Software Books

Reading this book I was reminded that the humor of Scott Kelby leaves me a little cold. I guess being published by SK means the book must provide a sampling of his type of humor. The humor is funny at first reading but the third or fourth time it grows very dim.

That rant over I must say that the book is really good. It provides insight into Adobe Bridge, actions, and other speed tactics that will definitely enhance your work flow. Photographers who shoot a lot of pix will benefit most but there is much for everyone (except, maybe, those just beginning Photoshop who may be a bit bewildered).

Recommended reading. I just wish the print on the screen shots was big enough that I didn't need a loupe to read it.

rps

This is a really good productivity booster and time saver. If you use Photoshop a lot you will find a lot of uses for this book.

As I move around often, many Peachpit Press books I buy on the road usually, once throughly perused, end up in the hotel trashcan. Kloskowski's excellent PDF tutorial on Smart Object in PS, merely underscores my desire for publishers to make available PDF (or similar) versions of their texts so that we itinerants can view them and keep them while on-the-road. (I see that the NY Times has come out with a Reader version of its paper which is terrific). I'm a podcast convert; now make me a Peachpit Press Reader convert.

For those of you who watch Photoshop TV, you'll get the little joke in the title. This book is fantastic, I've been using Photoshop for years, so I'm fairly knowledgeable when it comes to using the program. But this book is great whether you are an intermediate user, or a professional user. Matt does a great job teaching you ways to speed up your daily production in Adobe Photoshop CS2, in addition to some great tips and tricks.

He also touches on working with Adobe Bridge - Adobe's file browser / management / etc., software. Honestly, I'm normally not a "book" person, I usually prefer the video versions of everything. But the Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic is written in a way that makes reading it easy and fun - I had a hard time putting it down! For the price ... It's a "must buy" for all Photoshop CS2 users!!!

The Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic is a must-have book for seasoned Photoshop users. The author presents a series of powerful tips and techniques that will work wonders when integrated into your production workflow. The book delves into harnessing the power of Adobe's Bridge software, writing repeatable Actions to automate your workflow, and fine-tuning Photoshop's settings to work well with your hardware setup (Mac or PC). The tips and techniques are easy to follow, with plenty of images to support the text. This is a book that you can easily read through in one sitting, but I guarantee you'll keep coming back to it for reference.

This book is more for intermediate to advanced Photoshop users - focusing on maximizing your productivity with the tool. It's NOT a book for learning how to use Photoshop.

I think most of the information is pretty straightforward for those who have modeled objects and component packages. Anyone familiar with test driven design and other extreme programming practices probably have come to most of the same conclusions that this book shows examples of.

While it is very thorough, it is not very concise.

In the end i gave it 5 stars because it's the ONLY book that i've ever seen that gives this type of information in ANY format. I applaud the author for taking such a hard topic and putting it in writing. Sometimes I have to have examples like this to show to other developers when they 'cry' about not being able to unit test.

If your job is working with Legacy Code, then you need to pick up this book. If you follow his line of reasoning, you can pick up solid habits to systematically revitalize legacy code. The main emphasis of the book is applying unit testing to legacy code for in the authors opinion, legacy code is simply "code without unit tests." You may or may not agree with this statement, but the techniques he presents to find "seams" as he calls them in the code to allow you to break dependencies are vital to working with legacy code even if you choose not to apply unit testing to your projects. Some developers may attack the simplicity of the examples presented, saying they don't represent real-world examples, but if you "read" the text accompanying them you learn the techniques to tackle legacy code issues. Although I noted many publishing glitches - places where sentences to entire paragraphs are repeated from one page to another, the content is solid.

[...]

This is a must-read for software developers, I think. It's up there with Code Complete as a must-have, and I think does a better job than Refactoring by Fowler of explaining Refactoring. I started using some of the techniques in this book immediately and found that coding was higher quality and more enjoyable. It also helps to understand that the author's definition of "legacy code" is "code without tests".

I am an entry level software developer who has only been in the industry for a little over a year. While I was in college, I was always provided with very clean code bases to work with or analyze. I was in for a huge surprise when I entered the real world. The code I deal with every day at work is an extremely ugly mess. We have no automated tests. We are basically operating at CMMI level 0. There are no clear coding conventions of any kind. People just kind of band-aid things on top of other band-aids just to make the new changes work. We are basically in emergency mode every day because of all of the ugly side effects of global variables and functions. I was presented this book one day by my company news website. So I grabbed a copy and gave it a chance.

