Reviews (16)

An Excellent Starters Book
WHY FIVE STARS?Here's why:
Excellent Start for Beginner's
This book is a terrific start for someone interested in computer programming. It is well written, easy to understand, and not boring at all. It took me about two weeks to get through it (part time in the evenings). If you work through each tutorial step by step, you'll get a basic understanding of C++. Once you've done that, then you'll be able to move on to more challenging material. This is NOT a book for someone with previous programming experience. All in all, I was very happy withit.

An ok start, but not complete as a tutorial
This book does not assume you know a programming language so it starts from scratch, explaining things in sufficient detail. The examples are well chosen to illustrate the basic ideas and at the end of each chapter, there is a nice, useful section summarizing the important points. If you read it just a little carefully, you will understand all the material well. The cd that you get with it is very useful, as you can begin writing and testing programs right away.
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Subjects:  1. C++ (Computer language)    2. C++ (Computer program language    3. C++ (Computer program language)    4. Computer Books: Languages    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Programming Languages - C++    8. C & Visual C    9. Computers / Programming Languages / C++   

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Reviews (14)

an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn to use applescript
this is just a great book im not sure where to begin this review. i am new to programming and i wanted to start off small and applescript seemed like just the thing. after reading tiger missing manual i decided to get this book on the recomendation of david pogue. i was not disapointed. applescript is really easy to use and this book shows you excatly how to use it(just like an missing manual book does). i highly reccomnd this and any other missing manual title to any beginner or power user. being a power user myself i definetly got my moneys worth from all these books. im currently reading iphoto 6 from david pogue and im allittle disapointed on that one its more of a "how to take pictures" than how to use iphoto. but iphoto being such an intuitive program you really don't need much to learn to use it.

More like a travel guide
This is not a "manual" in any sense of the word. A manual tells you how, where, and when. This is more like a tour guide of Applescript. Sure there are scripts, but few of them make the Mac easier to use than its own OSX interface. The information is presented in such a scattered form, that it is hard to follow for very long, and therefore hard to learn. It's like trying to learn to be a chef by watching the Cooking Channel.

A Good Book For Beginning Programmers
Pros: Humorous, Easy To Read, Numerous Good Examples
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Subjects:  1. Apple And Macintosh Programming    2. Computer - Apple/Macintosh    3. Computer Books: Operating Systems    4. Computers    5. Hardware - Personal Computers - Macintosh    6. Microcomputer Integrated Application Software    7. Operating Systems - Macintosh    8. Programming Languages - General    9. Reference - General    10. User Interfaces    11. AppleScript (Computer program language)    12. AppleScript: The Missing Manual, AppleScript, Script Editor, Apple, Macintosh, Mac, Mac OS X, Finder, iApps, iTune, iCal, Address Book, dictionary, Apple Event    13. Computer / Apple/Macintosh    14. Computer Programming    15. Computers / Operating Systems / Macintosh    16. Computers/Hardware - Personal Computers - Macintosh    17. Computers/Programming Languages - General    18. Macintosh (Computer)    19. Programming   

Reviews (2)

Good introduction to FORTRAN
This book does not assume any prior knowledge and provides a good intro to Fortran programming (also provides a short intro to programming in general). Goes over the essential elements needed to get started with Fortran and provides many examples. In fact, most of the concepts are demonstrated using actual coding examples. One drawback is that the index in this book is not extensive, so it does not serve quite as well as a reference. However, it still does a decent job in this department. After reading through this book I felt well-prepared to begin programming in Fortran. A nice complement to getting this book is to download one of the freely available Fortran documentation manuals (e.g. from Intel) to serve as a reference guide.

slow moving field with lots of legacy code
No previous coding experience in Fortran is assumed by the authors. Actually, no previous programming in any language. Fortran is quite easy to learn, compared to others like C++ or Java or C#. The book explains the differences between the 4 major recent versions of Fortran. Though some of you might quibble as to why the book even talks about Fortran 77. That originated in 1977!
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming - General    5. Programming - Software Development    6. Programming Languages - General    7. Computers / Programming Languages / General    8. Fortran    9. Fortran 2003    10. Fortran 90    11. Fortran 95    12. Numeric Programming    13. Programming Language    14. Software Engineering   

