Software Books

Word cannot begin to say how insightful this author is. And still speaking to us many years after his death.

Once again Andrew Murray gives excellent counsel for spiritual growth. Every believer needs help along the way and Absolute Surrender is a great tool to use as a springboard. The message is meaty and to be taken in with the intent of life transformation! As Jesus lived His life in absolute surrender to Father God, so must we, and this book points the way!

THIS IS THE MOST WONDERFUL BOOK I HAVE EVER FOUND OTHER THAN Andrew Murray,THE POWER OF Intercession. I suggest the whole world would Understand the Bible A whole lot clearer if they just read Andrew Murray Books. What A wonderful Evnagelist he was.

This book was truly insightful and should be used as a tool to assist all who strives to improve their Christian walk.

Right up there near Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God" (free online at the Practice Gods Presence web site) are the wonderful works of Andrew Murray. "Absolute Surrender" is a classic in every sense.

These gifted children of God have a way of restating, enlivening, and magnifying the very words of Our Lord and do greatly glorify Our Father.

I looked high and low, and this has to be the best option for developing an LDAP or ADSI component in C++. Find this out of print book and buy it instead of buying another book that is still in print.

Really awesome AD programming book. Covers all the basics of AD and ADSI and then dives into the LDAP API which all other authors try to avoid and dont cover well. You do not need any other AD programming books if you have this one.

Very good book, extensively covers LDAP programming
unlike others.

I've struggled with using LDAP and this explains it all with code samples, which for the likes of makes it easy to learn and best of all Copy and Paste

Really awesome AD programming book. Covers all the basics of AD and ADSI and then dives into the LDAP API which all other authors try to avoid and dont cover well. You do not need any other AD programming books if you have this one.

My three-year old grandson loved the book. The story is good and the art is exceptional.

As an artist I tip my hat to William Joyce! I read in an earlier review someone saying it is done in simple watercolor but thats not watercolor unless its watercolor pencils. Such meticulous detailed work even as George ventures down the railing of the stairs he passes a depiction of "Sunday afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte"! This book is a prize the story line is so cute the text is perfect for age 2-6 and the adventure and art are unforgettable. No wonder PBS made it into a show!

I loved this book. It was so cute. I thoughtit was good for every one. It was about a kid who wonders about how it would be if he was shrunken and when he was sleeping he actully shrunk. But he had to do some chores and they were the simplest things like watering the plants or feeding the goldfish turn into the biggest adventure.

I gave this book a five because a little kid name George has a dream of him being small like a "teddy bear". When he had the dream he was in his bed sleeping, his mom left a note of chores and he was doing the chores. The "scary" part in the book was when the cat sees George and thinks his is a toy and the cat tries to put his claw on him ,but George runs and hides from the cat. This book is great and I think William took a long time doing the cover and pictures and I say the book cover and pictures are really beautiful. I love this book because he had a dream that was weird that he was small and that he had to do big chores. I would recommend this book because it is a cute book for a 1st and 2nd graders I think they will love it because all of the cute pictures and the funny pictures they would love to read this book a lot of times and I would like to some day read it again because it would be so nice to read it over and over.

I will give this book George Shrinks 5 stars. I do like this book because it is action pack and it is kind of funny because a boy that small can do all his chores.I do recomend the book to people that have a sense of humor.I think this book is for all ages.

If I could get someone to write down everything I don't know about LotusScript and Java, it would fill a book. Well, this is that book.

Hatter and Banks aren't wordy and target this book strictly at the experienced developer looking for a reference work. That makes this incredibly useful. These days I carry this book (thankfully light despite being 700 pages) between sites all the time. The lovely posters from Lotus might list all the properties and methods, but these guys provide the details underneath it.

The remarks on each class are pertinent, yet brief (as for NotesRichTextItem, "you must call the save method of the parent Notes document to save the data to disk") They include examples not only for classes, but also occasionally for methods and properties.

Interestingly, a quick check of the index for 'Index, databases' found only a reference to the updateFTIndex method for Java Database class and not to the LotusScript NotesDatabase class, while 'Registering Users' listed the LotusScript page and not the Java one. Perhaps the editors need to work on that. Fortunately, they provide a lot of cross-references on the pages, giving you page numbers for the classes mentioned in the text, reducing the need to refer to the table of contents or the index.