I was very satisfied with this book. I was expecting to start reading this and it would be like one of those GoF (Gang of Four) or Martin Fowler books that already assume that your code is already written fairly well in the first place. The reality is, like others have said here, is that most companies you will work for will just not have the prettiest code base in the world. The book's content is fabulous and I can see this being one of the key books on my desk every day. I absolutely love how pragmatic Michael Feathers is. I like how he continuously explains the concept that sometimes the code might look uglier or awkward in order to get it under test. I always thought the design pattern books were just a bit over the top. Michael is not like that. He provides examples you probably run into everyday and provides succinct steps for getting it under test.

The only gripe that I have with this book is the overwhelming amount of publishing errors throughout the book. Sometimes, a word is skipped in a sentence or the wrong word is obviously used. There was one point in the book I recall where it seemed like it was missing the ending of a sentence or something. I think if Michael ever wants another edition of this book then he ought to hire someone new that will catch all of these little glitches and correct them. They were a bit annoying at times. Also, like someone else said, it would've been nice to see some examples of really old code in COBOL or FORTRAN even.

Otherwise, it is easy to read this book and you'll get through it fairly quickly. There have been some technical books I have read where I just couldn't read it all the way through because of how utterly boring it was. Michael keeps you entertained with some rather interesting concepts and stories. I also like the way he formatted the book in general. I like how many of the chapters in the book are titled by some problem like "These API Calls Are Killing Me!" However, the last chapter called "Refactoring" was a bit vague and odd to me especially since all it discussed was his infamous "Extract Method" refactoring.

I really wish all of the developers on this team would read this book. They really need to. We need to stop this game of changing and guessing whether it worked. You just cannot do that with software unless it is very small. Any software engineer should have this book on their desk.

This book is decent but it doesn't break much new ground. The author has the Fowler-esque affectation of naming very simple things to create a shared and clear vocabulary (ie making a change and seeing what it breaks when you compile is now the LeaningOnTheCompiler pattern) which feels a little overdone in places.

There was some good material here, but generally the best parts were where he would tie an example into a well known design principal which would be explained in a sidebar (SRP, etc). Of course, that kind of stuff could be found elsewhere in a more concise format.

The book is nice in that it makes you think through the samples, I just wish there were more moments after doing that where I went "oh hey, cool" (there were a couple, don't get me wrong) instead of "yeah, thats pretty much how we do it now".

This was truely an amazing book, I've read many .NET books, all of which assume zero knowledge of programming, or very little. So when I skipped the first few chapters, or skipped them (Since I've been a Java Developer for several years), I missed valuable differences between Java and .NET.

Be sure you do know your stuff in Java, or else this book will seem over your head. This is not a beginners book. But if you're a Java developer, or have similar programming experience, this book is 100% for you.

My only quirk with this book, is that at times, it's more of a refrence/comparison, over how to use several key .NET features. And it seemed to jump around a little. So actually I'd probably rate this book a 4.75...but rounding up gives us a 5, which it pretty much deserves.

I highly recomend this book out there for anyone who is NOT a beginner programmer, or comes from a Java background. This book is a MUST read for you.

After about 5 years as a java developer, I took a new job as a .NET / C# developer. This book was a great starting point for me. Going from java to c# is a relatively easy transition, but this book makes it much easier and quicker. The book compares the two languages and highlights the differences which made it easier for me to pick up. I'm not a person who reads many books, for work or pleasure, so I don't have much to compare it with. But out of the 10 or so books in my work library, this is the second best book I've used. (The best I own is Effective Java. I'd really like to get one like that for c#.)

As an experienced Java developer who was "forced" to move into the C# and .NET world, I turned to this book to help me make that transition. I am very glad I did so. This book provided nearly all of the background I needed for that transition, and it still serves as my primary C# reference a year later. (By the way, working in the C# and .NET world is not as bad as I feared it would be.)

If you are accustomed to Java and new to the world of .NET and Microsoft books in general, you will find the majority of these books to be written for a less sophisticated audience than you are used to. My advice is to be very cautious what you spend your money on, as many of the books about Microsoft programming topics are not worth the investment.

This book, however, is very much worth the money you will spend on it.

