Applied Languages Books

An excellent update of a classic text. This book, in just this one volume, gives you an incisive description of information theory. It assumes that you have no prior experience in this field. It develops the theory from the first principles of Claude Shannon, and rapidly shows you his major results.

If you are a student, a valuable and essential part of the book are the several hundred questions. You really need to tackle as many of these as you can. By doing so, you can substantially deepen your understanding of the subject. The problem sets are probably also another reason why this book has become a common text in Information Theory classes.

The first edition of this book (and now hopefully this edition!) has been compared by some to Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics, as a standard and authoritative book in its field.

The book is very helpful in producing activities and worksheets for children. Many great and creative ideas have stemmed from here. I highly reccommend this book for teachers when helping students learn to write.

I was new to XML and I searched everywhere for something that could make me comfortable with it. Thanks to this book, I am now very comfortable with this technology. Highly recommended for those new to XML.

This is divided into three parts. The first part, roughly a quarter of the book, includes a detailed, technical discussion of XML and DTDs. The second part, roughly half the book, is devoted to DOM (Document Object Model) and Microsoft's extensions to DOM. Examples largely use Microsoft's XML support. Some limited use is made of Java, but mostly the author's use JavaScript, Visual Basic, and ASPs (Active Server Pages). There is a moderately complex example, an online shopping demo, done from two different perspectives--both using ASPs under Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server) on the server-side, with one using Microsoft's IE and JavaScript on client-side and the other using a Java applet. There is also complete source for a Visual Basic program that presents an XML document's tree structure. Finally, the last part of the book, roughly a quarter, is devoted to XSL (XML Stylesheet Language). This includes a detailed, technical discussion of XSL.

This was published in July 1999 and so is somewhat dated. I suspect that the book continues to sell because it is on the recommended reading list for IBM's XML certification test. The back cover indicates that the authors are students that interned at Microsoft. Their bias toward Microsoft is unfortunate. It isn't clear that Microsoft has any place in a discussion of XML and associated technology and tools. Contrary to the authors' remarks, Microsoft's XML parser does not conform to the DOM specification. Moreover, languages and tools like Visual Basic and ASPs that are only available on one platform are of limited utility to programmers that need work on multiple platforms (NT, Unix, Mainframe), that is, programmers in the real world. The authors' choices in this regard make their book of limited utility.

I was recommended this book as an introduction to XML/XSL, being a web application developer myself. Well I was lucky to already be familiar with things such as Active Server Pages, Javascript, SQL server, and script programming in general, because otherwise this book is very hard to read.

The first two sections give a very clearly written overview of where XML fits in the current Internet world (though published in 1999, this story is still true I think), but after that the book quickly becomes rather technical with lots of references to chapters that are still to come. Moreover, some of the examples contain awkward typos. Still, after reading this book I have the feeling that I am now quite capable of designing and realzing XML/XSL based web applications myself, especially after re-creating their on-line shopping demo, an excellent example that the two authors provide. Their (previous) involvement in Microsoft I did not find bothersome; on the contrary, since Internet Explorer is still the only browser that supports XML in a decent fashion, their knowledge of IE5 comes in handy.

All in all recommended for the more technically oriented people involved in web app design, although the book could maybe by now use a revision and an overall quality review.

intended for the programmer new to XML/XSL - has the clearest explanation of the structure behind the DOM model, and how to use it out of the 4 or 5 books I went through. Gives you enough understanding of foundation to layer in complex code, in several different approaches. I really liked the level of their example - not the trivial bits and pieces found in books like WROX, but a coherent and complete set of code. This is not a reference manual, which is probably just as well with XML/XSL being the moving target it is, but a textbook that actually enlightens. I thought the organization was well-thought out - but I got the book because I'm NOT an expert in this.

Although this book tries to cover a lot of useful information, the overall effort is poorly written, lacks coherent organization within each chapter, and at times rather juvenile. The youth of both authors is clearly evident and the book is better skimmed than read (often too painful to read). Oftentimes the authors put the cart before the horse when trying to teach a concept. Likewise, their examples tend to be rather weak and trivial rather than based on real-world usage patterns and scenarios. The authors' lack of professional experience in creating the kinds of applications that benefit from XML detracts from their overall ability to present the capabilities of XML in a professional manner.

