5 comments about C# Cookbook, 2nd Edition (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)).

1. If you are just coming into C# or have been doing it for a while - it doesn't matter - BUY THIS BOOK!!! Oreilly as we all know, makes very good tech/programming books and this one is one of the best I've had so far. This will be a book that will spend much less time on my shelf and much more time next to me on my desk.



2. I came across a project that had to do with XML, and I came to love this book. It has a lot of suggestions that helped me jump start my project.
   
   I wouldn't recommend this book to learn C#- (pick up John Sharp C# step by step for that.)



3. I'm an intermediate coder, familiar with programming and I have about 1.5 years programming C#. I've already used this book(C# Cookbook 2nd edition) to write C# code navigating in and around directories and files. The examples in the book regarding "Directory Info" and "File Info" were so clear and concise, I was able to complete my programming task with almost no lost time to the learning process. What I like most was that there was not one example, but many examples for the most used functionalities. This book has already paid for itself when I consider the time it saved me the first time I needed it!



4. This is a good intro book that eliminates the need for some of the first books I bought on C#. When compared to other "cookbooks", however, this book is incredibly weak (see: XSLT Cookbook, SQL Cookbook). If you have used C# for more than 6 months, you will know how to iterate over an array, to use String.IsNullOrEmpty, get the index of a value within a string, and use a generic arraylist. These are just some of the junior "recipes" you'll see in this book. The "recipes" just exercise the fundamentals (i.e. how to boil water) rather than how the fundamentals work together to solve complex problems in elegant ways. The easier the concept, the more information. There isn't really any analysis or best-practice justification present. I'd like to see some performance analysis of generics or at least some depth on partial methods. Nothing to see here for mid-level developers. Not written or organized poorly, just simple. If it were titled "Intro to C# by example", I'd give it a higher score.



5. [Reviewed by XPSD member Steve Grubbs]
   
   Summary
   
   I wanted to check out a C# cookbook after developing in C# for almost a year. I figured I should get a basic understanding of the language and the .NET framework by using it for awhile before I buy such a book. That said, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to get the C# Cookbook the day I started developing in C#.
   
   Overall Review
   
   I see two main criteria for reviewing a programming language cookbook.
   
   1. The quality of each "recipe"
   2. The recipes chosen for the book
   
   The C# Cookbook handles each recipe very well, which we should definitely demand of a cookbook. It has a very simple 4-section format, Problem-Solution-Discussion-See Also. The problem is briefly stated first. The solution is almost entirely code samples, with minimal commentary. The discussion is usually short and sweet, with a few exceptions. The "see also" points to reference topics in the MSDN help, which is of questionable usefulness, since you can search the topics yourself; but, is short enough to skim over easily.
   
   The recipes chosen for the C# Cookbook range from very useful to trivial. One of the trivial examples would be something like, converting degrees to radians. The only language specific feature here is Math.PI, which I don't think is worth the page it's printed on. What I found surprisingly useful were some code samples that I spent time coming up with on my own before reading this book, like a custom trace class that outputs in XML. Fortunately, most of the examples were in the useful category.
   
   A few glaring topic omissions are remoting, ADO, and advanced object serialization.
   
   Per-Chapter Review
   
   * Numbers - somewhat trivial
   * Strings and Characters - good introduction to the C# string
   * Classes and Structures - good stuff on interfaces, casting, converting, COM interop
   * Enumerations - simple, but short and useful
   * Exception Handling - an underrated topic that I'm happy to see covered
   * Diagnostics - a surprisingly useful set of tools to help with debugging
   * Delegates and Events - very good intro for the new C# programmer
   * Regular Expressions - very good intro for the new C# programmer
   * Collections - a little simple, could have more useful samples
   * Data Structures and Algorithms - simple, but good if more advanced types are required
   * Filesystem I/O - very good examples of file I/O in C#
   * Reflection - a necessary intro to reflection, but a bit simple
   * Networking - biggest complaint: Why is there no remoting?
   * Security - a good survey of various security issues in C#
   * Threading - a good intro to threads and basic synchronization in C#
   * Unsafe Code - I tore out and burned this section
   * XML - good intro to reading/writing XML in C#

5 comments about C++ Programming: Program Design Including Data Structures, Third Edition.

1. This book doesn't flow at all. It is hard to follow along. I am a beginner and this book almost has turned me off from programming all together. I recommended looking for another book.



