Programming Books

I have been reading many c++ programming books now to learn programming. So far I have just started to read this book, and I have to say that this is the best book, i've read so far. The author does an excellent job in explaining everything step by step for the reader and he gives simple little examples in order to better understand the programming language of c++. I have no experience in programming at all, and this book is making it very easy for you to get to learn this language. Awesome book!!!

If you find c++ scarey, this is the book for you. My professor wasn't the best, but this book guided me to score an 'A'. It explains everything real well and provides mini examples along the way to ensure you understand what is going on. You wont be bombarded with details, since it isn't necessary at the introduction level anyway.

This is the best book I ever read in my entire life which gave me all the details about the c++ programming language. The author of this book professor Hennefeld are the best teacher and the writer in the entire world that is why I am taking him for the third semester in a row for my computer and info science major. The book is so clear that anyone who has no background in C++ can master this language and yet the best c++ reference book for any professional.

If you are looking for a well written easily understood C++ book, this is it. I've been in the MIS business for 15 years and am currently attending Penn State. This book as enabled me to recieve A's in all my C++ courses. The book starts off slow for the novice user, showing basic concepts. Within weeks the reader can master the most challenging C++ algorithms. I refer to this book as the C++ bible. Definately worth the investment!

This book is here to help the beginner in Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL. If you have always fancy in setting up your own web server but have no idea of how to do it, this book is for you.

The author teaches you step-by-step from installing Apache web server, PHP and Perl to writing applications like database-enabled web applications using Perl, PHP and MySQL. He also touches a small portion of SSI (Server-sise Includes).

This book is indeed very good for beginners. However, please be warned that you may get frustrated by the typos and mistakes found in this book. Refer to the previous post, he mentioned some configuration issues which are helpful. Other than that, this book is definitely worth reading as you may learn a lot especially when you have no idea of what and how to use Apache, PHP, Perl, and MySQL.

For advanced readers, you may want to look into other books :)

I want to congratulate the author for writing such an excellent book for beginners to open-source software like Apache, PHP and mySQL. On windows platform does not bother me as it is the predominant operating system platform and easier to relate to, although I do hope the second version of this book might include a Linux-version.

The CD software includes the latest version of PHP, MySQL, Apache and Perl, although personally I think Perl should be less covered since PHP is much better. Also the section of IIS installation with PHP kind of distract the attention from Apache in the whole book.

Some typo errors in the book's codes, as well as installation errors not mentioned in the book could frustrate non-technical people: e.g. Not able to set up on my Windows XP (Home) for virtual host / Server Side Include / OpenSSL / Preventing Directory listing...also on PHPMyadmin (Chap 8), the book missed out a step to uncomment in PHP.INI the line extension=php_mysql.dll in order to get the nice result of Fig 8.30, otherwise you would contantly get this error "cannot load mysql extension'.

Overall the book is recommended to read through in one session (I spent 3 hours in one single night), then follow by practices in few other sessions on Apache, PHP and MySQL in sequence.

It has been an enriching and enjoyment experience for me. I highly recommend to all new commers in web-database application developers.

Eric Hunley's USING OPEN SOURCE WEB SOFTWARE WITH WINDOWS addresses some common issues with open source documentation, from Linux/UNIX focuses not easily accessible to Widows users to adapting these focuses to Windows environments. Chapters tell exactly how to adapt open source software to Windows environments, using four of the most popular Internet programs as examples. The focus on how to reduce costs in the process is also a welcome one.

While there is an awful lot of software available on the net, this book concentrates on software related to setting up web sites on systems running the Windows operating system. This includes the Apache web server, PHP to provide web/database interconnectivity, MySQL database, and Perl to provide more flexibility to your web sites. The CD-ROM included with the book includes copies of all of this software, so here is really all that you need to put up dynamic web sites.

I gues the question I would have to ask is that if you are using a system for a single application such as being a web server, why wouldn't you go all the way and use a Linux operating system under it, it would be faster, more reliable and less expensive. But if you gotta use Windows, here's all you need.

