what I would expect from a 15-year old.
   
   In fact, I suspect that the book was actually written by a 15 year-old. The tone used, the examples (the wiki developed throughout the book is a wiki for ghost stories...), the logic of exposition, is all very 'youthful'. It's as though some teenager with an Internet connection and a bit of time on their hands had built themselves a wiki, and then someone had remarked to his parents "Wow, little Timmy knows so much about wikis I bet he could write a book on it!".
   
   Given the lack of competition you may want to go out and buy this book anyway. Just don't expect a detailed technical reference, and be prepared to overlook the frequent grammar and spelling errors...



3. I bought this book because I'd been looking in vain for information on customizing MediaWiki, having hit the proverbial brick wall trying to get beyond the basic configuration on my team's intranet wiki. I was a bit hesitant after reading earlier reviews mentioning that this book was poorly written, but bought it anyway being the *only* book available on MediaWiki.
   
   Given my prior (although minimal) exposure to MediaWiki, I was able to skim through the first four chapters rather quickly. The second half of the book has promising chapter titles, and does contain several code snippets & hacks, but I continually found myself wondering how a professional title made it to press with such poorly written prose. I found the explanations of key concepts to be rather circular, never clearly communicating "the big picture".
   
   Bottom line: If you're starting from scratch, this book should get you started & help as a reference if you need some hacks later on. Otherwise I'd skip it.



4. I am new to wikis and this was an excellent resource for me. Yes, there are a few errors here a there but I still consider it a very good reference. After this book you will be able to do more deep research on your own.
   
   This book is based on version 1.9.0, which is clearly stated in page 20.



5. I recommend the book "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" for editors of your custom mediawiki, but for administrators, this book: "MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide is well worth the $40.00.
   
   I like that this book covers so much, yet doesn't try to cover everything. I'm sure that you can find the rest of what you need for a complete reference by Googling and reading the mediawiki that supports mediawiki.

5 comments about Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost.

1. 
   Boost is great -- a set of portable libraries for C++ that makes a lot of common development tasks easier, esp. for those of us who target mutiple platforms with out code (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc). However, this book I feel is not much of an introduction at all. The chapter on scoped_ptr, shared_ptr, etc. is good, but there is so much that a beginning Boost developer needs that just isn't anywhere in this book. For instance, I can create a boost::thread on the heap, but I can't seem to wrap a boost::shared_ptr or boost::scoped_ptr around it -- at least, this book doesn't give me a clue how.
   
   Now, Boost is big -- there are dozens of Boost libraries, so I can't fault the book for not going into detail on every one of them. However, as an "introductory" book on Boost, I would have thought that the book would concentrate on the most commonly used Boost libraries -- boost::thread, for one. Every time i've had a question on a Boost library that i'm considering using that I can't find a decent example for, I look in this book and ... don't find any pertinent info about it.



2. The book is well-written, clear, and honest to the title -- it truly is an intro. In fact, it's honest to the title a bit too much: I found it shallow. It is very much like most of the other recent C++ books (although it's one of the better-written ones), that is it has a distinct publish-or-perish taste to it, like a paper produced by another graduate student who doesn't really want to write it but has to. Not enough depth. It is, however, free from many sins of this PhD-indited flood: it's NOT pompous, it IS simple and clear, it has no pseudo-scientific pretense in it. I mean it's almost good; just not enough indepth.
   
   Someone asked me recently, a bit confrontationally, well, you don't like anything, what's a good book then? No problem: books you tended to get a decade and more back; mostly written by practising professionals rather than CS PhD students; written by people motivated by either love of their work, or vanity, or greed -- all valid motivators, frequently resulting in good products. Unlike, I mean to say, the publish-or-perish imperative of the typical graduate student/newly minted PhD, who produce inflated and unnecessary, poorly written drivel about undeserving minutia. Abrash, Meyers, Stevens wrote good books. If you want STL, fine: Mark Nelson wrote a wonderful book on STL. It is unfortunately out of print (and behind the times a bit), but it's done right -- it really works on things, tweaks them, pokes them with a finger, looks inside, considers alternatives -- you end up really understanding the subject matter. Karlsson's book is well written, but along other books of the same kind (Josuttis, etc.) is limited to a verbal exposition of header files' contents with a teensy-weensy bit of sample code -- waaaaaay too little to be of much practical use. Whoever wants to write an STLish sorta book should check out Mark Nelson's book on STL and use it as a guide.
   
