Book Reviews

Beginning Ruby 172

Posted by samzenpus from the get-started dept.
TimHunter writes "Peter Cooper's Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional has two audiences, novices with no programming experience who want to learn Ruby as their first programming language, and veterans who want to add Ruby to their programming toolkit. Cooper's response to this challenge is a solid entry in the limited arena of Ruby tutorials. Even though the early chapters are marred by the occasional reference to an advanced topic, readers will appreciate the plentiful examples and thoughtful description of the Ruby language." Read below for the rest of Tim's review.
Book Reviews

MySQL Stored Procedure Programming 206

Posted by samzenpus from the a-little-lite-afternoon-reading dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "MySQL may be the most popular open source relational database management system (RDBMS) in the world, but during the first decade of its existence, it lacked support for stored programs, i.e., store procedures, functions, and triggers. The major commercial RDBMS vendors — including Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft — could point to this deficiency as reason enough to choose their proprietary systems over MySQL or any other open source system, such as PostgreSQL. But with the release of MySQL version 5.0, in October 2005, the "little database engine that could" dramatically improved its position against the competition. The most comprehensive discussion of these new capabilities is in the book MySQL Stored Procedure Programming." Read below for the rest of Michael's review
Book Reviews

Java Generics and Collections 278

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
andrew cooke writes "Java 6 was recently released, but many programmers are still exploring the features introduced in Java 5 — probably the most significant changes in the language's twelve year history. Amongst those changes (enumerations, auto-boxing, foreach, varargs) generics was the most far-reaching, introducing generic programming in a simpler, safer way than C++ templates and, unlike generics in C#, maintaining backwards (and forwards) compatibility with existing Java code." Read on for the rest of Andrew's review.
Book Reviews

MySQL Pocket Reference 72

Posted by samzenpus from the in-the-palm-of-your-hand dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "MySQL database administrators and developers have several options for MySQL reference sources, though naturally none of them are ideal in all situations. The online MySQL documentation is extensive, but the most commonly needed nuggets are buried in its necessarily exhaustive contents. Third-party MySQL reference books can winnow out some of the rarely-used minutia, but they still encompass hundreds of pages, reflecting the complexity of the subject. For quickly looking up the most frequently used command syntax and other details, a MySQL user would usually be best served by a much more compact book, such as MySQL Pocket Reference." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.
Book Reviews

The DV Rebel's Guide 51

Posted by samzenpus from the making-movies dept.
Michael Flynn writes "The DV Rebel's Guide is broken down into chapters that follow the basic timeline of a film's production. The first chapter covering the overall philosophy of the authors approach and the rest focused on the making of your film: Pre-production, Production and Post production. A great deal of the book is focused, to very good effect, on post production." Read on for the rest of Michael's review
Book Reviews

Beginning Lua Programming 173

Posted by samzenpus from the get-started dept.
Simon P. Chappell writes "These days, Brazil is no longer just on the map for its fine coffee and martial arts. They have a few other reasons and one of them is called Lua. Lua is an open-source scripting language that was originally designed for small size and excellent portability to support its use in embedded systems. Like anything good, it didn't take long for it to be discovered by others looking for a small and efficient scripting language."
Book Reviews

GWT Java AJAX Programming 100

Posted by samzenpus from the prefix-programming dept.
simon_kehler writes "The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a Java AJAX framework that provides an easy to use programming paradigm for web developers using the Java programming language. It is one of the more recent entrants into this field, but has been gaining a lot of traction and popularity. GWT Java AJAX Programming authored by Prabhakar Chaganti and published by Packt Publishing addresses the use of GWT to build ajaxified user interfaces. The author gently introduces the reader to GWT and then leads the reader through a series of tasks, each of which shows how to perform an useful action with GWT." Read below for Simon's review.
Book Reviews