The print's small, but they use fonts, abbreviations and familiar symbols to get the message across clearly.

On balance, it's well worth the (money) I paid Amazon for it - it probably saved me an hour today and none of our hours come cheap, do they?

I bought this book originally expecting a full reference to Lotus and at first was a little dissappointed that it only covered LotusScript and Java. After reading it, now it is the only reference I use for LotusScript. I too have several other books, but none give the information and detaill in an easy to read format like this book. Anything you want to know about Classes, Methods, Properties, Events, and new R5 LotusScript features are covered in this book in detail with good examples. I also like how each class has it's own contents page giving page numbers for all of the assosiated Properties, Methods, and Events for QUICK reference.

This book has minimized my LotusScript related headaches! It is a one-stop resource for methods and properties for the predefined LotusScript Classes. It is hard to believe, but ()it takes me less time to write scripts, which gives me more time to enjoy the finer things in life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, beginner or advanced.

The authors did a great job providing examples of how the properties and methods are used. I haven't written any Java yet, but when I do this book will be right by my side!

If you are new to LotusScript do not buy this book. This is a reference book for LotusScript and Java classes and a very good one at that. The developer help files can be confusing at times and it always helps to have a reference book near you.

If you are an intermediate or experienced Notes developer this is a terrific book, I have it by my desk all the time.

If you want a book to teach you LotusScript but Practical LotusScript it's great!

Exactly what I've been looking for: A no nonsense reference manual for the LotusScript and Java class libraries. Probably the most useful book a professional Notes/Domino developer can have.

This book is clear, concise, interesting (almost like an unputdownable novel by Sidney Sheldon). I'm not joking. You can read it in one or two days, do the transcenders, print out your transcender results. Before the exam review the transcenders and walk out with a 900 like me. I must mention i have six months admin and six months support experience. Just to let you know the experience level. Good luck to all.

This book is clear, concise, interesting (almost like an unputdownable novel by Sidney Sheldon). I'm not joking. You can read it in one or two days, do the transcenders, print out your transcender results. Before the exam review the transcenders and walk out with a 900 like me. I must mention i have six months admin and six months support experience. Just to let you know the experience level. Good luck to all.

Exam 70-073 is now the 1 exam most people take in order to become MCP and this book will make a big difference in the attempt. This book covers each exam objective and gives the detailed information you need in order to pass the exam on the first try.

The book of over 600 pages gives you exam tips, study tips, hands-on exercise, case studies summaries and review questions, exam questions and practice tests all to help you obtain your certification ....................

The book sis loaded with diagrams, pictures, tables and figures to make the learning process easier. The author takes out the mystery behind the NT Workstation and uncomplicates the technical jargon thus enabling to retain more information, and remember information is the key to passing the exam.

The book includes Top Score Software exam simulation; this allows you to try the exam before you go live. Overall the book is one for the technical library even after passing the exam.

As good as it gets - do not look farther....

I have looked at few of the books on this subject - this one is make you understand the subject in plain English - you do not feel stupid reading it.

Combine with a good exam test questionary - and you will make it...

I have right know - 5 books on this subject and I just passed the test on the first try with a 866 when only a 700 is required. I believe this book is what put me over the top and gave me some error room to boot! It is very easy to read and reminded me a lot of a textbook but thats a good thing, those "other" books try to make things much harder than they have to be. This book lays it out in a GREAT format. I found no errors unlike many other books and I recommend this with 5 star! - something I rarely ever give out. Good job to the author, keep it up! Highly recommend!

If you are considering MySQL you may not know how, but you are not a dummy. This book is not for dummys in that it doesn't patronize nor take you into convoluted scenarios, this book is for the reasonably intelligent who want to do stuff. What a blessing.

I was familiar with databases having worked with MS Access, but I had never worked with SQL. This book hit the spot in showing me what I needed to know to get going. I am now using MySQL successfully with a Java/Struts front end. While I found a few small gaps in this book, it has helped tremendously in my learning journey in that it gets to the point with minimum emotional overhead and verbosity, unlike MySQL (4th Edition) (Developer's Library) which I have found to be pretty useless and weighty after reading Forta's book.

This book has clear, short, well labeled chapters to find what you need. Highly recommended.