   To summarise: The book is not bad by any means, but is superficial. Bjorn Karlsson writes very clearly, which is good and is not to be taken for granted -- and I hope Bjorn Karlsson will rewrite this book to make it more indepth, augment it with things like, you know: not only WHAT can be done, but HOW it is done (dig into the library itself: for example, how can you not want to stick your nose into the lambda library? It looks magical, I want to know how it's done... It is completely inadequate simply to mention what it can do, add a two-liner example, and be off to something else). OK, so do I recommend this book? Er... uhm... it's OK. A Quick Intro Guide, if you know what I mean. From a fifty-dollar book you'll want more.
   
   So, I say, first go to boost and read what they've got there; I don't feel this book gets you more than the site itself -- jeez, what am I saying, of course it is less, it covers only a small part of the overall deal, but it's better written and more consistent. So, if you got fifty bucks to spare then get the book as well. I mean, it's an OK book. Were it sold for fifteen bucks, I'd give it five stars.
   
   ----------------------
   
   PS. Bibliography is deficient: there's a couple of standard formats any style guide will describe; neither is used in here: what we have here is a kind of home-brewn summaries w/o year, publisher, etc., just the title and authors. Also, it seems that only books from Addison-Wesley made it into the bibliography (hmmm....)



3. Boost is a series of libraries for C++ that provides extra functionality missing in the C++ standard library. Unless you're forced to only use what's part of the current standard, you'll want to lean heavily on Boost. And even if you can't use it for some reason, a lot of it is passing into the next version of C++, so you may as well get familiar with it now.
   
   This book covers the most immediately useful Boost libraries for the general audience. Topics include various smart pointers, including the vital shared_ptr, that makes STL container of polymorphic types much easier to deal with, extra casting operators, regular expressions, and the signal library, that provides a framework for implementing the observer design pattern.
   
   A large chunk of the book is devoted to functional issues, covering the bind, lambda and functional libraries, which work together to substantially extend the functor capabilities of the STL. Code making use of these libraries are a good deal more powerful than what's currently in the standard library, more readable (although that's not necessarily saying much), and might even make the dream of writing loop-free code with functors a reality.
   
   As an introduction to Boost, this is pretty good, which is just as well, given how little competition there is out there. Bjorn Karlsson writes well, and provides plenty of examples of the code in action. None of the examples are very long, however. In many places you'll find just enough to work out the syntax of the libraries, which you can then use with the API details that are also provided to get your own code working. It's not intended to be a very deep treatment of any of the libraries, however.
   
   If you're looking for an introduction to Boost's most immediately usable code, this is a good purchase.



4. This book doesn't add any value over reading the documentation that comes with Boost (and some of the Boost documentation is really terse). It fails to explain concepts clearly and there are almost no diagrams.



5. Lets distinguish: Boost is great, but this book is just not well written.
   It is technically shallow, it is exhausting and boring to read and the authors attitude seems arrogant and is nerving.
   
   I wouldn't buy this book again but recommend working through the docs on the boost website which are way better.

5 comments about Oracle Database 10g SQL (Osborne ORACLE Press Series).

1. The disorganization of topics is staggering. It covers a number of useful aspects about using Oracle SQL, but it fails to develop complete ideas. It can serve as a quick reference to moderately skilled programmers but so can the Oracle docs.
   
   Beginners may wish to try Learning SQL by Alan Beaulieu, and intemediates are better off with Oracle by Example by Alice Rischert, alas old hack are still looking for a book.
   
   Good Points:
   - Identifies the deference between ANSI/86 and ANSI/92, albeit in an indexed note on page #46. An improvement over labeling ANSI/86 as Oracle Proprietary syntax like another author does in a competing book.
   - SQL*Plus does show how to set a default editor.
   - Nice coverage of ROLLUP, CUBE, RANK, and MODEL functions.
   - While mislabeled as security (alternatively, missing content), the concept of roles, privileges, grants and synonyms is covered well in Chapter 9.
   - System reference cursors are covered at the basic level adequately.
   - There is an introduction to large objects but narrowly explored without useful examples.
   