I had to look at some of the other people's reviews of this book to see if I was totally alone on this once I finished reading this book. I was disappointed in the book. It wasn't very in depth and it definitely focused on how much better women are than men on every other page it seemed.

I am by far not a sensitive guy when it comes to facts but I felt it was always presented in a fashion that was condescending to men. Either that or all the research that wasn't self-serving was thrown out.

Other than that it really didn't go into a whole lot of depth. It wasn't a bad read even though I really didn't learn anything new that I didn't just know my whole adult life.

I just hope this helps her write more objective in depth material.

I'm gonna keep it simple

The premise: The power of body language, how to use body language, how to improve your body language, how to interept (sp) body language, Tonya talks a lot about different forms from facial experssions all the way to where to sit in a meeting

Pros: Tonya discusses everything from facial expressions to body language. She uses illustrations in some of her examples. She also uses examples of people she helped and how you can improve your body language

Cons: The book is very reptivie and doesn't offer any insight which an average person doesn't already know about body language. She doesn't give any special tricks besides the "reiman" report, which any person who is fairly concious of body language uses anyway. The book is tad boring at times as well

Verdict: overall this book is for someone who is completly clueless about body language who wants to improve, for an alpha male/female or someone who is concious of their body language this is just review

i learned a lot with this book. tips for being more secure in meetings both professional & personal. very fun and interesting. it changed my life!

Interesting, however I expected a little more on every day contacts. Seems the book centered more on reading the body language of the opposite sex. I was a little disappointed.

I purchased this book to help me in my professional business. I am a civil engineer and deal with clients on a day to day basis. I try to read at least 1 non-fiction book a month. I made it through 3/4 of the book and could not stand to read another page, I almost ripped the book in half. This book contains very sexist overtones, and at times is very insulting and degrading toward men.

I found it very difficult to read chapter after chapter about how superior women are to men. Granted, women do indeed have a sixth sense about people. I always include my wife in a critical interview to get her take on the person about to get hired. This book goes beyond making simple comparisons between men and women to out right stating women are superior, period. No credit what so ever is given to men in this sexist, demeaning book.

If you are a proud hardworking man with half a backbone, leave this book on the shelf. Radical feminist will love it, and no doubt Mrs. Rieman wrote it with them in mind.

Men, you have been warned.

This is a huge and comprehensive book about MATLAB but definitely not for beginners. It can also be used as a reference. It covers everything you need to know about MATLAB - even classes and object-oriented programming. However, if you are just beginning to learn MATLAB, you may want to check the book "MATLAB for Beginners: A Gentle Approach".

This book is very good if you are a not familiar with matlab. From the beginning it gives you the possibility to understand matlab world with many practical examples. However if you are looking for a detailed description of specific arguments i.e, polynomial interpolation, p.d.e., neural networks, then it's better to give a look to other books.

I use this book everyday. It is easy to find what you need right away. Although, MatLab has demos that you can use to write programs or m-scripts, the book has features that are not in the demos that will make writing scripts much easier. It doesn't go into great detail with more difficult plots but allows for the those who just need 1-D, 2-D and simple 3-D plots to plot data points easily and fast. This is definitely the bible for first time users of MatLab.

This book was presented at a much lower level than I expected. I would find it hard to "master matlab" using this book, but I suppose it is good for people with very little programming background. If you know how to program and simply want a book to quickly bring you up to speed look elsewhere - this book is a somewhat watered down and slow.

I purchased this textbook for the matlab course taken in university. I always can find something interesting or useful inside of it, and knowledge inside of it was all written in details.

This is the Pattern book that can be made compariable with GoF's book -- Detailed and clear explanation of 23 patterns plus some system patterns. The full code examples can further illustrate the concepts in a modern view and benefitial to technical pattern design. Though it's Java approach, it can still work in other OO-related projects.

For the developer LEARNING Patterns, the Heads First book seems the most popular. But this is essential as a reference book. Premier examples, plus it reads more like a book and less like a math book (as most coding books are).

I open this up from time to time to keep those patterns not used often fresh in my mind to ensure I will realize when one is needed.

This is the first book that I go to for anything patterns, and I have a copy at work because my coworkers also come to this book when they need a refresher or reference.