TextMate 226

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
OSXCPA writes "TextMate is a closed-source, GUI-based, extensible text editor that looks and behaves like a mashup of GNU Emacs ("Emacs") and NetBeans. This book is a primer and reference for TextMate. The blurb on the back of the book identifies the target audience as 'Programmers, web designers and anyone else who regularly needs to work with text files on Mac OSX.' After working with TextMate and reading through the book, the target audience is spot on. For example, the book briefly covers basic text editing, but provides in-depth information about basic operations (keyboard shortcuts, customizations, etc.) more advanced users will want to know and beginning users should know." Read below for the rest of OSXCPA's review.
Book Reviews

Pro Java ME MMAPI 20

Posted by samzenpus from the make-a-better-phone dept.
Cory Foy writes "Several months ago Vikram Goyal emailed me letting me know he had a new book coming out from Apress, Pro Java ME MMAPI: Mobile Media API for Java Micro Edition. Having done mobile device development using J2ME, I knew how difficult it can be to do, or explain, some of the tricks in device development. So I wanted to see if this book could rise up to the challenge." Read below for the rest of Cory's review.
Book Reviews

IT Manager's Handbook 129

Posted by samzenpus from the follow-the-leader dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have managed a lot of technical people in my career, and one thing I know: managing geeks is hard. Rewarding, interesting, challenging — and hard. Hard to do well. Dealing with all of the complexities of a modern IT environment is extremely difficult. There is precious little time, even less (skilled) help, and many, many "mission-critical" demands. This book is written for that over-worked, tech-savvy (and perhaps business newbie) IT Manager (and IT Manager wannabee.) It discusses both sides of the IT department equation: both the technical, as well as the business issues. It talks about not only how to write a good SLA but also how to avoid burnout in your employees." Read below for the rest of the review.
Book Reviews

SELinux by Example 77

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Ravi writes "SELinux is a project started and actively maintained by the U.S Department of Defense to provide a Mandatory Access Controls mechanism in Linux. It had been a long standing grouse of Linux power users and system administrators over its lack of fine grained access control over various running processes as well as files in Linux. While Solaris touts its famous RBAC and Microsoft Windows has its own way of providing finer rights to its resources, Linux had to put up with the simple but crude user rights known in tech speak as discretionary access control to control user access of files. With SELinux project making great strides and now being bundled with many major Linux distributions, it is possible to effectively lock down a Linux system through judicious use of SELinux policies. SELinux implements a more flexible form of MAC called type enforcement and an optional form of multilevel security." Read the rest of Ravi's review.
Book Reviews

Inside the Machine 53

Posted by samzenpus from the take-a-look-in-there dept.
Paul S. R. Chisholm writes "Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture, written by Ars Technica's Jon "Hannibal" Stokes, talks about how CPUs work, and how they've evolved and advanced in the past fifteen years. The result is detailed, very up-to-date (including descriptions of Intel's Core 2), generally clear, and covers a lot of fascinating material." Read below for Paul's review.
Book Reviews

The Book of JavaScript 83

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Developers of Web sites, whether professional programmers or Web hobbyists, are oftentimes impressed by the more advanced functionality that can be achieved on a Web page using JavaScript. Yet these personal discoveries of JavaScript's power do not always motivate the developers to implement similar functionality on their own sites — partly because most of those custom-built JavaScript functions are cryptic, and make no attempt to show how the developer would customize the code for their own use. The majority of JavaScript books are of limited help in this regard, because they focus on the language details, illustrated only with code snippets. Many readers would benefit more from instruction via working examples, which is the approach used by The Book of JavaScript." Read the rest of Michael's review.
Book Reviews

Character Design For Mobile Devices 35

Posted by samzenpus from the design-time dept.
Aeonite writes "According to the Introduction, Character Design For Mobile Devices is 'the first book on the designs, the technologies, the issues, and the techniques behind character design for mobile devices and games.' Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting and unique coffee table book suffers from an unclear message, poor design, bad editing, and an authorial voice that is rather too present at times, and too oblique at others." Read below for the rest of Aeonite's review.
Book Reviews