I had always had problems with trying to figure out how to use Sub Selects. Now I feel silly for not "getting it" quicker. This book has been a big help in me learning about the capabilities of MySQL in general.

Money very well spent.

This is also a great book for those just wanting to learn SQL. The examples are great.

If you are fairly familiar with the concept of a database, this book could very well be all you need to get going. My issue with it is that it skimps on some of the very basic stuff. For example, it never goes over the syntax of the create call for creating a database, doesn't explain calling mysql at the command prompt as a particular user, gives you 11 chapters on manipulating data before showing you how to create a table, waits for chapter 28 to mention administering users, and puts datatypes in the appendix. These are the first things I wanted to learn. By the time I was done googling these concepts, I got pretty good at mySql and knew where to find better resources. At that point, the book became a very light reference.

As others have said, this is a great book for beginners, whether in MySQL or in databases in general. Because I have a lot of database experience, I went throught it very quickly.

When I started to apply some of the techniques I learned to existing applications, I found out VERY quickly that this is insufficient as a reference. Each topic has enough hands-on examples to give you a start, but not nearly enough depth to use for looking things up.

I thought that Appendix B on creating the sample tables might have been a little abbreviated for the novice user. It refers to Chapter 2 to create a new datasource, but I think it was a little confusing jumping back and forth between the appendix and the chapter. This might be better as an exercise right in the chapter.

Overall, I would recommend this book as a starting point.

If MySQL will suite your needs then this book is for you. I read the book cover-to-cover in my downtime at work over a few days and walked away with a solid understanding of MySQL.
Unfortunately MySQL isn't the most mature database solution, but if it's good enough for your project, then this is a great resource.

A very usefull book, well written and with a deep analysis of the entire subject. I learnt more from this book then any other.

I felt there could have been much more tips and tricks on restoration of old photographs.

This is easily one of the best Photoshop retouching manuals ever. As a working photographer who enjoys doing his own retouching, I am always on the look-out for any instruction or manual that will make my job easier and workflow smoother. This book has migrated from my Photoshop bookshelf to join only four other books right alongside my monitor on my desk. When I need to address some specific problem that needs to be retouched, this is the first book I reach for.
The author has laid out the chapters in such a logical way, one only needs to look up the issue and go to the section that addresses the specific topic, a huge time-saver. As with Photoshop, there are many ways to correct images and this book presents quite a few new ones, even on techniques I use every day. I especially enjoy the before/after images and I'm sure many will benefit from the step-by-step lessons the author presents in a friendly, conversational way. Also, the "Tip" and "Caution" highlights are very helpful and concise.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to work in PS3 efficiently and profitably. Truly a Photoshop Retouching Bible in every way!

This book is more than just a restoration and retouching. Mark Fitzgerald has included the basics of photoshop in a clear and easy to understand way. The book is easy to navigate and find answers to your questions. One of his suggestions saved me hours of work. I highly recommend this book, it is a must have in anyone's photoshop library!

Having read most of the various Adobe Photoshop Help books, this book Photoshop CS3 Restoration and Retouching by Mark Fitzgerald is hands down the most organized and helpful of them all. His information is never too verbose which is a plus in a world of complex computer jargon.
Anyone, who has read books on this subject will be pleasantly surprised by the wealth of information (and how to use it) that the author has put forth.
Stephen Anderson

If you want to understand and write professional Windows Service programs, buy this book. You will find good C++ examples and best practices in Windows Service writing.

There has been so much written on the reviews for this book that I don't think I want to repeat all the good stuff said about it. The author has presented the various topics clearly and I like the style of writing. This book has been a great help. If you need to understand NT Services and how to program something decent; this is the book. Not for someone new to Windows programming. Just hope he comes out with another book soon.

The book is comprehensive, clear, and easy to read. The source code works and it is easy to follow (the code is available on-line.) The discussion on ATL COM servers is truly enlightening and by itself worth the price of the book. If you are writing an ATL COM server this book is a must, especially if it will be a multi-threaded server.

From the beginning the author has the attitude that NT services are easy to understand and his "prophecy" becomes self-fulfilling throughout the book. The book is well organized and it pays special attention to service design and usage patterns.

Also notice that the book does not cover hardware drivers. By the way, do read the previous review titled "One of a kind" as it gives very useful tips on installing ATL services (using "myservice.exe -Service") and housing COM objects in a service; I have not found that information in the book.