Just shortly: Book contains all patterns from GoF book. Patterns are explained in more appropriate way and more closer to Java. Also examples are pretty simple and easy to understand. So the simplicity would be the best about this book.

I also like that the the second part of the book: "Patterns in the Java Programming Language" where the author covers extra patterns used in J2EE which I find very usefull !

I would like to see a CD or FD attached on the end of the book, although full code samples are also good (you don't need PC while reading the book). There is a web site to download examples and images and all fits on one single cheap floppy.

Anyway the best pattern book for Java I saw. I have many Pattern eBooks, but all of them are either too simple (can't really learn how to use the pattern), or too complicated (e.g. GoF is complicated for me). So this remains the best for me.

After reading this book, I did not see the author tried any new way to explain how, when and why to use design patterns. I don't think the book is worth the moeny I spent buying it.

I got the book before I had read the GOF book and found it quite useful. After reading the GOF book I found it even more so - I like the simpler examples and the fact that they are done in Java. Some people will not like the code reprint at the end of the book (about the last half of the book) - however I do, as it is quite convenient for referencing. Found the UML diagrams that were downloadable from the web reference site quite helpful.

The major problem with the book are the errors! The first pattern I looked at (Visitor) had an extraordinary number of errors. In the text it gave the methods one name and used another name in the code listing. Two of the classes for this pattern the code was simply duplicated from a third class. The downloaded examples did have the correct code. Be nice if there was a CD - but this is no major issue.

I would give it a 2 star at best, due to the errors, but if you can sift through the errors I think you will find it a nice supplement to the GOF book hence 3.5 stars (if I could).

I looked at several ADO.Net books and found this one to have just the right combination of detailed explanation and clarity I was looking for. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn ADO.Net.

Don't even try to buy this book at a bargain price like $5. I bought it at BargainBookCo then have to throw it away. I wonder where all those 5 stars raters come from. I love
Apress books but definitely not this one.

Disorganized and packed with grammatical errors, spelling errors, and confusing or downright nonsensical sentence fragments, this book is incredibly difficult to read. An example, from page 13: "Using XML, it's easy to program XML files..."

That said, this book does have some interesting content. Were it not for the total distraction of the poor writing and total lack of editing, I would have enjoyed this book quite a bit.

I'm extremely disappointed, as I generally find that APress books are of very high quality. Avoid this book; there are much better titles available.

This book has been my best guru in learning the ins and outs of database programming and ADO.NET. Authors give you an in depth understanding of ADO.NET, interfaces, internal classes and namespaces. The do a thorough discussion of every area of ADO.NET. Book is upto date, written using .NET version 1.1 and covers every available data provider including SQL Server, OLEDB, ORACLE, MYSQL, XML, ODBC and whatever else. Good chapter on ADO.NET FAQ. If you are learing and writing database applications, this book is an absolute must have.

I personally found this book an excellent coverage and very informative. Besides ADO.NET information, its full with tips and tricks. As an intermediate developer, I fould coverage on custom data providers, interfaces, ADO.NET FAQ, and detailed internals of ADO.NET data binding very helpful. Also, good coverage on every aspect including ODBC databases, OLE DB, SQL Server, MysQL, ORACLE, SYBASE, and others. This book definitely gives you an insight of ADO.NET technology and how the technology works under the hood. If you are not very fond with the grammer and looking for a good technical book on database programming, this book is for you.

With this book I learnt to use Matlab. Matlab was always a nightmare for me, because I don't recognize, how Matlab works because I prefered to programming with C++. When I read this book, I understood all the things that before I didn't understand. The way the authors wrote the book is the key of the success of this book, because they're using a easy form to explain all the topics. I also recommend the next book of them, to the v6. and v.7.

This book might be great for new users to MATLAB, but even then, I am not sure that it is much more help then the text or the help files that come with the software. I was hoping for a reference that went in to more detail than the help files and covered more advanced topics or commands.

I'm an experience programmer and I learned Matlab from this book but I never really read it. Typically, I used it as a reference, looking up a function when I needed it. I'm just amazed that after 1 year (of full time matlab programming, I wrote a matlab toolbox myself), I'm still using the book. You find what you're looking for easylly from the index. It's clear, short but very deep and detailled and the chapter are cleverly organized. That's the best programming book I've been using. I would like all of them to be like that.