Anyone teaching VAX Assembly Language should take a good hard look at this excellent textbook!
Sara Baase does a superlative job of laying groundwork and then building upon it. The questions at the ends of the chapters are practical and pertinent--and any teacher knows that is unusual!
INPUT/OUTPUT library routines are provided which may be easily typed in and incorporated into a student's first programs.
The book very effectively runs the course from fundamental to advanced concepts and techniques.

If not for a very few typos in the answers at the end of this book, VAX Assembly Language by Sara Baase would rate a 10!

I bought this book in the early eighties when our company moved platform to VMS ; I myself had little exposure to assembler, and I reckoned we'd have to 'get our hands dirty' to write conversions from the discarded platform. As it turned out , this book was a revelation to us. The content was exactly what I needed and the practical examples were of immediate use to us ; also, the clarity of the book made it an easy and enjoyable read. I'm thankful to Ms. Baase for having written this book - any chance of something similar for the Alpha assembler?

Dr Baase is my teacher & CS advisor in SDSU, so of course I will recommend this book for others. But besides that, the book is very well organized and full of examples. I need that because it's more practical for me to seee codes with explanations at the same time.

'Vax Assembly Language' is the textbook for my Assembly Language class at the University of New Orleans. It is quite useful, following up each explanation of a concept with a detailed example. The chapters are well organized. Each builds on previously referenced basics which lead to more advanced topics. The excercises throughout the chapters as well as at the end are relevant to the rest of the chapter.

For all things except CCReations and VBOOP there really is a single book that covers it all for beginners to severely advanced coders. I first bought the VB3 edition and the VB4 edition is still the first grabbed book whenever I hit any non-oop walls. Graphics & palettes, optimizations, and a devious VB-ONLY encryption technique that is as secure as any system you would pay for (and that only needs to be converted to a VBdll to get rid of the documented limitation ... prior to VB5 you could not reset the initial "engine" without restarting the app... think about it). Seriously, this book is the ace in the hole. Says "VB4" on the cover, excellent for any VB version (cd includes the full VB3 version too). Get it, you'll never regret it. If Amazon can't get it for you (nothing against Amazon at all but it is listed as out of print) try calling "Computer Books @ Half Price" (ask you operator for the numbers in Bellevue or Seattle Washington) for a brand new copy ... at half price .

For anyone who knows a reasonable amount of general visual basic. The language is ENGLISH. It's not scientific, you can understand more complex concepts. Proof of all statements made are backed up with code. Their are plenty of examples. I do not write book reviews, but this book deserved one. I only hope that they write another one, or someone else can write as good a book for VB5.

I never used the API before. I got this book and in minutes I knew how to READ, WRITE and EDIT an INI file using the API. Add mail-aware and mail-enabled to all your applications. It just shows you all the stuff you thought where impossible to program in a couple of lines of code. Would of got a 10 but only the bible gets that rating

This is a great book. Very specific and clear. Uses plain English to describe the power of the visual basic. I recommend this book for beginner and advanced a like. If you want to master vb you must have this book.

This is an excellent book on VB. If you are already a programmer or want to learn programming, this is the right book. It will give you an overview on programming concepts and deep details on programming with VB.

I am an engineer that has been learning c# and VB to build some applications to help our department automate our processes and turned to the Deitel books for instruction. The Deitel series books are excellent. If you had to get only one reference book, I would suggest getting one of theirs. The "How To" books are textbooks and the "for programmers" books basically leave out the self tests and chapter questions. I have both the C# How to and the VB.net Programmers books along with a couple more brand X books. If you are looking for an excellent reference, get the Deitel "for programmers" book. It's a lot cheaper and will still have the information you are looking for.

As a seasoned Access developer, I was really excited at the launch of .NET in 2001 as I wanted to make the jump to developing VB/SQL applications. But alas, every time I made an attempt to develop a VB.NET application using Visual Studio 2002/2003, I would end up with a ton of errors that I couldn't fix, and I would always go back to Access because it was so much easier. The books around at the time were also difficult to understand.