   Weaknesses:
   - Non-equijoins are not well explained or demonstrated in Chapter 2.
   - Aggregation functions and behaviors are incompletely developed and limited to rather small examples in Chapter 3 without a nice reference to the other treatment in Chapter 7.
   - The SQL*Plus coverage should be more toward the front, and it presume a knowledge of the environment - clearly a bumpy road for a beginner.
   - The concept of scalar subqueries is missing, a single row subquery that returns a single column.
   - ANY and ALL are covered but not SOME, while they all work similarly the coverage is incomplete.
   - The differences between subqueries and correlated subqueries is not well developed. The key difference that a correlated subquery resolves for NULL values is an aside on page #176. The tuning chapter on page #537 and tip on page #175 fail to qualify when you should use correlation.
   - The DECODE and CASE statements have limited demonstration only in SQL statements, and the idea of merged and conditional inserts is limited to two pages in Chapter 8.
   - PL/SQL coverage is a like hopscotch and the Oracle documentation a better guide, especially to a newbie.
   - How to select the fields from a nested object or collection is missing.
   - Collections in Chapter 13 are dizzy and a comic relief of Johnny Depp reprise with scissors should snip the chapter out.
   - High performance tuning in Chapter 16 is missing.



2. The book is good for beginners, especially who do not know SQL. The book talked about basic SQL syntax, and SQL Plus at the beginning. It also covers advanced SQL at the second part which I just ignored.



3. It is a very good book for both who are beginning to learn SQL from scratch or those who are not too familiar with Oracle SQL databases. It introduces a lot of new 10g functionalities. Examples are given in almost most functions for easy understanding of practical usage. However, the book does not explain enough about the concept of storage about the Oracle 10g.



4. Oracle Database 10g SQL - Is a good book to read or reference concepts in detail. Author has covered good amount of concepts from basics of SQL to advanced SQL queries. But we were disappointed to find that the book doesn't come with exercises at the end of each chapter to practice and play on the concepts understood.



5. Maybe a little disorganized, but overall a pretty good reference. Lots of odd omissions though. For instance, the SUBSTR function can take negative number parameters but that is not shown. In the numeric functions, where are the GREATEST and LEAST functions? There is a list of conversion functions but no examples. If you've ever pulled your hair out over a deeply nested DECODE, you know some good examples would be nice. A few of the SQL*Plus SET commands are scattered here and there, but there is no list.
   Bottom line... not bad but needs more work.

5 comments about SCJD Exam with J2SE 5, Second Edition (Expert's Voice in Java).

1. Most of the time people who are preparing for SCJD will buy this book but it is good beyond that. Second edition give you practical example on actual project. It is kind of parallel to what you are doing in SCJD. Author is active member on javaranch and gives very useful tips to all post in SCJD forum. I think people who want to improve Java skills on application side should look into this book as well.
   
   I am using it for SCJD exam. Good luck to all.



2. It is one of the best books on latest version of SCJD J2SE5. It gives you insight of project and way to complete your SCJD project with confidence. You should buy if you are preparing for SCJD like me.



3. This book gives you all information you are serching for to start your project. This is one of the best book available right now for Developer exam



4. The SCJD assignments are somewhat vague and misleading. While part of the exercise is to work through imperfect requirements (as those you will find in the real world), a good set of 'must' requirements needs to be met. The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 5 book fills in the gaps for common questions a SCJD candidate may have on areas such as packaging, logging and Javadoc. More importantly, the authors walk through a sample project detailing key areas of importance to your SCJD assignment; including RMI, Sockets, serialization, Swing, threads, design patterns, value/transfer objects and more.
   
   If you are going to do the SCJD assignment, you should purchase this book. You will find yourself developing the assignment the 'right' way and you will also find yourself working many of the author's suggestions into your workplace.
   
   The code for the sample project is provided online for reference purposes.



5. Even if you decide not to seek Java Developer Certification you owe it to yourself to read this one. You won't find any better coverage of threads and RMI anywhere.

5 comments about Professional DotNetNuke ASP.NET Portals.

1. This book is an excellent book for DotNetNuke.
   It gives complete picture about how we can utilize the functionality of the DNN to make portal on the fly.
   It is a great book to have with you when you decide to use DNN to built your portals.