Reviews (4)

An enthusiastic writeup by an unexperienced jogl user
It is best categorized as a tutorial. It is not a book by any means. The tone of the 'book' is informal and tends to be 'cute' - which tends to be annoying at times. Noticeably the installation instructions are missing - which is not a big deal since i was able to google my way to proper installation in few minutes; nevertheless having included an installation section would have brought some authenticity to the book. Not all was bad about the book, what i like most are the chapters on lighting and other places where the author gives a refresher on several concepts (like matrix multiplication, field of view, camera positions etc.). I get a distinct impression that the author is himself new to the JOGL world (and perhaps to Computer Graphics) and hence skips over areas that he is not comfortable with himself. Since the author does not make explicit claims that this is a "Bible to Jogl" he can be excused for not being thorough in his coverage of JOGL. I had to read the Red Book (OpenGL programming guide) along with the NeHe tutorials to find my way around JOGL. If you are new to JOGL but not to OpenGL and computer Graphics i.e. you have all the major computer graphics concepts and have been building applications in OpenGL then this book may be worth buying. Otherwise use the red book to get your concepts right and then go to NeHe tutorials (look at the jogl port for the tutorials) and if you still think u need some help then go ahead and by this book. All in all this book is a basic tutorial that can give you some ideas but you can't build useful and serious applications by following this book.

A decent tutorial article but nothing more
The material in this text really does not belong to a book, but should be a free web tutorial article. As a text, it s way smaller than a notebook, most of it pages are just taken by line of code, and most of it is code you have already read, as the examples are very similar to each other and the authors keeps printing over and over the same routines.There is also a lot of hands-waving and superficiality in the explanations, and the examples presented cover only the very very basics. Also, detailed JOGL installation instructions are not given, and this will probably leave the beginner stranded. Overall, it feels like the author has written a couple example programs of the kind you expect in a web tutorial, and then decided he could try to make some bucks out of that. My advice for you is not to spend any money on this booklet and my advice for the author is to make all of the book available on his website, where it belongs.

Superficial content further damaged by a rather poor presentation...
This book is a weak taste of OpenGL at best.The author forgets his audience, writing as if he is explaining the concepts to a junior high school student.He spends more time explaining cartesian graphs, radians vs. degrees, and what a basic matrix is than talking about JOGL.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. General    5. Programming Languages - General    6. Programming languages   

Editorial Review

Aimed at any serious programmer or computer science student,the new second edition of Read more

Reviews (142)

Great reference, Bad textbook
This is actually a very good book to read - what they cover, they cover in depth, building each concept up from elementary concepts so you can always see how they got from point A to point B.The authors present mathematical proofs of essentially every assertion (although, as is typical of "discrete math" proofs, the proofs can sometimes be a tad on the silly side as they sometimes just restate whatever they're trying to prove - blame academia).The algorithms are all presented in a language-agnostic pseudocode which highlights the essentials of the algorithm itself without burdening the reader with language idiosyncracies.Plus, if you want something more concrete, the latest edition comes with a CD-ROM including all the algorithms implemented in Java!
A great reference
This book is not for the casual reader.If the contents seems confusing at times it is because there are hard problems being analyzed.Any book on algorithms that is not confusing at times is probably not discussing any interesting algorithms.While quite academic, this book is also relevant to any engineer who needs to design/optimize a non-trivial algorithm.It's also one of those books that one can open up to any random page and start reading.Sometimes when I get coders-block, this is just the thing to break me out of it.This book is heavy, expensive and well worth its weight and price.

