Software Books

As an IT Project/Program Manager, senior IT executive and fellow-author for more years now than I care to remember, I found Marsha Lewin's new book, "Better Software Project Management", a pleasant and informative surprise. Ms. Lewin has distilled her obviously vast experience into a highly practical "how-to" book which will prove invaluable to Project Managers and all other managers with IT connections. Her advice and suggestions throughout this well-written book vibrate with hard-won experience and a strong aura of "been there, done that". Newly minted project managers will find a wealth of tips and templates to get them started and to provide project deliverables with the aplomb of seasoned veterans. Veterans will themselves find plenty to learn and re-learn from Ms. Lewin's hard-nosed, yet humorous approach. The author dispenses with the usual theoretical approaches to the subject but illustrates the best of the available theory with practical and thoughtful "cases".

If you have one project management book to read this year, read this one!

This is a short and easy to read book that is packed with practical advise. Marsha gives detailed examples that can be adapted for other projects. She discusses the role of tools for project managers but also discusses the unquantified problems that cause projects to fail such as personnel turnover, changes in scope, and defining the end of a project. She has obviously managed some large projects and is speaking from experience. I must contrast this with "Extreme Programming Explained" which might work for very small projects but which does not work for a large project.

Whether you are an experienced project manager or just starting out, this book should be on your shelf. For the beginner, it covers all of the basics...and much more. For the experienced project manager, much of it will be familiar, but you will find many opportunities to improve your techniques.

Better Software Project Management goes beyond the oversimplified approaches that confuse project management tools with project management. Real project management means dealing with people as well as tasks, schedules and budgets. This book offers insights into them all.

I have been engaged in the management of software projects for more than 30 years. This "primer" is, by far, the best and most concise book that I have ever read on the subject.

Of particular note, it is written by an experienced project manager to meet the needs of real life project managers. The author offers practical answers and presents usable examples that clearly show how her methods may be applied.

One of the hardest things for a new project manager to do is to sort out all of the acronyms, buzzwords, means and methods spoken of when describing the management of a project. The author cuts through the professional fog that obscures the subject and makes clear what is entailed in this art/science. Even after 30 years I found myself learning from her.

I strongly recommend this book.

As an IT Project/Program Manager, senior IT executive and fellow-author for more years now than I care to remember, I found Marsha Lewin's new book, "Better Software Project Management", a pleasant and informative surprise. Ms. Lewin has distilled her obviously vast experience into a highly practical "how-to" book which will prove invaluable to Project Managers and all other managers with IT connections. Her advice and suggestions throughout this well-written book vibrate with hard-won experience and a strong aura of "been there, done that". Newly minted project managers will find a wealth of tips and templates to get them started and to provide project deliverables with the aplomb of seasoned veterans. Veterans will themselves find plenty to learn and re-learn from Ms. Lewin's hard-nosed, yet humorous approach. The author dispenses with the usual theoretical approaches to the subject but illustrates the best of the available theory with practical and thoughtful "cases".

If you have one project management book to read this year, read this one!

I teach and do statistics for a living. Don't let the humor fool you. Despite being the most (only?) fun to read statistics book, it also has more thorough (and readable and usable) coverage coverage of the basics and advanced methods than any other book its size. It explains both underlying principles and practical applications. Readable, usable, thorough AND funny. Who would have thought it possible for a statistics book! I reccomend it to anybody in the biomedical or social sciences who wants to learn statistics AND as a handy reference for anybody who uses statistics AND for anybody who needs to teach students AND for anybody who needs to explain statistics to the public. Deserves to be bestseller. And it's back in print by BC Decker, available in U.S. from Blackwell; ISBN: 1550090852.

I was so upset when I learned that Mosby had dropped this book that I contacted the authors and found out it is available:

Blackwell Science (for BC Decker) ISBN: 1550090852

I was trying to find the book for residents and students. I can believe that it is out of print! It was the only book I could find in many years that could be used to learn biostatitics on your own. It was easy, fun and it did not treat you as a dummy.