2. This is my first review of any book after buying many books from Amazon over the years. Generally I find reviews helpful when considering purchases, but I always take them with a grain of salt and supplement it with my own research before making a buying decision. I'm writing this review because I had such a negative experience with this book.
   
   A little background on myself. I'm a self-taught programmer mostly working commercially in Visual Basic for the past 7 years. I've also done a lot of studying in C and C++, and recently decided to get a B.S. degree to further my career. My first course was programming fundamentals, and the textbook couldn't have been worse. I already knew much of the information covered in the first half of this tome, but I can honestly say it was poorly presented _to the beginning programming_ student. I'm not saying Malik doesn't know what he's talking about, I'm saying he tried to present C++ fundamentals to the absolute beginner and did a poor job of it. The first half of this book should have been cut, and the second half made its own book and be used in an intermediate course.
   
   He repeats himself ad nauseum. Some might argue this is an effective teaching tool, however he goes to great lengths to repeat himself on even the most easy to understand concepts. The end result is you feel like you're swimming upstream making no progress, and I don't say this because I already know the basics. He takes pages and pages to explain even the most simple concepts to the point where you get frustrated and start to speed read or skip portions just to slog through the chapter. There is a word for this style of writing, it is called prolix.
   
   The example programs were also poorly thought out. True, they make use of topics covered in the chapter (as any example ought to), but the "problems" (from a very high level view, all computer programs can be classified as solving one or more problems) they attempt to solve are the most mundane, boring examples imaginable. I can't see how any beginning CS student would want to keep programming after seeing the types of programs written in these examples. They could come away with the idea that all programs are like this. First of all, they are far removed from any real-world program. This is partly a consequence of GUI and platform dependent programming being an intermediate to advanced topic (at least in C++). Because of that, the examples should have been the bare minimum necessary to show how the chapter's topics are used. Instead, they go on and on at great length with a huge problem which incidently makes use of the chapter's topics instead of coming up with a program that actually does anything useful. And if a program is useful, it just might be interesting. If it's interesting, the student just might learn more! Keeping the student interested in the topic is by far a better approach to teaching than just repeating yourself and using boring examples. In all fairness, many programming books also take this (bad) approach, but Malik's book overdoes it.
   
   Unfortunately, my school required this textbook for the C++ classes so I did not have any choice but to buy this book. If, however, you have the freedom to choose your own C++ text, I encourage you to look elsewhere. Unfortunately I don't have any other texts that I've read and could recommend.



3. By about page 689 I had read the word "suppose" once too often. Mr. Malik's coherence fell apart when he got to the object-oriented stuff, and he started to use examples to *start* explanations. His meandering paragraphs begun with the word "suppose" are generally not helpful. Don't let chapter 12 (Inheritance and composition) discourage you, though. It's the worst of them and it gets better after that.
   
   If you like to highlight your textbooks you will be frustrated by this book. You will spend a lot of time pondering if you really want to highlight an entire 12-line paragraph when what is explained could be stated in a single sentence. So, here's a hint: Read each section between the purple headings through before highlighting anything. Sometimes you'll find your concise sentence further on. If you don't, make use of the white space to write one yourself. This will aid in memory, and save your highlighter.
   
   This should have been a shorter book, and the object-oriented stuff should have received some editing for clearer, more concise language.
   
   The example code is redundant and the explanations unnecessarily long. Each problem is exhaustively set up and explained, with code segments that are duplicated in the finalized code. You'll find yourself skipping the setup of the problem and going right to the finalized code to see if you understand it, and invariably you will, because it is not complex. The examples are uninteresting and demonstrate things that are simple.
   
   One really nice feature of this book? You don't have to get 300 pages into it before it will lie flat on your desk. It stays open nicely and has bright, white pages.
   
   A summary of the contents:
   
   One chapter on computers, programming languages, the process of writing a program, and a description of and background on C++.
   
   Almost six hundred pages on non-object-oriented C++ language stuff. It does not assume you already know programming. Tiringly verbose, but seems comprehensive and well-organized.
   
   About 350 pages on the object-oriented features of C++. It's not difficult material but it's not explained coherently. If this is the stuff you are most interested in you will be disappointed.
   
   About 300 pages on applying C++ to algorithms, such as searching and sorting, liked lists and binary trees. Classic first-year CS course material. Perhaps the best-presented part of the book.
   