Then I went to a developer conference in 2005 and saw the latest versions of VB.NET, Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005, and I thought Finally!! - Microsoft have made developing VB/SQL applications as simple as Access Database applications. So I wanted to find a book that covered all the cool features of VB.NET 2.0, as well as a discussion of OOP and UML. And just recently I discovered this awesome book by the Deitels.

This book is the perfect introduction to VB.NET 2.0 - for someone who has programmed, but not necessarily VB6. It doesn't discuss differences between VB6/VB.NET 1.1 and VB.NET 2.0, as most other books seem to waste space doing. Rather than have separate chapters for OOP/UML, it combines discussion of OOP/UML within the context of VB.NET concepts such as classes and inheritance, which by the way are exquisitely explained in a simple, readable format with relevant examples.

While the ATM case study, that is gradually built up throughout the book, is excellent, I just wish they had taken it one step further and discussed the design of the "Bank Database", and the relationship between the database design and the classes. Since nearly every business application built these days involves a database backend, this would have been worthwhile discussion.

It still somewhat amazes me that Visual Basic has stood the test of time like it has. It keeps getting updates and facelifts, and continues to "play well" in today's environment. If you need a comprehensive guide to the language and the programming environment, I think you would be well-served by the book Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers (2nd Edition) by Paul J. Deitel and Harvey M. Deitel. Not much seems to be missing, and there are a few features that would cause me to highly recommend it to the Visual Basic crowd...

Contents: Introduction to .NET, Visual Basic and Object Technology; Introduction to the Visual Basic Express 2005 IDE; Introduction to Visual Basic Programming; Introduction to Classes and Objects; Control Statements Part 1; Control Statements Part 2; Methods - A Deeper Look; Arrays; Classes and Objects - A Deeper Look; Object-Oriented Programming - Inheritance; Object-Oriented Programming - Polymorphism; Exception Handling; Graphical User Interface Concepts Part 1; Graphical User Interface Concepts Part 2; Multithreading; Strings, Characters and Regular Expressions; Graphics and Multimedia; Files and Streams; Extensible Markup Language (XML); Database, SQL and ADO.NET; ASP.NET 2.0, Web Forms and Web Controls; Web Services; Networking - Streams-Based Sockets and Datagrams; Data Structures; Generics; Collections; Operator Precedence Chart; Number Systems; Using the Visual Studio 2005 Debugger; ASCII Character Set; Unicode; Introduction to XML Part 1; Introduction to XML Part 2; XHTML Special Characters; XHTML Colors; ATM Case Study Code; UML 2 - Additional Diagram Types; Primitive Types; Index

As I said, there's not a lot that's missing here... :)

The authors forego the hand-holding tutorial approach and target the professional programmer who already knows the basics of how programming works. As such, the book dives into documenting the different features of the language and provide a large amount of example code that demonstrates the features being discussed. It's also written in such a way that it can serve as an ongoing reference manual when you're up and running with the language. It's impossible to know everything about every last feature, so you can go back and check into areas where you're still a little fuzzy...

As I mentioned earlier, there are a few features here that really make me like this book. For one, it introduces UML diagrams and real object-oriented concepts. All too often the Visual Basic programmers I've met are self-taught individuals who can sling code but don't understand the larger industry concepts. Using UML here helps to bring them up to speed with the rest of the world. There are also a number of "call-out" tips in the book that are grouped around good programming practices, common programming errors, error prevention, look-and-feel observations, performance, portability, and software engineering. These gems, by being separated out of the text, are highly noticeable and extremely valuable to help you write better code. The authors also focus on the Visual Studio Express packages for the IDE. These Express versions are free, so you don't have to buy this book and then fork over $500 for more software. You pretty much have a complete, self-contained learning package right here.

I have my hands full with a number of other technology learning goals right now, and Visual Basic isn't on that list. But if it was, this would be the book I'd want in front of me...