I teach and do statistics for a living. Don't let the humor fool you. Despite being the most (only?) fun to read statistics book, it also has more thorough (and readable and usable) coverage coverage of the basics and advanced methods than any other book its size. It explains both underlying principles and practical applications. Readable, usable, thorough AND funny. Who would have thought it possible for a statistics book! I reccomend it to anybody in the biomedical or social sciences who wants to learn statistics AND as a handy reference for anybody who uses statistics AND for anybody who needs to teach students AND for anybody who needs to explain statistics to the public. Deserves to be bestseller. And it's back in print by BC Decker, available in U.S. from Blackwell; ISBN: 1550090852.

This book is fun and interesting, and not nearly as scary as the rest. It doesn't rely on lots of math, and it presents basic concepts in a way that regular people can understand. I recommend it to everyone I know who (1) doesn't know much about stats but (2) finds they need to do something statistical.

It breaks my heart that it's out of print, because I was hoping they'd write a whole series of books!

Books that improve my technical communication skills are few and far between; either the advice is too general or it is simply repeating something Gerald Weinberg once said. Still, being able to explain something to a colleague without sounding authoritative is difficult. My belief is that conversations with a colleague should be collegial, and one thing that can set us on equal footing is checklists.

Bug Patterns in Java provides you with a checklist for code reviews and software defect disputes. The best thing about these checklists is that they are non-authoritative. A checklist is just a general static analysis tool. It cannot prove there is a defect or corner case awaiting to be discovered by the end-user. It can, however, non-authoritatively point out patterns in code that appear to be programmer mistakes. What's more, since a checklist is really just a general static analysis tool, you can implement these checklists using automated tools like FindBugs. These tools help provide you with The 2 Minute Answer about the health of your code base.

Now, if you can just run a program to find these mistakes, should you still read Bug Patterns in Java? Absolutely. Just as Martin Fowler's Refactoring is still read by many who love their push-button refactoring features in IDEs, Allen's book should still be read by programmers who use static analysis tools to locate and correct mistakes. The correction half is where Allen shines. He explains exactly what program transformation to do. Moreover, in talking you through the correction, he makes you realize how valuable code reviews are in catching mistakes before they become part of a forward-facing, published API. Allen provides a fantastic vocabulary for describing common bugs in Java, and my belief is that this vocabulary can be cross-pollinated and benefit users of other languages. In particular, Liar View, Dangling Composite, Run-on Initialization and Sabateur Data are phrases I regularly use outside of Java.

Last but not least, most of the chapters are based on an IBM developerWorks series written by Allen. You could read the developerWorks articles by typing in the names of each bug pattern in a search engine. However, if you are not strapped for cash, then it really is worth it to get the book. In my opinion, the format is easier to read, the ideas flow well from one chapter to the next, and Allen definitely spent some extra time sequencing the chapters in the most pedagogical order possible. You are paying for a finished product and world class presentation quality.

Two side notes:

(1) Others have since built upon Allen's work. Sai Zhang published a paper titled "On Identifying Bug Patterns in Aspect-Oriented Programs". It is a really good paper that explains some pitfalls to watch out for, whether you are a programmer or language designer. Templight, a Template Metaprogramming Debugger for C++, was the first effort to provide a way to identify defects in C++ code that takes full advantage of the Turing Complete template system. Problems like infinite recursion and so forth were shown to be identifiable using an automated checklist of sorts. There are many more examples, but these were just the first two I encountered after reading this book. Do your own exploration!

(2) Eric Allen claims he invented the term "bug pattern". Although I don't have any reason to believe he plagiarized the term, Google Book Search suggests that W. Lewis Johnson's book, Intention-Based Diagnosis of Novice Programming Errors (Research Notes in Artificial Intelligence), was the first appearance of the term in the programming field. Thus, credit appears to be owed to Johnson. I just hope that this "bug pattern" term isn't one of those notions that gets lost and re-invented every decade.

The author presents a different way to look on bugs and the debugging process. I could recognize most of the bug patterns as regular acquaintances from my daily work. What I liked most was the way he made clear how Java's type system can be used to eliminate certain kinds of bugs but that there's a trade off between static typing and duplication in code. In other words, to remove some sorts of duplication you sometimes have to forgo static typing in Java.