This book addresses all the issues related to such complex problems as NT Services. The author explains them in very great details, and makes you understand how all this works. The sample code works and you can use the classes from the book to start coding NT Services very fast. The author is very talented in explaining difficult concepts. Funny enough, this book has the best explanation on MSMQ, as well as apartments. As an alternative to the classes provided in this book, I recommend the CodeGuru NT Service C++ wizard written by Joerg Koenig. But even with a wizard, it is good to know how all this works.

No other source compares to the quality and convenience of Professional NT Services, either in book form or on the Internet. The only other way to get this information is to read sample code on MSDN, which is a less-than-optimal way to learn the subject.

Professional NT Services describes the issues involved in writing services, such as security and threading, and provides sample code every step of the way. The book also details how to build a service with ATL and even tells you how to improve ATL's implementation. It even talks a bit about Microsoft Transaction Server (now part of COM+).

Here are three bits of information that I discovered elsewhere that I wish were more evident in the book -

1. If you create an ATL service, the default registation code registers the EXE as a COM server instead of a service -- run "myservice.exe -Service" to register the service.

2. The easiest way for multiple clients to be able to use a single COM instance that's housed in the service is to implement the COM class using DECLARE_CLASSFACTORY_SINGLETON. This is your typical "server" pattern.

3. Clients that want to connect to COM objects housed in the ervice should use CLSCTX_SERVER in CoCreateInstance

Perhaps this information is buried in the book somewhere, but I didn't find it. At any rate, without this book, I wouldn't have known where to start.

Finally, for all its great qualities, the book needs to be revised for Windows 2000. It mentions some new features of "NT5" but I wonder how accurate this information really is.

Programming Language Pragmatics 2nd Edition (PLP2e) is a fantastic book that covers a great deal of information. It starts with explaining lexing and parsing, and then goes into scope, target machine instructions, control flow, data structures, a number of paradigms, and building a runnable program. It touches on pretty much every aspect of computer programming, and with deep and insightful knowledge.

While it's not as specific as some other books (language specific references, compiler construction texts, etc), it is a great beginning and reference for a wide range of topics. The bibliography of this book is incredible. I have marked a large number of papers/books from the bib that I now want to read in full.

The bonus information on the CD is also very good, including all the source code from the book, extra sections, and links to other resources.

This is among my favorite computer science books. I read the first edition straight through from cover to cover, even though I had some prior knowledge of the subject. I have since purchased the second edition, which exceeds the high standards set by the first edition. Scott's book would have made the programming languages course I took as an undergraduate much more enlightening, had it existed at the time.

As a software engineer, I tend to be picky about my books, but this one is very in depth and a good read. You will learn a lot about different programming languages, and why certain languages are better than others for solving different types of prroblems.

Overall, "Programming Language Pragmatics" (PLP) is a very good book. According to the Preface:

"It aims, quite simply, to be the most comprehensive and accurate languages text available, in a style that is engaging and accessible to the typical undergraduate....

At its core, PLP is a book about how programming languages work. Rather than enumerate the details of many different languages, it focuses on concepts that underlie all the languages the student is likely to encounter, illustrating those concepts with a variety of concrete examples, and exploring the tradeoffs that explain why different languages were designed in different ways."

I'm not knowledgeable enough to pass judgment on "the most comprehensive and accurate" part. But, I'm pretty happy about the book meeting the rest of those goals. I read through the book on my own and have only a few significant gripes:

- Chapters 2 (Programming Language Syntax) and 4 (Semantic Analysis) are tough to get through. They're basically trying to teach enough about Alphabets, Languages, Regular Expressions, Context-Free Grammars, Finite Automata and Push-Down Automata for the reader to understand what the rest of the book is based on. I've read Cohen's Introduction to Computer Theory, which is dedicated solely to this material and I still had some trouble. With an instructor in a class to walk through the things, it should be doable. But, for a person reading the book on his own, ugh.

- All of Section III: Alternative Programming Models, seems to depart from the format of the rest of the book (as noted in the Preface) where the author talks about the concepts and then how the different languages implement them. Instead, he focuses on the languages themselves and almost seems to be trying to cram a primer into his text. Since the section seems to be a special case, it wouldn't be so bad except that the languages covered are a bit out of the mainstream and so that degree of depth gets pretty unreadable at times. Again, with a professor around, things would be better.