Important Book
This is an excellent book. Well written, easy to understand, precise, good problems, excellent coverage of the basics. This book can provide an excellent foundation in computer science.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming - Algorithms    5. Computers / Programming / Algorithms    6. Java & variants   

Editorial Review

With the ongoing explosion in the popularity of digital cameras, online image delivery, powerful graphics-editing programs, and digital video, the technologies involved have been receiving a lot of attention. But such technologies have been evolving for years and Read more

Reviews (2)

Do you know Java and will work with images?
In general terms, this is a good book for intermediate and advanced Java programmers who need to work with images. An Introduction to Image Processing
This book introduces some basic concepts of image processing. It also uses Java 2D imaging functions to implement those concepts. Therefore, it is a practical book combined with concept and implementations. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics - General    3. Computers    4. Computers - Desktop Publishing    5. Data Transmission Systems - General    6. Digital Image Processing    7. Digital techniques    8. Image processing    9. Object-Oriented Programming    10. Programming Languages - Java    11. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    12. Java & variants    13. Programming languages   

Reviews (14)

Quite good, but not perfect
First of all, sorry for my bad English :
Great for novice C++ programmers
This book is exactly what it claims to be.My preferred development tool is Visual C++.NET, and I wouldn't even try to do a windows application using the windows API, which is what this book uses. However, the game engine that Michael provides takes care of all of the messy API details, and lets you dive right in to game programming with little knowledge of the windows API.The author takes you step by step through the game development process, building on the game engine features and programming techniques with great examples along the way.As far as I can tell, all of the source code provided on the CD compiled flawlessly.The CD also contained a good tutorial on the windows API, which I found very useful.If you are somewhat familiar with the c++ language, its OOP capabilities and want to do some game programming to advance your skill set or just to have fun, I think this book is a great resource to get started.

problems with the book
Hello all.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics - Game Programming    3. Computer Programming    4. Computer games    5. Computer software    6. Computers    7. Computers - Languages / Programming    8. Programming    9. Programming Languages - General    10. Video & Electronic - General    11. Computers / Computer Graphics / Game Programming   

Reviews (1)

the RMI and CORBA are awkward to build and use
One of Java's strengths is that you can run its bytecode on many different types of hardware. But one merit of this book is that it shows how you can customise your code to take advantage of binaries on particular platforms, and use specific devices.
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Subjects:  1. Computers - Languages / Programming    2. Physics    3. Programming Languages - Java    4. Science    5. Science/Mathematics    6. Mathematics / General   

Reviews (1)

This book is going to be a classic !!
This is a wonderful, code rich, book on language processing for computational linguists and language engineers. It is both theory and example rich with considerable detail throughout. The book is clearly written and very well structured!!
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Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Computers - General Information    5. Natural Language Processing    6. Programming - General    7. Programming Languages - Perl    8. Programming Languages - Prolog    9. Computational linguistics    10. Computers / Artificial Intelligence    11. Natural-language processing    12. Parsing    13. Perl    14. Prolog    15. Semantics    16. Syntax    17. Tagging   

Reviews (4)

One of the Best
This is one of the best textbook for Visual Basic 6 programming, for MIS students or professionals.It is easy to follow and designed for self-starters.The reference materials in the Appendix A-C are very handy and useful.I have used this book for my introduction to Visual Basic, at a few colleges.

Warning!
This book does NOT teach object based event driven programming of VB6.This book teaches code based 1960's structured programming in a VB5 environment.Unfortunately the authors do not know VB6 code.This book is a VB6 desert.

Using this book as a textbook for a 2 quarter course
I have been in the teaching profession for over 30 years!Currently, I teach COP 2172 Visual Basic, and COP 3170 Advanced Visual Basic: a two quarter course sequence at Florida Metropolitan University and have used this as a textbook.The presentation style of the authors of this book is excellent. They use the theory introduced in each chapter in a large number of worked out examples and programming projects in each chapter.Then each chapter ends with a good selection of programming exercises as well as programming projects.The book also provides a CD-ROM containing all the worked out examples and projects of the book and the publisher usually supplies another CD-ROM to instructors that also contains the solutions to the exercises and projects appearing at the end of each chapter.I found all this material to be excellent instructional tools.If you wish to view the qualifications of this reviewer to judge the validity of his review, feel free to visit:.... ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Basic (Programming Language)    2. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    3. Computer Books And Software    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Object-Oriented Programming    7. Programming - General    8. Programming Languages - Visual BASIC    9. Computers / Programming Languages / Visual BASIC   