This books hits the spot for java developers, the intended audience. A one page description on delegates, for example, has all the information you need to get started with delegates. The Oreilly book has a long winded chapter on it and the essence was lost in the obtuse example provided.

i could have sworn this book was from microsoft press. This book did a *great* job of being unbiased, and presented "just the facts". It did so in such a clear manner as well, straightforwardly laying out the similarities and differences between java and C#, and each's strengths and weaknesses (briefly).

definitely recommended!

An easy step by step how - to guide book makes corel 8 simplified right down to the short cuts. Well done gentlemen !

An easy step by step how - to guide book makes corel 8 simplified right down to the short cuts. Well done gentlemen !

This book and "CorelDRAW F/X are essential for users of the program. I can't really add anything to the reviews out there except "Amen"

I was looking for a book, not a manual, to show me some of the special effects everyone wants to learn, not just how to use the tools. I have learned so much from this book and have even impressed a few of my friends. The steps to create the projects are clear and easy to follow. The perfect book for any Corel user.

Studio Techniques by Gary Priester has been the most inspirational corel draw book I have (and I have read many). His ability to teach many skills and techniques in just one of his tutorials is absolutely amazing....His ability to use colors and create truely "gem like" creations with them has left me with my mouth open more than once! All of this means nothing to me if the person with these abilities lacks teaching skills...and this is where Gary shines above most others.... When you combine "Creative Genious" with truely great teaching and writing skills you have "Studio Techniques.." by Gary Priester!!

Very good book, lots of useful info that goes beyond the normal documentation.

The content reveals a lot of details of RS. However, I had a hard time to make the samples running.

I found this book to have lots of information, but if you learn best by hands on examples, this is not the book for you. The author shows you a report already done and gives a quick explanation of how he got there. It is not a step-by-step type of book. As a lot of the examples shown do not have a how-to to go with it, I found this book not a good place to start. There are others that are more hands-on and step-by-step which are easier to learn from.

Having said that, if you've had some Reporting Services experience and are just looking to brush up on techniques and/or learn additional techniques, then this book will probably save you the tediousness of having to go through a step-by-step example that you have already done in the past.

Being a Microsoft trainer, and needing to get up to speed in a hurry, I found this book - luckily. This book was able to give me the answers to the "how do I do..." questions I had, and then enabled me to explain these concepts to my students.

Teo's style is easy to read, and he makes it easy to see how you can apply his examples to your reporting needs.

If you need to get up to speed on Reporting Services in a hurry, and need a book you can refer to in the future, this is the one.

The project: create a secure, distributed, Internet-facing, interactive ASP.Net reporting application for a Very Large Customer. The schedule: short. The budget: low. Amazingly, we got it done, and I credit Teo and this book with helping us meet our requirements.

The Microsoft Reporting Services 1.0 documentation is not very useful to the newcomer, and with 7 months' experience now, I can also say it's not very useful to the rising journeyman. The product is quirky, with surprising gaps and baroque security features. Without expert guidance from someone who has worked with the RS dev team I don't see how anybody would get much done with Reporting Services 1.0.

Teo Lachev worked intensively with the Microsoft dev team and the book shows it. Perhaps one of the reasons other reviews here gripe about the examples is that the most useful examples are the non-trivial ones in the second half of the book. Report authoring is the easy part! Delivering your reports to your users in the ways they demand is the hard part, and in my opinion this is where Teo's book shines.

It is no exaggeration to state that without Teo's book, and in particular his discussion of custom security extensions for Reporting Services, we would have failed to deliver the goods. But we succeeded... thanks Teo.

I think this book is a "must have" if you are involved in Lua scripting. It covers almost every aspect of Lua programming from basics to advanced topics. Maybe a little of confusion may arise when reading the chapters related to the fundamental topics such as iterators and tables, because the author lifts up the limit going deeper in to the explanation. But I think that this is a merit and not an obstacle, because at every level what the author writes about the topic let you use Lua even if you have not understood the whole topic yet; furthermore the author always points out pros and odds of the examples code.
You can use the book both as a starting guide and as a reference book.

This book is very approachable and has a clear, concise writing style. It not only teaches the language, but also covers many interesting computer science topics along the way and shows how to make the most of Lua's features. I can honestly say you could also use this as a tool for learning advanced JavaScript, because it does a great job covering closures and other concepts that the two languages share. There's also a large section on embedding Lua, a powerful idea that makes software like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 run.