   A chapter on the Standard Template Library.



4. As far as the quality of the book is concerned, pages keep falling out from the binding.
   
   I purchased this tome of boredom to complete some classwork in Data Structures and I have to say the book is completely awful. The worst part is the assignments. If they're not entirely boring or useless, they have the rare implementation that more information cannot be found on elsewhere, so you're essentially stuck with the author's poor explanations.
   
   A good example would be the simulation assignment in Chapter 18 with queues. I keep looking at it and the explanations are so insufficient or meandering that I don't know where to start, or what I should be doing -then I realized this is the first time in an assignment that I had to depend directly on the book. I tried understanding the RPN explanation for stacks in the same chapter, and I gave up in frustration and searched for a more sufficient explanation on the internet because it was so poorly written.
   
   Basically I've finished all of my assignments in spite of the book, not because of it.
   
   The code examples are quite simply erroneous and full of bugs. If it were not required material for my course, I would not purchase this book, and I recommend against it. Get something more interesting.



5. I don't care what anyone else says, I think this book is very helpful. I'm a computer science/mathematics major...though mathematics comes easily for me, I'm not finding the same with computer programming and this book has helped me tremendously to understand and apply these new concepts. Repetition? Some, but repetition is what helps us learn. But I don't think there is too much repetition, just enough...maybe more repetition should be used in some of the book's sections, especially higher level chapters, such as for structs and classes.
   Great writing too, easy to understand and to absorb. I'm sensing that this is an author who is more concerned with having his readers understand c++ than to be impressed with his writing...I've had enough college classes and read enough text books to know that some authors are more about showing off their writing ability, forget it if the student gets it or not. But not so with D.S. Malik.
   I highly recommend this book.

No comments about Shader X6: Advanced Rendering (Shaderx).

5 comments about Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace.

1. I've been an avid advanced amateur photographer for years and a Photoshop enthusiast almost since the inception of the program. I have not however read too many Photoshop books in the past since I concluded early on that I could get what I needed from experimentation and the occasional magazine article.
   
   This book, Photoshop LAB color is, however, a must read for anyone using Photoshop who wants to take their photo editing to another level. This is not an easy read, as the author acknowledges. On the other hand it is worth it. The techniques described in the book are revolutionary, and will change the way any reader uses Photoshop -- whether they are advanced users or rank beginners.
   
   I not only recommend this book -- I think it should be required reading for anyone using Photoshop.



2. A fellow flickr member pointed me toward this title, when I asked him how he got such beautifully, vivid colors. The author is, prior commentaries notwithstanding, a master of words, using them to make a fairly complex and potentially dry subject quite palatable. As I am not an expert in photography or color management, I will most likely not use most of what he lays out in the latter chapters, however, it is not hard to understand, merely hard to keep in working memory. This book certainly does far more toward getting stunning pictures than any 10 volumes of 'Photoshop for ' and is worth the 30+ bucks I paid for it.



3. Yes, the use of the LAB space is not so easy to learn, and it has many uses. Margulis shows these uses, but he is not the teacher who will make it easy to learn. Sometimes he dwells on the obvious (it is a great color space), sometimes he jumps over some practical issues.
   The fun part is that Mr. Margulis' classes in [...] are really great. So, he definitely knows what he is talking about, but maybe a book is not the ultimate best tool.



4. Um excelente livro para quem quer se aprofundar no modo LAB para fazer correções de cor. Como diz a chamada da capa: "This book will radically change how we do color correction". Recomendo.



5. I just don't know about the low reviews on this book and fully get the high reviews! This is one of those books that comes along once in a while with such valuable information that after reading it, it will leave you feeling crippled in the digital darkroom without using the techniques contained within. The final output of my photos have improved dramatically by using the LAB color workspace and my understanding of the LAB color workspace would be very elementory indeed if not for this book. Understanding and implementing the LAB color workspace is in my opinion a higher level of education, and as such will require putting more effort and thought into mastering it. With this book, Margulis gives you the ability to not only understand LAB, but implement it very effectively and masterfully. Good work Margulis and thanks for writing it!

5 comments about Google Web Toolkit Applications.

1. This Book contain a real utilities Drag and Drop, Windows, conecting with logic in other lenguages by HTTP GET/POST and more, ideal for an understanding of the potential for rapid GWT Technology.