Time is a very valuable resource on every project, and this book can help conserve that resource. The first six chapters of the book present defect management within the larger concept of Agile development methods. Chapters 7-20 detail various bug patterns with symptoms, causes, cures, and preventions. The remainder of the book provides some nice resources like a diagnostic checklist, a glossary, a reference list, and an index.

I recognized some of the patterns from the author's column on developerWorks, but the book does a solid of pulling them together to present debugging as a rather orderly and scientific process. The author relies on his real project experience with the DrJava project to illustrate his examples. Various tables are available to link concepts with potential bug patterns or problems to a bug pattern that could be related.

The patterns are explained and depicted with code with each chapter having a summary of the concepts at the end. Tips and variations on the patterns are sprinkled in the text. I found the glossary of particularly helpful. The text is easy to read and the examples are clearly explained. This book and "Bitter Java" may have a good "ROI" as required reading for Java developers.

A great Java resource for programmers of widely varying experience levels. Author found the perfect balance between theory and practical application. There is a wealth of useful information in the chapters devoted to detailed descriptions of the symptoms and cures for the most common and/or most troublesome Java bugs. The book is organized in a very friendly way, making it an excellent reference. I plan on keeping this book very handy.

Bugs. All code has them to one degree or another and they always seem to take twice as long to fix as the original code took to write. This book boils thirteen of the most common bugs down to their root causes and formulates them as 'bug patterns'. Each bug pattern describes how to identify the bug by the symptoms it exhibits, why the bug is occurring, and gives one or more suggestions to fix it and prevent it from occurring again.
If the bug you are searching for isn't among one of the thirteen bug patterns covered, the author also covers a methodical approach to tracking down bugs effieciently and quickly. Suggestions on how to prevent bugs from occurring in various stages of the development cycle are also presented, which are helpful even if you aren't currently searching for a bug in your code. Most of the suggestions are based on the XP development model, but the practices that are important are pointed out so they can be incorporated into any other style of development.
Even though debugging doesn't sound like a fun topic, the author has a very readable style and is able to get you excited about preventing and fixing bugs. The chapters have been very well thought out and the book is broken into topics very well. You can read a chapter in about ten minutes or less and feel like you have a good grasp of the topic covered.
This is a great book to partner with a 'best coding practices' type of book, like 'Practical Java' or 'Effective Java'. Those books are really good at describing how Java should be coded. This book gives examples of why those practices should be followed, and how to quickly get back on track when they aren't and something goes wrong.

I am an attorney who only occasionally encounters intellectual property issues stemming from "gaming" in my practice. However, like most males my age, I'm fascinated by the video game industry, and in particular, video game development. I picked up this book to learn a little bit more about gaming issues--partly in the hopes of expanding my practice, partly in an effort to learn more about the industry--and ended up buying this primer on a whim. It turned out to be a great decision...not only does this book provide the astute, rock-solid legal analysis I would expect from a legal primer, it also gives an amazing and exciting inside look at the world of development.

The primer begins with a good-natured and insightful perspective on starting your own game company, winds its way through the trials of day-to-day business operations and ends up with some shared experiences from those who have "made it" in the world of video game development, including the co-founders of GameLab. In between, well-researched and easy-to-understand legal advice is dispensed on a wide range of pertinent topics, including intellecual property law, contract law, taxation and even the current state of law in virtual worlds.

In short, this primer is an affirmatively *enjoyable* read--a rarity among legal primers, as I can unfortunately attest--and a must-read for would-be developers and anyone else who wants to really understand the ins and outs of video game development. I plan on recommending it not only to my clients but to anyone who is even remotely interested in learning more about the gaming industry.

Superb book. Enormously Practical text. The best intellectual property law and game development book on the market. A very healthy read. may change your whole perspective on business, games and life.

