IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
First off, I have to admit: I fell in love with this book while looking at the description at ora.com before it was ever published. I'm a geek. I've used Google for years. I live and breathe this stuff. I know the high editorial and production quality that O'Reilly puts into their technical books. But the pre-publication descriptions left an open question for me: just how useful would this book be for normal people?To those who know nothing about programming/scripting, fear not. About half of this book is stuff that anyone anywhere can use with no programming skills whatsoever. And if the hacks described in the other half of the book sound useful, sufficiently-motivated people will find a way to use them: talk to their technical friends, their children, or (heaven forbid!) teach themselves how to use Perl/Python/etc. And even that's kind of missing the point: the book is about giving you a taste of what is possible to do with Google. You will get an education simply by leafing through the examples.How do the authors get so good? Clearly, they're smart folk. But they have a much more important quality: a sense of adventure and, at times, a giddy quality of fun in what they do. Chapter 7 -- Google Pranks and Games -- is as good a place to start reading this book as any. And a non-technical person who reads and tries the examples in Chapter 1 will have a far better working knowledge of google than 99.5% of the technical types out there. Finally, Chapter 8 is an excellent intro to webmasters to understand how google picks which pages rank higher for any particular search. It gives valuable advice on how to get a good rank for your website. This book should be a good antidote for small-time operators who are currently getting hustled by "rank booster" con artists and other snake-oil salesmen.One side comment: hacking is a good thing. In the past two decades, the word has been co-opted to mean a dubious or possibly-illegal activity. Nonsense. Hacking is a most honorable activity; it's part of what makes the world works. Kudos to O'Reilly for starting their "Hacks" book series.Google is an Internet search engine database, but it's far more than that. It's existence has begun to shape the very fabric of the Internet. Anyone wishing to be literate on the Internet would be wise to understand quite a bit about it.I'm buying a copy of this book for my mother tonight.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf
Rating: 3/5
This book would be great, if it had an index. The book does have a TOC, but it doesn't help find specific commands or functions. This book is only good for a reference on PHP. They do explain a couple of things, but not enough to use this book specifically as a learning tool. If you are looking to learn PHP buy "PHP Fast and Easy Web Development. I bought it and it is a great book for someone that wants to learn all of PHP.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Scripting XML and WMI for Microsoft(r) SQL Server 2000: Professional Developer's Guide
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Tobias Martinsson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Scripting XML and WMI for Microsoft(r) SQL Server 2000: Professional Developer's Guide
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Tobias Martinsson
Rating: 5/5
Wanted to learn programming SQL Server 2000 with WMI. I'm a programmer, so the book's approach fits me. WMI text and samples worked for me. I learned WMI. I'm happy.XML is not what I bought it for. I know MSXML, XSLT, XPath, yada yada yada. But I found some stuff I can use with ADO and MSXML. It's a bonus.Another bonus: the code samples are available in Perl. Found them on the CD-ROM next to the VBScript samples. A pleasant surprise because the booktext shows example-code in VBScript.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Visual Quickstart guides are incredibly clear and easy-to-use. This book tackles basic PHP features like date functions and making text appear on screen, goes through conditions and loops and includes more advanced chapters on arrays, basic MySQL integration, cookies, and dealing with external files.I've always found it easier to try to figure things out from examples - this book displays clear code examples with explanations side-by-side. Highlighting the new code examples in red is a real help.This book can get you from no knowledge of PHP to an impressive intermediate level in just a few days, even if you don't have a background in programming or scripting.Finally - while there's no CD, the accompanying website allows you to download the script examples chapter-by-chapter.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Undoubtably the best SQL Server book ever written, with the 6.5 version a close second. The level of technical detail is superb. Written for an advanced developer who wants to have more than a "black box" approach to databases. I just wish someone could write a administration book of this calibur.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Before buying this book I was familar with PERL, C++, ASP, and SQL. I bought this book looking for a quick way to learn the syntax of PHP and how to use it with MySQL. This book proved to do that very well, but I am unsure how well this book would have done had I been without my prior programming experience. Some of the topics go by fairly fast and without some previous knowledge it might be hard for a beginner to grasp some of the ideas. Nonetheless, this is a great book which outlines the basics of PHP extremely well. Though I don't yet consider myself an expert on the topic, this book was perfect as an introduction and a good enough introduction that I feel confident that I can go out an develop my own PHP applications.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP/MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Andy Harris
Rating: 1/5
Title: PHP/MySQL Programming for the Absolute Beginner
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Andy Harris
Rating: 1/5
As always, another book for beginners that makes no sense. If you are like me trying to learn PHP/MySQL it looks like the NET is the way to go. Find tons of tutorials and read them. I only read the first 100+ pages and was not happy. It appears that they DONT KNOW what a beginner is! I'm still looking for a book to get my feet wet, so far I've read the "in easy steps" books from BN, and they were simple to grasp. But not enough.This has been one of my biggest complaints with books for beginners... Are they really for some one who knows nothing about the subject? Or is it marketing? You make the call. I have complained forever about this! It appears they start out good then lose it, and you are now stuck.PS This is my first review and I wanted to write it so you can see it really does not help the newbie. Good Luck in your PHP/MySQL learning.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server: Common Problems, Tested Solutions
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Neil Pike
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Server: Common Problems, Tested Solutions
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Neil Pike
Rating: 3/5
There was a lot of good and helpful information but the cutesy lowercase, non-spaced titles made navigating the book next to impossible. If you have a lot of time to look things up or plan to read the book cover to cover, it's a good buy. When time is critical however, I won't be turning to this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
PHP Essentials was just what I needed. I was shopping for my first PHP book, having some programming experience in Perl behind me. This book starts out well, slowly introducing the reader to PHP and a refresher on HTML and web forms (so that you can use them to interact with PHP). Then, the book progresses into the language in a logical, organized manner. Just about everything I bought the book for was covered -- connecting to databases, specifically mySQL though the book lists how to interact with about 10 other types, interacting with databases, building a shopping cart system, session management, etc. Even as a reference, the book is great. It has a full appendix which is a great reference for useful functions, each one has its own description. When I needed to build an application I would normally do in Perl, I went to PHP Essentials and found everything I needed in there, even things that I didn't expect to find.Overall, a great book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This book helped me a lot. I liked the conversational approach and the lucid explanations. I'm excited about all I've learned to do in Transact SQL. If you're trying to get your arms around SQL Server and Transact SQL, this is the book for you.