2. There's not much to say about this book other than it is the best GWT book out there. It is prior to 1.5 but the generics really don't change any principles or techniques covered on this text.
   
   It does have a very practical approach, with a lot of coding and it mixes several other technologies to solve the covered project issues, so, if you are not familiar with recent (not so recent anymore) web tech you will probably need a bit of research to fully enjoy the reading.



3. This is the best GWT book among the others. Covers from basic concepts and definitions behind GWT (like the gadget library, panels, compositions) and moves to advanced topics (like internationalization, integration with other server technologies, patterns, etc). The book explains server comunication taking from the basic comunication (http requests) to more complex JSON and XML examples. It explains very well and gives so many examples, including many application examples (it's 600 pages).
   
   For those with some experience in Java programming for the WEB and wants to know everything about GWT, this book is perfect.



4. The source code examples on the book are incompatable with GWT version 1.5 because of the use of the GWT gears project in the examples. You also have to go hunting around for the examples by going to the authors page, then the book forum. Not a good starter book.



5. What makes this book great is that it sets the tone for beginners and makes it easy to step to the next levels. Advanced GWT and Ajax programmers (and designers) can jump right to the examples and learn to maximize the benefits of GWT. Highly recommended for professionals of all levels.

1 comments about Windows PowerShell(TM) Scripting Guide.

1. This book looked really good at first. A lot of practical scripts included, however, they all appear to be basically the same with exception of a WMI call (query). Which brings up the point, that a lot this book is geared towards using WMI. A better title might be Using Powershell and WMI. There is very little in terms of concepts, efficient uses of Powershell, using COM or WinRM. Many of the concepts and techniques are spread through out the book and difficult to locate. If you have a basic understanding of Powershell, need some quick and dirty scripts and don't plan on getting to know it much more in depth this might work for you.

5 comments about Google Apps Hacks.

1. I happily take advantage of a number of Google applications such as Gmail, iGoogle, Google Calendar, and a few other things. But there's more to the Google Apps family than that, and I know I'm not getting all I can out of the offerings. After going through Google Apps Hacks by Philipp Lenssen, I have a number of new tricks to try out both on stuff I already use as well as a few other apps. Fun stuff!
   
   Contents:
   Meet The Google Docs Family; The Google Docs Family - Google Documents; The Google Docs Family - Google Spreadsheets; The Google Docs Family - Google Presentation; Become a Gmail Power User; Customize Your Google Home Page; Manage Your Events With Google Calendar; Keep Up On News With Google Reader; Manage Your Photos And Videos With Picasa and YouTube; Create Your Own Home Page, Blog, or Group; Dive Into Google Maps, Google Earth, and Sketchup 3D; Google Analytics And Beyond - Market Your Site, Track Visitors
   Credits; Index
   
   This book follows the same format as other O'Reilly Hack titles. For each of the chapters, you get a number of tricks, or "hacks", that show you how to do things that may not be intuitively obvious. There's a difficulty meter after each hack title that gives you a clue as to whether its something that is easy to pull off or something that takes a degree of technical skill. The first couple of hacks in each chapter tend to be introductory in nature. They explain the package and get you started. For instance, the first hack in the first chapter is "How to Get Your Google Account". Likewise, the first hack in the iGoogle chapter has you adding Google tools to your iGoogle home page. The hacks get more in-depth after that, such as "Backing Up Your Email" or "Create Google Maps Overlays On the Fly". I personally was intrigued by some of the possibilities in the Google Spreadsheets area. "Add Live Data to Your Spreadsheet" was interesting, as was "Automatically Complete Lists of Related Items". That one is completely unexpected, and shows the power of integration with the Google search engine results. There's also a way to import data from web sites into a Google spreadsheet. That has some particular interest for a project I'd like to do. Finally, there was a *really* cool hack to show how to track packages via RSS using Google Reader. That one will be getting some significant use with my next Amazon order...
   
   As with all Hacks titles, some items will be absolute gems for you, while others will hold no interest. That's OK, and it's to be expected. All it takes is one or two hacks to make a radical change in the way you do things. In terms of usefulness, Google Apps Hacks ranks up there with the best of the Hacks titles.