MySQL Cookbook 64

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-get-cooking dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the technical challenges faced by the typical experienced computer programmer, questions about syntax form a relatively small portion. This is especially true now that current coding editors and IDEs offer statement expansion and syntax checking. Rather, the most common type of technical challenge is understanding how to solve a specific data access or manipulation problem. Hence the growing popularity of programming "cookbooks," which are filled with "recipes," each comprising a concise statement of a focused problem, followed by a solution, with plenty of sample code to show how to implement it. For developers using the MySQL database system, the gold standard of such books is MySQL Cookbook, by Paul DuBois." Read below for the rest of Michael's review
Book Reviews

Groovy in Action 154

Posted by samzenpus from the look-at-all-the-colors dept.
Simon P. Chappell writes "I missed the partying in the 70's and so was not exposed to the full groovy experience that was available. You could say that I was a late developer (pun intended). Thankfully, I am now able to make up for lost time by learning the Groovy scripting language. For those of you not familiar with Groovy, it is a dynamic language designed to run on a Java Virtual Machine and be easy for Java programmers to work with; it looks very similar to Java and will freely inter-operate with Java objects and libraries. I've been tinkering with Groovy on and off for about two years now; learning Groovy in the old days, prior to this year, was a challenge with all of the design changes that were taking place. Groovy in Action (GinA) is the book that I'd wished was available back then. Dierk König, a committer for the Groovy project, has written this definitive guide to Groovy and after what has seemed an eternity to those of us on the Groovy mailing list, it is finally available." Read below for the rest of Simon's review.
Book Reviews

Rails Cookbook 59

Posted by samzenpus from the get-cooking dept.
honestpuck writes "When reading the foreword of Rails Cookbook I felt a strong kinship with Zed Shaw, I too have fond memories of the first edition of Perl Cookbook and the way I relied on it once I'd taken the training wheels off. Since that one I have relied on several of the O'Reilly Cookbook series. It is only when I discard the early tutorial and dive in the deep end with a "cookbook" on my desk that I really start to learn proficiency." Read the rest of honestpuck's review.
Book Reviews

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design 209

Posted by samzenpus from the make-it-pretty dept.
Trent Lucier writes "Fellow programmers, beware! Graphic designers have been invading our territory. A flood of books have been released aimed at artists who want to learn web development skills. Oh, it starts innocently enough, usually with CSS and XHTML. But soon they are learning JavaScript, PHP, and even SQL! What have we techies fought back with? What material is there for us to boost our artistic right-brain power? Sadly, our motley collection of Gimp tutorials alone will not win this battle. We need something stronger. We need to understand the principles of graphic design. But the shelves have been empty of books that make this topic accessible to tech-minded people. Well, empty until now." Read below for the rest of Trent's review.
Book Reviews

Minimal Perl for Unix and Linux People 332

Posted by samzenpus from the easy-does-it dept.
Ravi writes "Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) — the language which was created by Larry Wall is arguably one of the greatest programming languages. But it has a reputation for taking an excessive cryptic nature which gives it an image especially among Perl novices as a language which is complex and hard to master. Minimal Perl: for Unix and Linux people, authored by Tim Maher and published by Manning Publications addresses the obstacles presented by Perl's complexity. This book which is divided into two parts comprising of a total of 12 chapters takes a unique methodology to explain the Perl syntax and its use. The author emphasizes on Perl's grep, awk and sed like features and relys on concepts such as inputs, filters and arguments to allow Unix users to directly apply their existing knowledge to the task of learning Perl." Read on for the rest of Ravi's review.
Book Reviews

PHP 5 in Practice 116

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Computer programming books come in all varieties, but there are at least four general categories: introductory texts, which typically have the lowest content per page; language references, which have become increasingly supplanted by online sources; "advanced" treatments, which are often a mishmash of errata-riddled articles; and "how-to" books, usually at the intermediate level, and sometimes presented as "cookbooks." It is that last category that has been growing in popularity, and for good reason. When an experienced software developer needs assistance, it is rarely for language syntax, but instead a desire to see how someone else solved a specific problem. For solutions using the PHP language, one source of information is PHP 5 in Practice." Read the rest of Michael's review.

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