Lua isn't a complicated language, honestly. If you're coming at it from another language, especially ones with simpler syntaxes like PHP or VB, you'll feel right at home. In fact, it's so simple you could easily pick up most of the language's workings just by looking at other people's code, and building your own from there. That said, not everyone likes to learn that way. Some people, myself included, like to have a reference book that they can pick up at a whim, skim to the topic that they're struggling with and find a solution. That's what this book excels at: reference, and teaching by example. It's a great buy for anyone looking to get into Lua scripting, and a nice reference guide for those already fluent in other languages.

One of the best programing language books I have read. If only the programing guides for other languages could be this clear and concise.

The information in the book is clear, easy to understand, and worth reading. The formatting of the text, the fonts used, and the overall style of the book is lacking. The end of the book was actually a few mm shorter than the spine on my copy, but nothing was cut off, so it doesn't matter beyond looking a little odd.

I would buy it again, even if the previous version is available for free online. It's great to read when you're not near a computer, as (for a programmer) the book is easy enough to follow without needing to try every example yourself.

Until Mac OS X came out this book helped me with _every_ hardware and software problem that ever turned up!
Only once one of my Macs was actually beyond repair, but ever since 1999 this book really saved the day.

The iMac I purchased in July 2001 is my first home computer. I found this book at the library, then discovered it contained so much good information, that I purchased it. It sometimes has too much info for a newbie, but still it is an excellent reference. This book is the "bible of troubleshooting", and a great way to learn how your computer works. I'd say it is a "must purchase"!

The iMac I purchased in July 2001 is my first home computer. I found this book at the library, then discovered it contained so much good information, that I purchased it. It sometimes has too much info for a newbie, but still it is an excellent reference. I use 2 other books along with this one, to trouble shoot and confirm resolutions to any computer problem. This book is like the "bible of troubleshooting". I'd say it is a "must purchase"!

One of the few technical books in my library that I feel has really paid for itself, and then some. Technical books are so expensive, and most of mine sit in the bookcase collecting dust within a month or two after purchasing them. This book had saved me more money than I spent on it within the first month, and I continue to use it on a regular basis. In addition to having real and practical advice on fixing problems, Mr Landau provides advice on preventative maintenance and must-have troublshooting aids, and background on how Macs work when thre aren't any problems. I would say that this book is the most essential of those aforementioned must-have tools.

I have a lot of respect for Landau .. and he knows what he's writing about ... but this was written pre-OS X.

It's time for another edition, since OS X has a whole NEW set of problems ... including the occasional "kernel panic" (read "crash"). There is also a whole new group of compatibility issues with peripherals: printers and scanners among them.

The others have said it all. This is truly a five star book, full of useful content. By now you should be in no doubt - buy it!

J.Scott Hamlin is on the cutting edge of Web graphics design and his book Effective Web Animation offers a new look and fresh approach to incorporating animated imagery. According to Hamlin serious Web graphics design goes far beyond the simple GIF animations of poorer quality and performance that just about anyone can create. Image size, color quality, interactivity, accompanying audio, and faster delivery over the Internet are factors that have led to new Web animation technologies. Are we ready to face them?

Hamlin lays a foundation for Web animation on the professional level for serious minded Web designers who must face new graphic design consideration demands. Hamlin offers detailed instruction involving the use of JavaScript, Photoshop, and Macromedia Flash and the results are phenomenal. This book contains many well-planned and beautifully designed graphic images and the tips and advanced techniques necessary to create comparable results. The accompanying CD features sample code, animations, demoware, and tutorials for further instruction opportunities.

Web animation is making a comeback and Web graphics design has become serious business. Hamlin's contribution in the form of this book is essential for those designers who want to graduate to a higher level of Web design mastery and income. Clients are wising up to the many Web technologies available to them and are becoming more discerning about how they spend their advertising dollars. Don't be left behind. Consider animating your Web creations today. This is must reading!

Having already worked for a number of years with the Internet I was hoping this book would provide me with such information as "Advanced Techniques for the Web" (as the books sub-title states). What I found though was the book is a fantastic resource for anyone who is a complete beginner right up to intermediate web developer.

I was expecting detailed information on java scripting and Flash scripting however found that the book goes not much further than, for example, the handbooks and tutorials of Flash 4 and Dreamweaver 2.

If you are an experienced web designer/developer with a solid grounding in the internet and are looking for more than basic java scripting and flash scripting, this book may prove to be too basic. With this all said, this is a valuable book and many colleagues who newer to the web are gaining much benefit from information in this book.