You sit sometimes and think for hours about how to do something in Visual Basic that is so darn easy to do in the pure Win32 API. It still does not come. More Jolt. Nope still nothing. Then you read this book and holy moly there it is!

I think that pretty much covers what this book is about. For someone like me that started programming Windows with Windows 2.0 and am an old hand at the actual C level API this book brings some of the tricks of the trade to the Visual Basic programmer. Between this book and "Advanced Visual Basic 6" by Matthew Curland a programmer of VB will find plenty of ammunition to shut down those "VB is a whimpy language" attack chihuahuas.

If you are a better than average VB programmer and need some new tricks to keep interest up or if you are any level programmer that needs a little spice to go with your code get this book and play with the code inside.

This book also does something else all books should do. The authors included the source code for ALL the examples and annotated the code to the max. Thus the "Annotated Archives" title, eh. Other peoples' code is a valuable tool for programmers and there is plenty of it in this book.

This book is the best example book I've ever read! A lot of examples, all are explained and the Code is very useful: Create flat toolbars with the Toolbar Control, do floating or docking Toolbars, or display designer menus! Congrats!

When it comes to references and "secrets of" books, there are so many choices that it makes finding a decent book nearly impossible. I am delighted to have stumbled onto "Visual Basic Annotated Archives." Whether you need to learn how to write an ActiveX DLL or simply wish to look at snippets of clever code, this is the one to consider. I heard that one of the authors (Kent) is a teacher... it shows in his writing style, which is very easy to follow.

this book is so good that you will never need another VB boo

We are visually oriented people. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. And with the dramatic increases in computer power that have come about in recent years we can visually display things that not too many years ago took a whole room of equipment.

This book presents a concise one volume introduction to visualizing data structures. It is not specific to any one discipline. The biologist programming how to visualize DNA will get as much out of the book as will the game developer. The material is presented at the undergraduate student level where some programming experience, especially in C++ is a prerequisite.

While there is no CD in the book, there is a companion web site maintained at the publishers which includes the source code of examples given in the book as well as additional source codes of various algorithmic procedures as well as test data to check that the code is compiling correctly. Also on the web are pointers to useful resources related to the contents of each chapter.

This is not a "How did Photoshop do it?" kind of algorithm book. I would suggest that if you want to make good use of this book that you already have had a course on the theory of algorithms, and thus understand how to follow the derivation of whether an algorithm is O(n), O(nlgn), etc. That is because the author dedicates much space to determining what the time-efficiency of each algorithm is before he goes into the details. Next, the author talks about each algorithm in pseudocode, and then finally there is the actual C++ code for the algorithm itself. Not every algorithm involves OpenGL, because quite a few of them don't actually draw anything, they just support the drawing of images by other algorithms. The book is well illustrated. Whenever there might be a question about an algorithm that words or equations can't answer, there always seems to be a figure available to finish the job. The book has a very academic tone to it, and each chapter ends with extensive bibliographic notes. The following is the table of contents:

1. Overview - A fly-over of the entire book.

2. Abstract Data Structures - Talks about solutions to common problems that come up time and again in visual computing. Topics include the Fibonacci numbers, conversions between 1D and nD array indices, how to flood-fill an area using a queue, and detecting whether or not a set of line segments intersect. This may not seem to have much to do with data structures, but the book ties it all in.

3. Coordinate Pipelines - Subjects include translation between Euclidean and projective points, 2D polygon transformations, 3D mesh transformations, and how to render multiple views to one device display by using viewport mappings. OpenGL is used heavily in this chapter.

4. Images - An oddly titled chapter, because if you get right down to it, the whole book is technically about images. The topics include the simple task of displaying the RGB color cube in OpenGL as well as the more complex tasks of image warping, image compositing, halftoning, and dithering.

5. Meshes - Meshes come up often when drawing complex and realistic 3D figures. Topics include approximating a sphere by with a mesh and various remeshing experiments and algorithms with the "Stanford Bunny" as a subject of these experiments.