2. The word 'Hacks' implied secrets, insider information, or the ability to do something others cannot. I checked the index before I bought it. I wanted some insight on how to program my own Google Apps. I thought this book had some. But there was really nothing useful for a programmer here. The book gave little more than what you can find online in tutorials. Nice book in terms of explaining what Google Apps are and how to use them in a Google domain, but no insider information here.



3. I really enjoyed reading this book and found many useful tips to enhance the Google search experience. Some of the things I already knew about, like Picasa, Google's photo organizing software. Other Google features were completely unknown to me until I read this book.
   
   One reason I think this book works is because the author is young, born in 1977. Most of the technical book writers are old guys who go back to the first generation of personal computers, which was two years before author Philipp Lenssen was born. The author definitely brings a young attitude towards using Google, tweaking it and making it your own.
   
   Book level: Advanced computer user. Not for the beginner.



4. While this book wasn't chock full of the kind of insider information that you usually get from a "hacks" book, it did offer a lot of good information that I haven't seen altogether in one place. Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware of all the different tools that Google is making available: from Google Docs to Gmail to iGoogle and more. This book does an excellent job showing how to use these tools and how to get more out of them than you probably thought possible.
   
   The book spends the first 4 chapters going through the various applications within the Google Docs family--which is essentially an online, non-Microsoft version of the Office suite. Subsequent chapters are then dedicated to Gmail, iGoogle (a customization of the Google home page), Google Calendar, Google Reader, Picasa, blogging, Google Maps (and related programs), and analytics. Even with all this information, there are still Google applications that were left out--but I suppose that is to be expected, otherwise this book would be well above its current 400 pages.
   
   I found each chapter to be well written, and I felt that each "hack" was something a real user would try/want to do. The author includes lots of screen shots and includes extra HTML and javascript within the text where appropriate. The author goes so far as to show (in a few cases) some 3rd party applications that rival the Google offering. For example, in discussing Picasa, the author shows some non-Google alternatives.
   
   I thought this was a great book that was well-written and easy to follow. It opened my eyes to many of the possibilities that currently exist within Google products. If you're looking to get more out of your Google experiences, this book is highly recommended.



5. Philipp Lenssen's GOOGLE APPS HACKS provides a collection of hacks and tricks to offer different ways of customizing Google Apps, from its email and spreadsheets to some of its desktop applications such as Google Earth. Owners of Google Apps learn all about document sharing, embedding web pages into Google Calendar, adding photos to its mapping system, and more.

3 comments about Professional Windows PowerShell (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This book is extremely well written and easy to understand coming from a non or limited programming background. If you are completely new to programming, I'd suggest reading Microsoft Windows PowerShell Programming for the Absolute Beginner by Jerry Lee Ford Jr. first and then read this book. Also, so far the code has been exceptionally accurate, which makes the experience that much better.



2. This is a really good book. I have purchased a bunch of other books on Powershell but most of them were written with developers in mind and not system administrators. Well good news, this book is written specifically for Windows System Admins. It walks you through how the scripting language works (.NET), and it provides very clear examples of how to use and create power shell scripts. With this book in hand and the free information that is available on the Microsoft Technet site, you are on you way to becoming a proficient Power Shell Scripter! Well done Mr. Andrew Watt.



3. I purchased this book based on two previous reviews and so far I'm somewhat disappointed. For example, I think the author should include how to add comments to a script (e.g. #) early on in the book because adding comments is proper coding practice. Also, none of the author's sample scripts include comments either. Additionally, I find the sample scripts to be very simplistic short examples and I defiantly expected to see far more complex sample scripts that demonstrates the more advanced scripting capabilities of the PowerShell scripting language. Based on this, I'm surprised that this book is in the professional series because what is presented in the book is at an introductory level.

5 comments about VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel (Business Solutions).

1. I found this book to be one of the best references for Excel VBA development. The book is easy to understand and follow. Contains a large amount of examples that can be easily understood. Addresses many critical aspects of excel VBA development. Not too much was spent on forms/GUI development so you will have to look elsewhere if you into that. Also addresses interfacing Excel to databases using ADO as well as API programming which is critical for superusers to extend the power of excel without the limitation of data storage. Overall, the authors have a superb job and I consider this book to be an essential of my Excel VBA library!



2. The book is useful. The worksheets downloaded from the Internet are also very clear.
   Sometimes you expect more explanations on statements which use new features not connected with the subject being reviewed.
   I think that I shall not need to purchase any other book on this subject.