5 stars for beginner - intermediate skill level

3 stars for advanced skill level

For those who are looking to make your web work more eye appealing, you NEED this book. It's chock full of fantastic ways to spice up your site without sacrificing the bandwidth. Mr. Hamlin has done tremendous work, and this is just one of them. Get the book-you won't regret it.

This is one great book! Picking it up and setting down in my usual lazy chair to read I quickly got a feel for how easy this book was to read. With beautiful pictures and easy to follow examples I quickly found it to be one of my favorite graphics books. This book covers almost everything you need to know about web animation, and best of all, it grows with you! As your skills get better the book explains more. From Gif89 animations to all out power house Flash animations that will make your site to die for! I loved every bit!

This book is a must if you are learning BSD Unix. All the commands you'll ever use are covered in this book. This book is easy to read and explains important topics without being exhaustive (a skill some authors never learn). A great book for newbies to BSD Unix!

If you're looking for a place to start with FreeBSD (or with open soruce in general), this is really the book to get. I knew a little UNIX before I picked this up, but essentially I was a babe in the woods. This book helped me get my system up and running with clear, task-oriented discussions of all of the essentials. This doesn't go as deep as some of the other FreeBSD books out there (for that you'll probably want "Absolute BSD" by Michael Lucas), but it does tell you what you need to know to get started.

I bought the book after I had installed a broken FreeBSD 4.7 on my old AMD K6-II. Despite the few typos here and there, the book helped me figure out what mistakes I had made during my previous installation ! I thus re-installed from scratch, following page by page. In no time, the system was up and running, I was customizing my shell behavior, connecting to the internet through my cable modem (Roadrunner/Earthlink), etc...

With some extra hardware, my old AMD K6-II is now a router/firewall between my cable modem and my WinXP/Red Hat 8.0 dual-boot box without a glitch, and am planning to add a second box to my LAN and use it as a printer server too.

For those who still hesitate, this book is written in english, not in nerdish. That itself makes it stand out from all the computer litterature I've read. This book is very valuable.

Annelise: your book made my hardware firewall project feel like a walk in the park. Thank you so much !

I first tried to install FreeBSD 4.8 on my K6-2 500mhz machine using the FreeBSD Handbook as a guide. While this book (the Handbook) is the standard for reference on the subject, it doesn't really explain it to a newbie's needs (even someone coming from Linux). My first attempts failed. I bought Annelise's book and was able to get 4.8 up and running following her suggestions. Though my copy came with a CD of FreeBSD 4.7, I had already burned ISO images of 4.8. The processes detailed in the book applied equally well. My only complaint would be that the book needs updating to reflect areas that a lot of people (most people) are interested in these days: burning music to CD - especially ATAPI CD devices, and USB mass storage devices. Both could be covered by a chapter on how to use SCSI emulation. I still give it 5 stars.

I had been getting fed up with using Windows and wanted to learn a new operating system. I bought Anderson's book and installed FreeBSD 4.6 on an extra hard drive in my computer. The book covers a broad range of topics and I found it very helpful during the installation process. The first 10 chapters are great. I started to get annoyed with Chapter 12 on connecting to the internet. I used PPP and something kept going wrong. I still do not know what it was but the errors I got were endless. The chapters little sidenotes on troubeshooting were of no help and I eventually gave up. Then I tried to install the printer daemon and also recieved errors. I followed the book as best I could and eventually gave up and moved on. Chapter 14 on the X window system is great. Other than the printer and PPP problems (which could have just been my misunderstanding of the book), I would recommend this book to someone else

Groovy brings advanced language features such as closures, dynamic typing, and the meta object protocol to the Java platform, and at the same time makes your codebase smaller and more concise. By concise I don't mean so compact that nobody can understand it. Groovy builds on your existing experience and familiarity with the Java platform and allows you to pick and choose when to use particular tools and when to combine Groovy and Java.

The book begins by introducing you to what you will need to compile and run Groovy as far as jar files and tools. Part one of the book is entirely dedicated to the language basics: syntax, grammar, and typical idioms. The language is presented via a combination of examples and discussion. The descriptions are detailed but are not overly academic. Chapter two is most important here, because that is where many of the examples lie that you will need to come back to later in the book.