This is one amazing book. It quite literally addresses every possible business and legal issue for the game industry. Not only that, the information in this book is applicable to really any software or software intensive company. A+

If you are even thinking of forming a company in the computer gaming industry, or if you're an outside developer presenting a game to a company, here is a wealth of information. Of course, as one of the contributor says, 'if you have $10 million already and you are starting a game company, then you can afford to hire a lawyer to do all this work for you.' But just to double check the work he is doing you still should read this book.

This book really has two sections. First is about starting a company. This is on all the general business parts like creating a legal business entity, renting an office, hiring staff, product and market analysis, raising capital, etc.

But then comes the second part that is specific to the gaming industry, especially the intellectual property that you are creating as you define characters, the art aspects of how the game looks, and the contracts you will need to have in place with your developers or with a game distribution company if you use them.

There's another aspect that could fit under either of these two as they are not standard for most businesses but not restricted to games either, this includes selling internationally, paying international taxes and so on.

Basically, as the title of this book says, it's a 'Primer,' that is, a general introduction that will enable you to know what you're talking about but not enough to consider yourself an attorney.

it's just the sort of material a business English teacher needs to meet the requirements of both business classes and executives.it is comprehensive and includes major business communication skills . I have been using it for the past two years. it is just exellent. it would probably be better if an answer key was attached to it.
well Done!!

"Business Objectives" is targetted towards adult English as a Foreign Language learners who are currently learning with a trainer.

It is directed towards pre-intermediate/intermediate level learners, and supported by teacher's book, cassettes, pairwork material and lively videos, it is comprehensive and up-to-date.

Topics include: meeting people, telephoning, presentations, socialising, describing products and trends - each in easy-to-use units that can be used as on-going training, or stand alone modules. It makes great use of sketches and role plays, and references to actual companies and situations and for a trainer with little business experience it is easy to use.

Its partner "Business Opportunities" is directed towards higher level learners, and frankly there is not an English training organisation that I know who is not basing it's business English course around this book. A must!

This is the kind of English business book that gives plenty of subject for discussion and giveas the student the satisfaction of knowing that he or she is learning useful English. It is also complete and varied, can be used with any businessperson, no matter the area of interest.

"Business Objectives" is targetted towards adult English as a Foreign Language learners who are currently learning with a trainer.

It is directed towards pre-intermediate/intermediate level learners, and supported by teacher's book, cassettes, pairwork material and lively videos, it is comprehensive and up-to-date.

Topics include: meeting people, telephoning, presentations, socialising, describing products and trends - each in easy-to-use units that can be used as on-going training, or stand alone modules. It makes great use of sketches and role plays, and references to actual companies and situations and for a trainer with little business experience it is easy to use.

Its partner "Business Opportunities" is directed towards higher level learners, and frankly there is not an English training organisation that I know who is not basing it's business English course around this book. A must!

I, just want a audio cassette of business objetives

I had been introduced to C before I knew assembly and was left wondering the magic behind the curtains.. what happens when u call a function.. when u declare an array.. I mean I knew that it must mean something in assembly but the link was not there in any of the C books I looked up.

For an engineer who knows hardware and is curious, there is no other place than this book. Holub breaks up C into assembly and show you what happens as you compile and run it, side by side. He takes the mystery out of C programming. Wonderful for folks who missed the link between assembly and C. C has been called as High level assembly language and the proof is here in this book.

This is the ONLY book which explains almost everything that is going on from program as text to an executable. Well organized and well written which makes it easier to follow. Could have included a few more topics on memory management. Nevertheless, a neat book that every professional C programmers would like to own.

Personally, I think this book is better than the K&R book. If I read this book when I was just learning C, then I would give up and say to myself "It's too complicated. Why do I have to understand all about these..." But hold on. Don't you want to know what the stack frame is and how it works during recursion and how a variable number of arguments are handled, how the automatic type-conversion is related to the portability issue? Then read this book. If not, just skip this book. The only short coming of this book is that it's not ANSI C compliant. But it matters little if you already know about ANSI C. You will be able to discern the difference yourself, and probably can smell the history of the evolution of C. It's sort of a bonus. Allen I. Holub, what about writing the 2nd edition of this book? Then, that would be a great a help even to many embedded C programmers, I think. Sencon-to-none C book for me.