Everyone has their own skill set and knowledge base, but, I didn't find this to be very useful. I am an engineering student with a decent college math background and several C++ courses under my belt, I didn't find this text to be helpful at all in learning Matlab. I ended up doing much better reading the on-line help, if you have a good internet connect, there isn't much point using anything else in my opinion.

This book is a great complete introduction to Matlab 5 and for novice users. The sections on Handle Graphics and Graphical User Interface (GUI) development are very useful for someone starting GUI work in Matlab. Not useful for more advanced users of Matlab. Overall the text is easy to read and understand, and a good reference. Well worth the price.

While this book at first appeared to be exactly what I was looking for, I quickly became disappointed by how hit or miss the entries are. Some entries are useful, while others simply waste space by going far to in-depth (for example, there is an entire algorithm that conveniently shows how to add pi/2 to the maximum axis to find the minimum axis of an object in an image). Other complicated topics are frustratingly over-simplified. The storage format topics are almost laughable; there are encoding and decoding details for macpaint and pc paintbrush formats that nobody ever uses, but entries for jpeg, gif, and tiff claim that the algorithm is to complicated for the scope of the book and point to outside references. The book isn't terribly useful unless you are well versed in the topic, and if that is the case then you probably don't require a book like this.

This book is ok for a quick find, but I've found mistakes that could have you scratching your head, like in the algoritm for Gaussian Noise. Your Images will look like crap and will not implement correctly until you discover they forgot to add the original pixel image to the noise. This can be annoying(unless you like to debug code) and time wasting. Fortuately they do provide before and after images that can help you muck through this. I could have given it a 2 star, but it does give a easy start if you are aware and informed. This is obviously not a tutorial or an indepth look at image processing. Just a way to implement image agorithms.

I really like this book. It gave me a jump start on image processing and it's good for anyone immersed in the field to find a quick solution to a particular algorithm they're looking for, get a good glimpse at how they're doing it and put it to code. However, there are a couple of flaws:

1. A good majority of the algorithms have the for loop indices reversed when performing spatial filtering. If you take a look at, let's say, the point detector code, the main 2 for loops to access the rows and the columns of the image are correct where the variable y iterates through the rows and x through the columns... however, for the sub-for loops when they iterate through the mask, they reversed the variables. i would be iterating through the rows and j would be iterating through the columns. To access a particular pixel within the spatial mask, they put *(IMAGE -> Data + X + I + IMAGE->Cols*(Y+J)). This syntax is incorrect. If I and J should be interchanged, then the loop iterations would be correct, but they're not. This error appears in several of the algorithms that are in the book.

2. The lack of the documentation makes it hard to go through. I understand that the book is for those who are already immersed in the field, but some comments do help.

3. They did a poor job on some of the theory in the book. The Hough Transform section of the book is written very poorly. They don't go too much into depth for some of the other concepts of the book.. then again, that's left for a textbook.

Though these errors surface in this handbook, it's very light, compact, and a good thing to keep beside your computer when you're coding away. All in all, I do recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn image processing quickly.

This book is excellent if you use it as intended - to lift working C code for the implementation of a variety of image processing algorithms. There are even algorithms for computer vision techniques such as circularity, compactness, and finding the minimum or maximum axis. This book assumes that you already know how to program in C and that you are already familiar with the theory of image processing as it was never intended to be a textbook on either of these subjects. However, this does not mean that this cookbook is devoid of theory. Each transform contains a short description of its purpose, a before and after image showing its effect, a paragraph describing the algorithm, and then the C code that performs the transform. Some reviewers have complained about the C code, but to me it was commented well enough that I have been able to easily translate several of the algorithms into Java for an application I have been writing. Depending on the complexity of the transform there may also be a diagram or an equation included. The algorithms are laid out in alphabetical order, so as to be convenient for quick look-up. It is true that the code assumes in most cases that the input image is a 256 level gray scale image, but then if the reader is familiar with image processing it should be easy to extend any of these transforms to color images. Where this book is weakest and most shows its age is in the class of transformations labeled "storage formats". For the image types the user is still most likely to encounter- GIF, JPEG, and TIF- the book only shows routines that tell you how to determine if the file is or isn't one of these types. Details on decoding or encoding these image types is beyond the scope of the book. The book does include details for PC Paintbrush and MacPaint formats. However, these simple image storage formats are no longer commonly used. I don't think that this one weakness negates the usefulness of this book for the vast majority of readers.