Editorial Review

Active Server Pages (ASP) is the standard way of doing server-side scripting under Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). ASP offers tight interaction with Microsoft database servers, and isn't as hard to learn as you might think. With a good book at your side--Read more

Reviews (4)

Good introduction and need some improvement...
I found this books is very helpful of the programmer who want to learn ASP from the beginner. However you need to know some concept from visual basic, html and some operation task in windows environment. The author explain very clearly and easy to understand. Anyway I found three point that should be change based on my experinece along with this books: 1) If you are install PWS from the windows 98se CD-ROM, it won't work. You need to find this solution from the following hyperlink to the install it successfully: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q246081 the books didn't cover this problem. For windows 2000 it is fine. 2) The code published in the books is too small it made me very difficult to read. 3) The most of the example of the source code is based on the game. The sample code should be focus on the read example that the technology apply for such as the real task that we might face when we get a project on web development. Base on that 3 disadvantage is the reson that I give only 4 start. If there is a future release of this book, I hope this 3 point would be change.

Learn ASP --- THE HARD WAY
Learn ASP -- the hard way: by acting as editor for premier press. Unfocussed
I reviewed this as a possible student textbook because of the examples. However the examples are insufficiently explained, and the games ! Gross !! The books structure is unclear, hopping around with other web-technologies. I would have preferred a clear ASP focus with programming examples in VBScript and in JavaScript. The book by Dr R. Mellor is clearly superior for this market segment. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Internet - Web Site Design    5. Programming - General    6. Programming Languages - General    7. Computers / Programming / General    8. Publishing on the Internet   

Reviews (6)

An instructors point of view
I am a technical instructor that teaches programming to students who have had no previous experience.I utilize many of the "absolute beginners" books to get them familiar with the landscape before dragging them into deeper "technical" books.
Great Balls of VB Fire For New Programmers!
I have been doing computer systems and software for forty years and was looking for a training book for two new staff engineers who have engineering degrees but little programming experience. I ordered Andrew Parsons "Starter Kit" for this purpose and then ordered this book by Jerry Lee Ford as well. For reasons described below, I have selected this book, the Jerry Lee Ford book, to use for newbie training while reserving the Parsons book for those with prior programming experience.
Entertaining and Informative Writing Style
This book is the best tutorial format book I've seen on programming VB. It starts with just a handfull of simple steps and behold, there's a real, live, working application. To be sure, it doesn't do much, but at least you have something working.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming - General    5. Programming - Visual Basic - VBA (Visual Basic for Applicati    6. Computer Programming    7. Computers / Programming / General   

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Reviews (13)

Important Note - Discontinued
New editions to this book are no longer in the works, as this title is being discontinued.O'Reilly's "Intermediate Perl" by the same authors (Randal L. Schwartz, brian d foy, and Tom Phoenix) is the new edition of this book.The first edition of "Intermediate Perl" was released March 2006.So if you're thinking about purchasing this book, purchase "Intermediate Perl" instead.It includes the same material (albeit updated) by the same authors.Once again, this title has been discontinued.

"Evolutionary" method to explain Perl Structures, References, Objects
This book attempts something very interesting: not just to describe "how" central aspects of Perl work, but also to understand the process of "how Perl got there". Thus, the book does not serve the "conclusions" right away; it reaches them via a series of experimentations and improvements (in fact, similarly to what is done in other sciences).
Great book
This book is perfect if you want to expand your perl horizon.It only gets 4 stars because, hey, I can't give everything five stars. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming - General    5. Programming Languages - CGI, Javascript, Perl, VBScript    6. Programming Languages - Perl    7. Computer Bks / Languages / Programming    8. Computers / Programming Languages / CGI, JavaScript, Perl, VBScript    9. Computers / Programming Languages / Perl    10. Internet languages    11. Perl (Computer program language)    12. Perl, objects, references, modules, CPAN   

Editorial Review

Java is the language du jour, and plenty of books have been written about it. But with so many books available, new offerings should be something special. This one isn't.Read more

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Reviews (60)

Excellent book if you know a few things about programming
This book covers almost everything (that fits inside one volume) in Java. Very concise and precise, but needs some prior experience in any high level progamming language. Very good examples. This book help me a lot to dive fast in the Java's deep waters.