Of all the C books I had, I would rate this book my number 1. Just the section on pointers is worth the price of the book. The way it explains pointers, pointers to pointers, etc is so done so elegantly and clearly. No complex double talk or technical quibbs.

I wonder why Mr. Holub stop authoring anymore books... Mr Holub, if you are reading, please continue your excellent work ...

When I started programming in C I was doing embedded operating system design and this was the only book I found that clearly explained what a stack frame was and how to unwind it in assembler to handle errors. It contains information for the experienced C programmer that I have never found elsewhere on how C code works 'behind the scenes' (assembly language, binary arithmetic, complex pointer math, stack frames, function call jump tables, etc.). It is not a book for beginning programmers, and it is not in any way an introduction to the C language, it is however, an unusual resource for the experienced programmer.

this book is a real gem, it is a must for any cics programmer. mine has a ton of tabs so i can find the commands that i use most often

This is an EXCELLENT CICS reference. It's really the only book you'll need if you have CICS projects at work. It has handy programming examples, a complete INDEX (novel concept, eh?), and detailed explanations.

One word review: Excellent.

Doug Lowe is a great writer/teacher. The book is well indexed and anyone could understand his writing. He tells you what you need and also show you examples. Trash the IBM manuals, it's all here. There are more copies of Doug's book in our office than any other writer.

Once you begin to modify CICS programs, you soon find out all about the little idiosyncrasies and problems inherent in anything as complex as online programming. The CICS Desk Reference contains practically all Command-Level CICS commands and error explanations, and shows many examples on using the commands. Although it deals with COBOL programming, Assembly programmers can find many answers here, too.

Some one always has it. Thats why I am going to buy one of my own. (Me and 4 other guys!) The best feature is it's alphabetized. And nothing is better than a good example. The only way it could get better is to add a chapter on Linkage Section and its use in calling/linking to background CICS programs. (PS. Hi Rick, glad to see you got CIO at Amazon) Mark Lankford

HomePage 3.0 is an older program but it has the advantage of being cross-platform (meaning Mac and PC) on the same disk. I have made a dozen websites using it and it is a wonder to behold. Newer standards have overtaken the WWW so not all of the new functions are integrated into it.

It has a first rate tutorial on the disk which can help you to make perfectly decent small websites. However, this book is the perfect manual to go along with that tutorial. In fact I think it is essential to own this book so that you can address problems as they arise without having to bounce around between the program, the Help, and the tutorial.

As with most of the Visual Quickstart series, this one is filled with pictures so that those of us who cannot grab the meaning from the text alone can guide ourselves with the screenshots showing what the text just spoke of.

I recommend both this program and this book to my students who wish to build their own websites, even though both the book and the program are out of print.

This book was very helpful getting me up and running and doing what I wanted to do--make my website. It was also helpful in stepping me through publishing my first database on FileMaker Pro. I would reccomend it to anyone wanting to use Home Page. I should say that Home Page is a very easy to use, but powerful program. It is quite intuitive. This book just happens to make it even easier to use. I just kept it on my desk and if I hit a snag it would unsnag me.

i need to know how to make a web page for 5$ if any one can give me instructions how to make a page mail me them thanks. p.s.hoss8617@aol.com

This book was very helpful getting me up and running and doing what I wanted to do--make my website. It was also helpful in steping me through publishing my first database on FileMaker Pro. I would reccomend it to anyone wanting to use Home Page. I should say that Home Page is a very easy to use, but powerful program. It is quite intuitive. This book just happens to make it even easier to use. I just kept it on my desk and if I hit a snag it would unsnag me.

I found this book very understandable and full of explanations. It summarized much of what the help menu in Claris Homepage offered, but showed detailed diagrams and steps on how to complete the functions for most web page design. I recommend this to any beginner with Claris Homepage to use as a basis to learn the program and understand the buttons and capabilities of the total program.