6. Animation - A brief overview of what it takes to make your images "move". I found this the least satisfying of the book's chapters. "Computer Animation" by Parent does a better job of discussing this topic, in my opinion.

7. Randomization - Topics include computing a uniformly random permutation, quick sort, selecting the nth smallest element of an array, and computing the scaled rigid transformation matching a given pair of segments. The author does a great job of discussing the algorithms, but comes up a bit short in the motivation for these algorithms in visual computing.

8. Higher Dimensions for 3D - Includes some good algorithms on computational geometry and how it ties into graphics. Topics include the k-means iterative clusteriing method, rasterizing a Voronoi diagram, and computing an approximation of the smallest enclosing ball in large dimensions. The author does a good job of tying in each algorithm to its significance in graphics.

9. Robustness - Discusses how to determine if certain algorithms are easily "broken". This discussion is done from the perspective of computing the area of triangles using floating point numbers and also determining if and only if two line segments intersect.

This book does not hold your hand on the issues of algorithm theory, C++ programming, OpenGL, or even basic computer graphics and image processing theory. You are expected to already know that material. This book is more about the algorithms that are applicable to geometry, graphics, and vision and what makes them useful, efficient, and robust. Highly recommended.

I should say from the get-go that I know the author personally, and I've reviewed chapters before the book appeared. I think this book fills a great space between more applied computer vision or computer graphics books, and the more theoretical computational geometry books. It provides a host of practical problems that the author has encountered in his research at Sony Research Labs, and feeds tons of excellent theory to solve it. The theoretical part is made very accessible, even if it assumes some reasonable (college-level) mastery of linear algebra.

The biggest attraction of this book is that it lies at the confluence of several fields. Depending on your background, you may be more versed in the systems issues (vision or graphics), or the algorithmic issues (computational geometries). The first kind of person will really appreciate all the foundations they are given to solve the problems at hand. How to apply them is very well explained in the chapters by using hands-on examples, and ample illustration.

To give you a short idea of the table of contents (more information can be found on the author's book web site, easily found through google):

The chapter on images, for instance, does great job discussing Halftoning, Morphing, Color space, and Interpolation/Sampling/Convolution, and contains material that will be familiar to computer vision and graphics people.

On the other hand, the chapter on meshes (with discussion of half-edge and mesh data structures, and mesh smoothing/parameterization) will be very familiar to a computational geometer or graphics person.

The chapter on data structures includes what is usually found in advanced algorithm textbooks. The advantage of having it in such a context is that its presentation is much more adapted to immediate use. There is also practical considerations such as C++ implementation, and a separate chapter on the use of randomization as an algorithmic design technique. That chapter covers an important problem of point registration and geometric point matching that is very useful in camera registration and in photo merging.

The central piece (that takes 130 pages) is the discussion of coordinates (chapter 3, "The Coordinate Pipeline") which achieves the feat of presenting all that is useful for discussing images (2D), meshes (3D), or camera transformation (projective geometry) in a unified and very accessible presentation. This chapter also introduces a few fundamental tools like homographies and epipolar geometry, singular value decomposition (SVD), Plucker coordinates (for lines in space), conics and quadrics. It is a gem and will prove an invaluable reference in my library.

Finally beyond the algorithmic and application issue, the author concludes with a chapter on robustness, a problem that plagues all these applications. It discusses a set of techniques that can be used to eradicate or at least lessen floating-point precision-related crashes (which not just result in numerical inaccuracy, but can altogether prevent the successful completion of a program and generate all kinds of catastrophic failures).

To recap, this is an excellent books that puts into perspective techniques from more theoretical algorithm and geometry communities to use for vision and graphics problem, among other applications. It is geared towards researchers/developers of applications. It is not a research monograph, and can advantageously be used as a textbook for a graduate or advanced underdgraduate class.