Ahha delight for your mind
I have been working in this industry for past five years, I have been addicted to buying books on programming, The trouble with most of the books is that they don't focus on people who are programmers, They just re-hash for-loop while-loop its really irritating to read such topics insay 1 hour that you can squeezeout of your time. And most of the time you end up dropping the book.
Good survey style introduction to Java technologies
Learning Java provides a good introduction to the Java technologies that make up J2SE. While most of the sections does not go into enough detail to fully cover the area (and that would be impossible without making the book a multi volume effort) they provide enough detail to form the basis of further research.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Java (Computer program language)    5. Programming - General    6. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    7. Programming Languages - Java    8. Computers / Languages / Programming    9. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    10. Java & variants    11. Java, Java 1.4, J2SE, Swing, I/O,NIO,NetBeans,Java 2 Standard Edition   

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Reviews (16)

Great Start to Learn OS X Programming
This book is a great start to learn the best OS X programming technology.As a professional developer.The title says it "Learning Cocoa with Objective C".Avoid the book "Cocoa in a Nutshell" until you know Cocoa and Objective C and want a good refeerence.
OK...
While this book is very detailed and has a lot of information in it about Cocoa programming, it starts off too quickly. You might be discouraged by the assumptions the author makes about how much C (and programming in general) you know. If you are experienced in computer programming, then you will find this book to be a blast and will learn objective -C in no time at all. However, if you aren't too good with programming, start off with some online tutorials or other books, as you will get lost after reading the first two chapters or so.

A good book, but not the best book
A very popular book, and greatly improved in its second edition.Very example and tutorial oriented; somewhat out of date at this point, however.� Helps the user learn Interface Builder, ProjectBuilder and Objective-C, too.Possibly a bit shallow to get the reader writing their own Cocoa programs from scratch, but a good introduction.Ultimately, probably not as recommended for a first purchase as Cocoa Programming by Scott Anguish or Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer - Apple/Macintosh    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Operating Systems - Macintosh    5. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    6. Programming Languages - General    7. Application program interfaces (Computer soft    8. C (Computer program language)    9. Cocoa (Application development environment)    10. Computer / Apple/Macintosh    11. Computers / Operating Systems / Macintosh    12. Computers/Programming - Object Oriented Programming    13. Computers/Programming Languages - General    14. Macintosh OS    15. Object-oriented programming (Computer science    16. Programming languages   

Reviews (12)

Better Than The Teacher
I had a pretty ambiguous and boring teacher for the course that required this book so I didn't listen to her much at all in class. Instead, I just substituted the book for her lectures, and I aced the course with ease learning much about how a computer works along the way. It makes me feel a lot more competent about programming to know this stuff, and the book provides it in a pretty good way through the LC-3 architecture and sprinkles the book with examples.
Intro to CS the way it should be done
This book is the implementation of what I have been trying to impart to my beginning students for years. It contains explanations of all of the ideas that make up the foundation of computer science. The first sections deal with the fundamentals of binary data, how numbers are represented, how arithmetic is performed, how the bitwise operations are executed, followed by the basics of digital logic. These ideas are then expanded into a simple assembly code with many control instructions. Staying at the assembly level, I/O operations, subroutines and stacks are demonstrated.
Contrary to Popular Review
This book was required for a lower level electrical engineering course.The main complaint I would have is that I found many sections of this book rather convoluted.It simply did not come across as clear as it could be.
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Subjects:  1. C (Computer program language)    2. C (Programming Language)    3. Computer Architecture - General