3. I am very satisfied with the transaction. The shipment was on time and the product is in good quality



4. Bill Jelen is a brilliant self-promoter. His book is even more brilliant. His newsgroup, MrExcel Message Board Forum at www.mrexcel.com, is an invaluable resource.



5. If I could give 0 stars, I would.
   
   This book is poorly written and poorly edited...and I have the version "Reprinted with corrections." Flipping through it in the bookstore, it seemed promising - enough so that I actually bought it. After three chapters, however, I am ready to throw in the towel.
   
   This is a technical book. It's about programming. It contains examples of actual code. The examples have to be correct to have any credibility. Once you lose that, every line becomes suspect. Let me provide you just a few examples.
   
   On page 32, the colorindex for "yellow" is given as "6"; on page 33 it is "30".
   On page 41, "Selection is actually a property and not an object." When I reach page 50, "Selection" has become an object again.
   On page 62, in the third example within Table 3.1, the delimiting comma is inside the quotes.
   On 67, " Notice that that the offset..."
   Also on that page, the resizing example at the bottom is wrong. If I have a column and add two more to it, I end up with three. Maybe Mr. Excel is using a higher level of math when he says "Range("Produce").Resize(,2) and says "Remember, the number you resize by is the TOTAL number of rows and/or columns you want to include."
   
   What really rolled my eyes back in my head was on page 63, when I encountered .range(.range, range) with insufficient introduction. A relatively simple statement with a single range reference suddenly morphed into a triple range reference with an indecipherable comment about "an extra range at the beginning of the code line." This makes absolutely no sense, and coupled with the authoring or editing miscues mentioned earlier, it is not even possible to determine if this is a typo or simply a badly written passage.
   
   Whether I ultimately can gain any value from this book remains to be seen - assuming I am able to actually make sense of the content. For me, it was a total waste of the purchase price.

5 comments about ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design).

1. This book covers many aspects of programming the ARM familiy, including a surprisingly thorough discussion on fixed-point DSP computation.
   
   Having come from another architecture, this book really got me going on ARM. It complements the documentation manufacturers usually provide for their ARM chips in that it covers the ARM core much more in-depth.
   
   The book discusses everything from register usage to memory management units. If you want to become an expert programmer in C/Assembly on ARM systems, you must buy this book.
   
   Also included is a nice comparison of the ARM and Gnu assembler directives, which came in handy when I converted an ARM assembly file to the Gnu syntax.



2. Product came in faster than expected and it was in new, excellent condition.



3. You know C, you know pointers, you know how to program. But what you need is something to teach you more about creating firmware applications. How to actually make something work! What actually goes on inside this black-box that we call the ARM core? How do you make it do some simple DSP?
   
   There should be a course in every college that basically teaches the information contained in this book!



4. This is the best book I've seen for the ARM series of processors. I have developed with many processors, on and off the Job and am now planning to develop for the ARM7 and ARM9 processors; particularly the AT91 and the AT91SAM7 series of processors by ATMEL. Base on the processors' hardware specs they are perfect for the small time developer. But, when looking the ARM's instruction set, it appears that programming them requires a steep learning curve.
   
   This book will easily reduce my learning curve, at the very least, by more than half. It is clear, comprehensive, and to the point.
   
   In a world that has strict requiresments on performance, power, as well as development time, a developer has to ARM himself. This book will show you how to do just that.



5. The authors have done a wonderful job of taking something complicated and making it very simple, without dumbing it down. They explain why and how, and the material is well organized. There are useful reference tables scattered throughout. There is no attempt at humor, and I'm grateful for it.
   
   Highlights include discussions about registers, Arm multiple load/store instructions, the Arm function calling convention, tactics for writing fast C and assembler, DSP implementation, memory management, and assembler code for things like division. The chapters on firmware and basic OS implementation each show a simple yet functional implementation.
   
   My only complaint is that there's nothing practical in here about IO, not even JTAG. The authors have limited themselves to the ARM core only, perhaps because there are many differences between the microprocessors that use it. This makes the title a bit misleading - in my view a System Developer's Guide should have enough information so that you can at least write a "Hello World" program of some sort, even if it doesn't work on everybody's hardware.
   
   So to do anything practical, you'll have to track down a lot more documentation for your specific microcontroller. Still, five stars for the clear, detailed information on the topics it does cover. I will certainly be using it as a reference.