2. When I first say DNN and the interface I was impressed until I tried to actually use it. The book is by far poor and riddle with mistakes and a discombobulated mess. I would not recommend anyone using DNN or buying the book.



3. hard to read, not complete, messy but still something that brings you forward when you have no access to other resources.
   Still compared with what you can download for free from the DNN homepage (especially the training videos) this book is a waste of money and time for the novice as well as for the experienced professional.



4. If you are hoping to get help installing DotNetNike you will be disappointed in this book.



5. An interesting enough background history of DNN with a bit of technical information thrown in and put into context. But don't buy this book if you expect it to help you build your own modules.

5 comments about Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Administrator's Companion (Administrators Companion).

1. As an MCSE, I gave this book 4 stars for two reasons: the CD contains a 120 day trial version of Exchange 2003 Enterprise Edition, and the text provides a good overview of Exchange 2003 features suitable for MCSE test prep. I did not rate this book with 5 stars because it is presented as an "Administrator's Companion," which I felt was stretching it a bit. As a previous reviewer has stated, there are better alternatives for strictly "desk reference companions" to Exchange; however, I was pleasantly surprised by how readable the book was, given that it is a Microsoft Press publication.
   
   For example, on page 9, the authors define policies thus: "Policies are collections of configuration settings that are applied to one or more Exchange configuration objects." The authors continue to define various policies in pretty basic terms. On page 268, the authors describe how to create a policy using step by step directions: "To create a server policy, right click the Systems Policy container, point to New, and then choose Server Policy." The instructions are also accompanied by extensive screen shots. While other reviewers found the screen shots redundant to the narrative, I feel comforted by the screen shots that match my screen when I am attempting to implement a procedure by following the text.
   
   The book begins with an introductory chapter that provides a good review of the uses and concepts of Exchange, but is probably a waste of time for experienced users of Exchange. The following chapters include detailed instructions relevant to: planning, deployment, upgrading and migrating to 2003, functionality, security, maintenance (including disaster recovery and troubleshooting), and a fairly decent glossary. The authors also invite commentary and suggestions to their email sites: benglish@networknowledge.com and books@walterglenn.com. Both authors are MCSE and MCT certified.
   
   I would recommend this book for those new to Exchange or preparing for the Exchange Server exam. Administrators looking for a thorough desk reference on the subject should try Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 24seven, ISBN: 0782142508.



2. Hi, this book introduced me the Exchange Server 2003 and was very helpful in my understandable of the software itself.
   I've read the comments people posted here about this title and found them misplaced.
   The book is very good and covers an wide area of Exchange 2003 administration. It also explains how the software works and gives you a lot of hints about implementing security in your environment.
   I didn't rate this 5 stars because it's not SO EASY to find information you that you need for now inside the package. Sometimes you endeavour ours searching chapter by chapter, until find what you want.
   If people rated this so poorly and rated Exchange Server 2003 Resource Kit so richly, I believe the last one to be the best book about exchange ever.
   I hope to help customers who are intended to buy these books, cause I appreciate these kind of constructive analyse.



3. This is a great book for getting starting in Exchange. You are not going to get it all, but you will have enough to be quite competent in the software.



4. This is a good book for an intro to Exchange. No secrets in here - just the basics.



5. I've edited this review because I feel I may have been a bit too harsh. It is a good book, just not what I was looking for.
   
   I need information on how to maintain an existing infrastructure and this was more in line with setting up the infrastructure. I need more of the "how to" stuff. There's not too much of that in here. If you want to know what makes Exchange run, without too much detail, then this book is for you. If you need to fix Exchange, then you need another book, and I'm still looking for that book. It just seems to hit lightly on a ton of stuff, but not deep enough on any one thing to give you a real understanding, or a way to glue it all together.

5 comments about Solaris 10: The Complete Reference (Complete Reference Series).

1. This book is NOT a true reference book for Solaris 10. Rather, it introduces Solaris 7-9 to a novice Unix user with only a few references to Solaris 10 features. And even on those few Solaris 10 items, there are not enough examples or configuration ideas. Based on the paucity of relevant information, one could not even use this book to determine if an upgrade to Solaris 10 is warranted.
   
   The purchase of this book was a complete waste of money.



