IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PC Annoyances, Second Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steve Bass
Rating: 5/5
Title: PC Annoyances, Second Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steve Bass
Rating: 5/5
If you own the first edition, you won't experience d?j? vu while reading the second edition. The new one has many changes that you won't recognize it. Whether you're a power PC user or a casual one, you will benefit from the book. Because of the wide array of topics covered, I can't imagine many geeks who know all of these tips.
Instead of calling tech support and staying on hold or going to Google, check PC Annoyances for the answers. It's impossible to have the answers to all the problems you encounter on a PC, but Bass touches on a bit of everything. If you don't find the answer in the book, you might find enough clues to shorten your search.
GMail joins the book and its tips immediately pay off. Other than the usual Microsoft applications, get stress-busters for fixing annoyances related to music, video, CD, and general email. Mozilla, Firefox, and Thunderbird don't make the cut this time. However, we know how the publishing industry struggles to keep up with tech changes. The book lists a few Netscape-related tips and what you can do in Netscape usually works in any Mozilla product since they're based on the same "bones."
How many times have you come across an interesting URL in a book that was a mile long and took several attempts to get it right? Bass takes care of that by using a URL shortening service making it easier and quicker to get the right URL on the first try. He provides links to software, humorous sites, and resources. After fighting a round with your PC, wouldn't taking a break by going to a funny resource release a few tense muscles? It does for me.
His software recommendations include free and fee-based products. I recognize many of the programs and own some. Based on my experience, he provides excellent recommendations, so you can trust that he isn't looking to pump up his stock with any of the companies. Most, if not all, of the programs come with a trial period, so you can play with them and see if they meet your needs. If not, uninstall and no harm done. If so, then thank Mr. Bass.
The only complaint I have lies with the warning boxes. They're dark blue with black text. Not easy to read.
Bass writes likes someone who has battled with the annoyance and shares the solution. It's conversational, enjoyable, and easy reading. You don't have to worry about insults from those who think they're the sultan of computers. Instead, Bass makes you feel better with his "buddy-style" advice. Thanks, Steve.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP: Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content
Publisher: Visual
Authors: Paul Whitehead, Joel Desamero
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP: Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content
Publisher: Visual
Authors: Paul Whitehead, Joel Desamero
Rating: 3/5
If you are a beginner to programming languages this book is very good. If you are a proffesional this is a book that you would breeze through in a night, maybe two to get an overview of the language. The book is good for a beginner because you cannot get more detailed about the small topic chunks they covered at any given time. The books assumes you know nothing or virtually nothing of programming languages or server side scripting.The book is only a wet your lips kind of thing for a proffessional. It will not give you everything you need to really write good production sites. You need another book for that. Even though it only wets your lips, this book is a good book even for the proffesional because it is a very quick read for someone who knows other programming languages.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 1/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 1/5
This is perhaps the best technical book ever written. Using this manual I was able to solve problems in SQL 2000 that had eluded me for years in Access, as well as solve some tricky issues in having my code talk to the SQL database. The couple of pages on correlated subqueries alone are worth the price of the book (particularly the bold hint about aliasing), and the excellent section on stored procedures is absolutely essential for the developer trying to make their program talk to the database. Being able to use stored procedures effectively has drastically increased the response time of my ASP and Java web sites, as well as simplified maintenance.My only issue is that I wish there was a dedicted section with regard to commenting and variable/table naming conventions. As a neophyte developer trying to make business and entertainment apps this would be help. If you want practical SQL in an easy to read and understand format, this is the book for you. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
One of the great things about PHP is how much good documentation there is online. The official manual at php.net is great, and so are many of the unofficial tutorial sites. Sometimes though, it is nice to have a book in your hand.This is one of those books. It provides useful examples and commentary at a depth you do not normally see on a web site. It is up to date, and includes PHP4 functions like session control, although I did not see a mention of MySQL transactions which were added recently.I have a few other PHP books, this is not the only one I like, but it is the most recently published and therefore up to date of the ones I like. The sample code usually works straight away, but authors of PHP books should be more careful to specify what settings they use that makes the code work. Do you need magic quotes on, do you need extra modules installed etc? This book is pretty careful, they always tell you the big things, like extra modules, but as I already had PHP installed and did not follow their install instrucitons, sometimes different configurations meant code needed to be fiddled with.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle Interview questions!
Publisher: Rampant TechPress
Authors: Janet Burleson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle Interview questions!
Publisher: Rampant TechPress
Authors: Janet Burleson
Rating: 5/5
I bought this book to prepare for my interview as a C programmer. I got the job, but I can't blame the book entirely for this, since I did a lot of other preparation too.
The book was great for preparing though especially the telephone screening questions which werfe eeriely like the ones in the book. The sample C questions were also very useful and I was asked very similar questions to see if I "knew my stuff".
Don't let the title fool you, this is a good book for the interviewee too!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP: Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content
Publisher: Visual
Authors: Paul Whitehead, Joel Desamero
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP: Your Visual Blueprint for Creating Open Source, Server-Side Content
Publisher: Visual
Authors: Paul Whitehead, Joel Desamero
Rating: 5/5
Straight to the point is the best way to describe this book. If your new to programming, the sections on arrays, strings and program flow will give you a solid foundation on which to build your skills. BUY IT!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
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: XML and PHP
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Vikram Vaswani
Rating: 5/5
Title: XML and PHP
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Vikram Vaswani
Rating: 5/5
After reading most of the book, I've concluded that this book is for amateurs. If you want to learn a little bit of XML, but nearly enough to do large projects, then maybe this book will be good for you. But once you need to do a large project or you need some actual advance over and beyond the syntax, concepts and APIs, the books won't help you; it's not even up to date in some areas. However the book is very easy to read, so I give it 1 star. However, there are better books that describe PHP and XML in much greater detail and in a way that is still very inviting to new comers. If you want to truely get the best knowledge for your buck, don't by this book. The Wrox book seems like a better choice so I'm going to pick that up next. I'm going to sell this book.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide (Book/CD-ROM Set)
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Syngress
Rating: 2/5
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide (Book/CD-ROM Set)
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Syngress
Rating: 2/5
This book covers the objectives for the SQL Server 7 administration exam in a reasonable way. However, it fails to achieve greatness because it is based on a beta version of SQL Server 7 (probably beta 3), and it came out long before anyone had seen the FINAL version of the Microsoft test. As such, the book has a few flaws and probably fails to cover some of the areas that will be important on the test. Even so, I found the book well worth the money I paid. In fact, unlike some of the other exam guides I've bought in the past, this one will stay on my shelf even after I pass.
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
The book showed me the real power in SQL Server. Coming from Oracle for the last 5 years, I thought of SQL Server as a toy. No more. If nothing else, this book convinced me that SQL Server is now ready to play with the big boys.As far as the book itself goes - it's loaded with valuable info. The cursors chapter, the stored procedure chapter, the triggers chapter, the views chapter, the concurency chapter - have all proved invaluable to me. In fact, there isn't much not to like about this book.The other thing I like is the fact that someone has finally documented all those undocumented features. Since I came over to SQL Server, I kept running into them, not knowing which ones I should use, or how safe they might be. Now I know. Henderson's Undocumented T-SQL chapter lays it all out. The secrets are finally revealed, along with a good dose of advice on when to use undocumented stuff and when not to.All in all, this is the best SQL Server book on the market, bar none.