Part 2, "Around the Groovy Library", explores how Groovy extends the Java Runtime Environment. Part one of the book demonstrated how Groovy makes commonly performed tasks easier. The second part shows how the same principle is applied in Groovy's libraries, using many of the advanced language features available to let you do more work with less code. Chapter 8 introduces the builder concept, which is one of Groovy's distinctive capabilities, because it can only be implemented in a general library class with a truly dynamic language. There are builders that come as part of the Groovy distribution, and you are also shown how to create your own builders. Chapter 9 covers the object/method pure GDK library capabilities. Chapter 10 goes covers Groovy's library support for dealing with relational database systems, providing great flexibility when necessary, and significant shortcuts when simple solutions will do. Chapter 11 presents various methods of making Java applications more dynamic by integrating them with Groovy. I found this to be one of the book's most useful chapters, but you need the first 10 for chapter 11 to make sense.

Part 3 supplies guidance on how to best apply your new Groovy knowledge to practical tasks. Chapter 13 reveals tricks of the trade - how to avoid common errors, using snippet collections, and command-line and automation support. Chapter 14 is about unit testing. I just skimmed this part since the subject doesn't appeal to me. Chapter 15 takes Java and Groovy to the Windows platform. It shows how to put Groovy's expressiveness into action for the automation of Windows controls and applications. Finally, chapter 16 looks at Grails and shows how it leverages J2EE, Hibernate, Spring, and Groovy to allow rapid application development.

This book is a great introduction to Groovy, and even at its rather advanced age for a programming book it is still the best of the Groovy introductory texts. However, I am a person who needs an extreme amount of examples to really get something. For that reason I also highly recommend Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java (Pragmatic Programmers). What this book lacks in examples that book has. What that book lacks in detailed explanation, this book has. Thus they go hand in hand extremely well.

Highly recommend the book to those starting to learn Groovy and as a reference for those that are somewhat familiar with it.

I feel like Groovy is like a programming language "Eintopf", it aggregates some best characteristics of a variety of programming languages. No matter which programming style you prefer - procedural, functional, object-oriented, meta-programming, static typed, dynamic typed... - Groovy has much to offer. The most beautiful thing is, you can easily combine different programming styles in one language and write most concise and self-explanatory code to solve your problem. With Groovy, you suddenly have so much mind-freedom, you have the choice of expressing your algorithms as close to the nature of the problems as possible.

There are languages having very concise syntax but the code is not easy for human to read. There are languages and APIs require more strikings on keyboard than thinking. Groovy is different. You have all kinds of syntax sugar while the code still tells a literal story in your problem domain.

The only fields I think Groovy might not be suitable are the machine-level infrastructures and image/audio/video processing. C and assembly languages are not replaceable by Groovy. In most other application fields, using Groovy can dramatically boost programmers' productivity and reduce programming errors.

I started off by simply renaming all .java files in my test packages to .groovy files. Worked. Then tried out it's closures and curry calls. For me there are a lot more to explore. Haskel fans will like Groovy. Smalltalk fans will like Groovy. Python fans will like Groovy. Lisp fans maybe too. Java folks? I for one, have already been conquered. If you program at all, by all means do yourself a favour and have a look at Groovy.

Groovy in Action is an excellent book on Groovy and programming. Get this book and get the insight, you'll be glad you do.

For those of you who haven't heard of Groovy, Groovy is a scripting language that is built on top of Java. Since it is written on top of Java, a Java developer can pick up pick Groovy in a snap.

I first heard about Groovy In Action (also known as GINA) during a Groovy presentation almost a year ago, the presenter was referring to Groovy In Action as one of the best references out at the time, After reading GINA, I was not disappointed. The roadmap given at the beginning of the book is a great guide to see how the book is organized out. As an added bonus, the book includes some great reference information at the end of the book. It contains Groovy Language information, a GDK API quick reference, and several great cheat sheets for items such as closures, lists, etc.

The book is full of great examples that you can use (some of the examples illustrate some of the finer points of the language).

In fact someone recently asked about where to find a complete specification of the Groovy Language. Guillaume Laforge, Groovy Program Manager and co-author of Groovy In Action, responded that the most current information can be found in Groovy In Action (source user@groovy.codehaus.org mailing list 3/16/2008).

Groovy in Action is one of the Groovy books that is a must have for anyone looking to get into Groovy Development.

This book is totally awesome. The book makes it very easy to jump around and come back to previous chapters. The book's online forum is great too. The author(s) respond very quickly. It is well worth the money. Order it now and you will be programming in Groovy very quickly.