2. The biggest disappointment for me was no discussion of SMF. If these reviews were here before I bought the book quite a number of months ago, I would not have gotten it. It is indeed a rehash of Solaris 9 ideas. It would have been very helpful if there was some discussion on how to control your own inet connections by modifying an XML template -- but alas there is no mention of this in the book. The one person who rated this a five has obviously not used Solaris 10 very much other than some very basic issues. Any system administrator book probably would have worked for that person.



3. I bought this book because it was the most appropriate book on Solaris 10 that I could find at the bookstore. I am a long time Solaris system administrator, but I wanted a book that specifically talked about the new features of Solaris 10.
   
   I didn't know about SMF when I bought the book, but it's a pretty important feature that replaced previous methods of system management in Solaris. I just can't believe that this book does not even mention it. I see other people have complained about the same thing.
   
   I also noticed that the book did not give a good overview of the installation. I had to go online to look up anything I didn't know about in regards to the install since the book just didn't discuss it.
   
   I gave this book a two star rating because it's an okay general Solaris reference book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.



4. This book not only doesn't really cover Solaris 10 but previous ones, but also is so full of mistakes, that I am really glad I had the opportunity to check it without buying.



5. Most of the services for Solaris 10 are under control of the service management facility (smf - try 'man smf') and the svcs and svcadm command. You can't start, stop, disable, or enable most services without it.
   
   This book doesn't even mention them. It still refers to /etc/init.d/ scripts (some are still there but most, such as the various nfs and automount services are not).
   
   This isn't a linux or general unix book - the book has 'SOLARIS' on the cover and should reflect Solaris.

5 comments about Perl for Dummies (Fourth Edition).

1. I bought this book to 'fill in the gaps' after several years of perl programming. It is providing valuable insights into new areas as well as being easy to learn from. This is particularly true in the area of databases and what different language versions can do. Highly recommend.



2. This was my first book for PERL and let me tell you, it was the worst written piece of garbage I have ever read. This book lives up to its name - it makes you feel like a dumbass. This is due to the authors approach in showing you PERL. Rather than breaking down the structure and powerful commands (telling you what they are and what they can do), he instead takes the approach of just showing you countless examples of complex code that the reader hasn't been properly introduced to. To show an example of how to use the chomp command, he buries it within examples along with other commands that he hasn't even talked about. That is confusing for a beginner. If you knew how to read his code, you wouldn't need this book in the first place.
   
   I recommend going with O'Reilly books instead. They tend to take a systematic approach, discussing and breaking down the structure and use of specific commands and then showing you small examples using only the code and commands they already discussed. Believe me, it is better than dummies approach of making you try to read a 50 line code example to see what a specific command can do.
   
   Stay away from the dumies series. All these books do is make you feel like a dummy.



3. I BOUGHT PERL FOR MY GRANDSON AND HE WAS VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK. AMAZON WAS VERY CHEAP COMPARED TO OTHER COMPANIES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE BETTY WEEKS



4. This was the first book that I used to learn Perl. I would agree with some of the other reviews that it would be tough to learn Perl with just this book. I ended up filling in some of the gaps with "Learning Perl" by Randal L. Schwartz.
   
   The book is an overview of the language and its different uses. It uses a lot of small snippets of useful code for examples which is great when you need that snippet. However, chapter 4 is the only example of a fully written out program and is only used to illustrate what a program would look like. You will not find a fully written out solutions or examples here.
   
   This, in addition to its spartan coverage on certain advance topics, can make parts of the book not very useful and confusing. Do not get this book if you want to learn about the following subjects as it covers them only briefly:
   -Object-oriented programming with Perl
   -Perl modules
   -CGI scripting or other involved server-side scripting
   -XML processing
   
   I basically use Perl for data munging and not for web purposes. I generally need to write a quick and dirty script to munge some legacy data. To this end this book is valuable to me. It is a good reference for remembering the quirky Perl syntax. I keep it handy when I need to remember how to write a section of code. I use it as a mini "Perl Cookbook".
   I would give it:
   4 stars for teaching the basic language
   3 stars for coverage of advance material
   5 stars for basic reference of regular expressions and data structures.



5. The book is well written and useful. I've a need to write scripts and
   do some coding in my job. I feel that this book will help me get past some of the disconnects, in my way of thinking, when it comes to programming. As a Hardware designer I can understand a piece of logic. But I've often struggled with interpretting or writing my own code.

No comments about Foundations of Qt® Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source).