Hey I am team leader who is into a RE-ENGG project from IDMS TO web technologies.Can somebody tell me how good this book suits my requirement.
Thanks in advance.

This is the most comprehensive COBOL reference that I have seen in my 20 years in the business. I bought it specifically for the IDMS chapter, but it also covers other database types. It is well organized and gets right to the point with code examples and diagrams. If I were to have only one COBOL reference this would be it.

The book really helped me in clearing up areas that my advanced COBOL teacher was not very clear in.

I think it will be a good reference book for the future.

This is one of the few books that contains anything about IDMS. All other IDMS books are out of print and hard to find. I authored Chapter 23 - The IDMS Chapter.

Pay attention to where this books says it does not teach programming.

_ALL_ code examples assume familiarity with COBOL and familiarity with programming. Most are simply free-form code examples designed to inform, not actual programs.

As for a reference, if this book missed it, I didn't notice. It's already helped me on a number of issues, including covering why SECTIONs exist (something not even my compiler vendor manuals tackle, and I've certainly never seen anywhere else).

I've seen a few typos, but they were obvious (again, you need to be a programmer already to spot this stuff).

The CD-ROM has several demo compilers and the code examples from the book. I haven't used any of them, but have read about others liking them.

Overall, a good book and a great buy.

Well, you know it's a winner b/c it's in Addison Wesley's Microsoft .Net Development series. Like their Hejlsberg title, this is pure reference. However, there's a lot to it (almost 900 pages in total) and EVERYTHING in the CLS is covered here. It's very technical, and definitely not a cover to cover read, but there are many good examples and if you need a quick reference for any topic in the Framework, this book is a must have.

.NET, unlike Java, is an implementation of an ECMA and a ISO standard.
This book, from the Microsoft employees that created .NET and with input from members of the standards bodies, annotates the standard with comments that provide insights into the reasoning behind the standard. If you are in one of these categories, you should seriously consider buying this book:
1. advanced .NET developers
2. language designers
3. tool designers
4. those interested in understanding virtual machines
5. developers of libraries
6. Java developer (wondering what a standard looks like, just kidding. As an intermediate-advanced Java developer, the book is very interesting though.)
7. developer who wants insight into current software architecture
Otherwise, the book is still a useful guide to help you grow as a developer if you even browse it sporadically, and unlike many programming books, it will not be obsolete in a year.

When Microsoft released its .NET platform, it attempted, and is attempting, something quite audacious. It is putting forth a programming environment whereby you could combine modules written in different languages, without recompiling, let alone rewriting.

Arguably, Microsoft set itself a harder task than did Sun with java. Along this road, as the book describes, a standard arose - the Common Language Infrastructure. It describes a Virtual Execution System and what type of executable code can use it. So a version of Pascal, say, that wanted to run on a VES would need to pass the compilation rules of a Pascal compiler that adhered to CLI.

An analogy might help. In some rough way, you might consider CLI + VES to be like a java virtual machine, and the choice of a language to use atop CLI to be like running java under its jvm. Granted, this is crude, but many readers are probably unfamiliar with CLI, whilst having more acquaintance with java.

Warning. The book may be heavy sledding for most. The main audience is compiler writers and language developers. Daresay that even experienced developers may not usually deal with a language at this level.

A slight irony is that CLI is meant to decouple programmers from any specific platform, which is why Microsoft pushed it over to a standards body. But the most developed instantiation currently appears to be .NET, which is inextricably interwoved with Microsoft's operating systems.

Excerpt from C# Online.NET Review (wiki.CSharp-Online.NET):
"...this book goes beyond the online documentation to clarify and amplify the original standard and describe its implementation.... the single source programmers, language and tool designers, and library and VES developers need to render the CLI and the CLR fully comprehensible."

This is not just a reference guide (although it is a very good one). It is also (due to the annotations, often funny) that give you insight into the 'why' behind thing like naming, design decisions, things that were internally debated that we would not normally know about, and in general you come away feeling like you were there creating .NET. I find it required reading and often use it as a reference. 5 stars. An amazing read.

Kind Regards,
Damon Carr
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