A good book for the student of computer graphics. The field is now very mature, and the book describes key algorithms invented over the last 30 years for rendering and ray tracing. Also useful to some readers will be the samples of C++ code that implement several of the algorithms.

As a learning experience, the book has merit. However, if you are tempted to do research in this field, the book should be approached with caution. When I said the field is mature, I meant that surely much of the techniques for visualisation have already been found. Combine this with the high resolution of current graphics consoles, and we get little room for significant visible improvement. Diminishing returns. The time to get into this field would have been in the 70s and 80s. As a research guide, the book does not really convey the prospects of this field.

Memorable interviews with the most affable interviewer. A lovely way to spend some time.

Even today, when celebrity revelations droppeth like the gentle rain, Studs Terkel stands head and shoulders above other interviewers. He had a knack. He could get people to say things they hadn't planned on saying. Terkel knew precisely what to ask, and how to ask it. Those are my words - the Chicago Sun Times said it better:

"Studs Terkel (gets) people to say things in such a way that you know at once they have finally said their truth, and said it better than they ever believed they could say it."

Trained as a lawyer, experienced as an actor, and a best-selling author, Terkel spent half a century on his Chicago based Peabody Award winning syndicated radio program. He brought together people from all walks of life, artists, writers, philosophers, inventors, and visited with each of them as they recounted their triumphs and failures.

Now, 48 of these original interviews have been gathered for our enjoyment - it's a treat to hear the stories of those who influenced our world in their own voices. We hear R. Buckminster Fuller, Woody Allen, Gore Vidal, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Parker, Bertrand Russell, Leonard Bernstein, and a host of others.

Exemplary listening pleasure!

- Gail Cooke

Studs Turkel is a wonderful interviewer, and over the past five decades he has interviewed many of the great thinkers, writers, and doers of our time. The ones he chose for this collection include Aaron Copland, Oliver Sacks, Margaret Mead, Daniel Ellsberg, Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, John Kenneth Galbraith, and dozens of others. All together, they provide a fascinating portrait of the last half of 20th century. Highly recommended!

Having grown up in Chicago and spent a chunk of my adult life there as well, perhaps the thing I miss most is Studs Terkel and WFMT, the best
FM station in the country. I learned as much about life and the never-ending struggle for human rights from Studs' interviews as I did from any
professor or priest. Hearing these wonderful chunks of those conversations again fills me with nostalgia and recharges my batteries for my own twilight struggle against the world's ills.

This weekly funfest brings chuckles and sometimes out loud laughter. Not My Job pulls material from the show and listeners will be pleased. The Tom Hanks and Janeane Garofalo are very funny, but reactions from the panelists also make this a must hear.

For those who think NPR is a bunch of boring folks, "Wait Wait" is a great weekly quiz show that's entertaining and (slightly) educational. This CD collection of the "Not my Job" sections from Wait Wait makes great listening - perfect for commutes, while running on a treadmill, etc.

Often times I disagree with the opinions of the commentators but they express them in such a wry agreeable way that I can't help but laugh. I listen to this CD and the program podcast at work and my coworkers often wonder what it is that I am giggling over! I highly recommmend these CD's.

If you like the show, you'll love the audio cd. And if you don't listen to the show, you'll be amazed at how much fun it is! Try it, you'll love it!

I use this book for over twenty years already. It is now worn out, I need a new copy. Although I am now writing in C++, this book is still always close at hand too look up simple things like operator precedence, and standard C functions.

A concise tiny book with all ANSI C functions explained. This book should be the standard style for all the computer language books. I am looking for smiliar ones for C++ and VB .NET, but could not find one yet.

If you want to learn C, you should have this one.

This is my favorite book about programming. I believe
a new edition, compliant with the latest C standard might
be a good idea. Though there is a waste amount of on-line
material available now, books like that are by no means
obsolete. I am now sorry that I bought only one piece.

This is the best C reference book I've seen. It's compact, and contains all ANSI C library routines with alphabetical index and subject index. It explains arguments for the function, and even has a brief example.