Plusses: lots of algorithms, good pseudo-code for implementing them, very easy to find stuff.

Minuses: some of the code presented is outdated (MacPaint files? Really, now...), while others are inaccurate. The 'Thinning' code generates incorrect results; it finds critical points, but does not produce a connected skeleton.

This book is brilliant for anybody that has an interest in the implementation of numerical methods in C++. I bought this book at the start of my PhD. I knew virtually nothing about C++ and within a week of getting this book I was fluent in pointer aritmetic, dynamic memory allocation and classes.

This book is great because it is geared towards people who just want to start programming numerical applications and are not too bothered with the finer points of computer programming. With the aid of this book I coded a 3d finite element solver, amongst other things. It also has plenty of examples and exercises to get you going.

This book is by no means perfect. It falls down in a couple of areas namely graphics and file I/O. It has nothing on graphics, which are essential for numerical applications. The file I/O that is discussed is great for an introduction. It introduces streams and how to import and export simple sets of data. But apart from these two applications the book is fine.

I would recommend it highly to anybody that wants to start programming in C++ with emphasis on numerics.

It is missing the first 16 pages, and I bought it new. Needless to say, I am very angry.

This book is fantastic for learning C++ using numerical-analytic examples. It is not exactly an easy introduction to the C++ language, which is admittedly vast and profound. Especially someone with little or no programming background would be rather disappointed with it.

I recommend coming to it after doing a first course in C++ itself using something like Deitel & Deitel (C++ How to Program) or Ivor Horton's Beginning C++. Once that preparation is in place, this book will not only provide a very useful revision of the basics (first learnt elsewhere), but also prove exceedingly successful in teaching numerical applications. C++ is so vast that it is impossible to digest many of its aspects from a single source only. Therefore, the "introductory" tone of the author is incredibly useful (for a second pass, I must stress).

Somewhat equal weight is given to both the procedural and object-oriented aspects of the language with coverage of legacy C concepts such as function pointers as well as state of the art OO concepts like encapsulation, inheritance, overloading. Moreover, there are dedicated chapters to such quintessentially C++ issues as namespaces, exception handling and STL. Last but not least, the treatment is fully ANSI/ISO compliant, so the code should run on most modern compilers.

A broad menu of numerical examples are illustrated ranging from simple arithmetic to root-finding, interpolation and matrix-algebra based computations. Most exercises are do-able and quite illuminating.

I have the second edition of this book, and have found it to be the best book of its type on the market (and I have bought several...). Though it may not suit undergraduates being exposed to C++ for the very first time, for research scientists and engineers actually wishing to use C++ in practice it provides an excellent grounding, and reasonably comprehensive coverage of all parts of the language. Also, unlike some books with similar titles it doesn't just present C type code with a chapter on classes (objects) tacked on as an afterthought. If I have a slight criticism, it is that perhaps there should be some in-depth examples of scientific/engineering problems programmed in an object-oriented way (i.e. as in Barton & Nackman's useful but now rather dated C++ textbook).

I think those who love this book are probably familiar with C++ and are impressed by the coverage of topics. I admit that the book has excellent scope, but there are many other books about which the same can be said. What makes this book very poor is that the author doesn't seem to understand the notion that one must explain something in the order in which it is used. For example, many examples in the book use the standard library and employ the 'using' namespace operator, but the author glosses over this until much later in the book. In fact, even though it is used throughout, stream IO is only substantially covered in the last chapter. Odd choice!

I'm not sure why this book is entitled '... for Scientists, Engineers and Mathematicians' unless the publisher was just trolling for readers. Except for a slight nod in the choice of examples, there is NO significant effort dedicated in this book towards scientific computing. It's basically just a C++ primer, and a rather mediocre one at that. In fact, the author only spends two pages on the standard library complex data type! Finally, there is no mention of optimization techniques to make numerical code run faster, a subject of specific importantance for any book that purports to be dedicated to scientific computing.