- At a more pedagogical level, the author has a tendency to merely explain what his example Figures are doing in general terms. The problem is that a lot of the code/pseudocode involves fairly advanced structures in several languages (many of which most people won't have run across). It would have made things a lot easier if he had walked his way through each of those Figures line-by-line and explained what each line did. Once again, this wouldn't be that much of a problem in a normal teaching environment since a professor could do it.

Other than those three things, this is a very good and readable book. I rate it at four stars out of five.

Every good programmer should know more than one programming language, that much is almost a consensus. But more than that, every programmer should educate himself about programming languages in general, what they mean and how they work. It's important to know at least the major programming paradigms, because they form the "mental model" of computation that is available to a programmer in a language from that paradigm.

And then it's always illustrative to know about the differences in many common languages, to see where different decisions have been made and what are the consequences. To know that certain legacy languages (e.g. C, Fortran) have features that were not designed because they were the "best" option (for some definition of best), but because the design was constrained by what technology was currently available.

This knowledge is not only required of compiler writers. It should be required of every good programmer. Compiler writers, of course, must know this, and probably in more detail. But Scott's book is a good resource about programming languages, in a level of detail that I believe adequate for all programmers.

There are two main kinds of books on programming languages: they are "survey" and "implementation".

Survey books show how things work in a lot of languages, comparing them along the way. Often the comparison gets down to small details that can affect the meaning, or semantics, of similar programs written in these languages. These books contain one individual chapter for every major topic, and inside such a chapter all languages are compared in relation to the topic. For example, one such chapter covers "subroutines" and then compare a host of different languages on how they implement subroutines.

Implementation books are different: they show how to implement many language features, usually by presenting code for interpreters and compilers. The reader doesn't learn that Ada permits nested subroutines, but instead how nested subroutines really work and how to implement them in a language, for example. A very good book of this kind is "Essentials of Programming Languages" by Friedman, Wand & Haynes.

I normally prefer the implementation books. I'm not really interested if Standard Pascal permits functions to be passed as parameters or not; if I do need to write a Standard Pascal compiler I'll look for a reference manual. I much prefer to know how to implement functions as parameters, and be done with it. Comparing minutiae about extant programming languages can sometimes be very enlightening, and sometimes be mostly dull.

Scott's book, however, really shines because it mixes feature descriptions and implementation details in the presentation. It does the usual routine of comparing a lot of different languages, most of the time the more popular ones like C++ and Java, but it then shows how the implementations differ because of differences in features. The book strikes a good balance between "language design" and "implementation" approaches, although it is clearly slanted towards design, and so more of a traditional "survey" book.

It wins over other survey books by including implementation information about almost every topic, and by the clear writing and style. Also, most survey books concentrate on mainstream imperative languages (nowadays C++, Java, C#) and leave other paradigms to chapters at the end. Scott's book is a bit better in this respect: the presentation often includes Common Lisp, Scheme and Standard ML in the comparisons. There are separate chapters about functional and logic programming too, but considerations about functional programming are spread in the whole book. This is important because paradigms change, and a good programmer must be able to adapt.

It's a good reference for language implementors and good education for most programmers. I look forward to the next editions.

This book does for Ruby what Kernighan & Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" did for C. It provides a concise, accessible introduction to the Ruby programming language.

Starting out with a tour of Ruby, you are then taken on a deeper dive into chapters on "Structure and Execution", "Datatypes and Objects", "Expressions and Operators", and "Statements and Control Structures". Some of the real power of Ruby is revealed in chapters on "Methods, Procs, Lambdas, and Closures", "Classes and Modules", and "Reflection and Metaprogramming".

The book closes with chapters on "The Ruby Platform" and "The Ruby Environment". The chapter on the Ruby Platform is like a condensed API guide to Ruby's core library. The chapter on the Ruby Environment will help you navigate through the Ruby interpreter's command-line arguments and environment variables as well as a grab-bag of extra Ruby topics that were not covered earlier in the book.

The book is well organized and easy to read. Each chapter is peppered with code samples. If you are serious about learning Ruby, get this book! It sits on my bookshelf, next to a copy of the Pickaxe book and The Ruby Way. Bonus: each chapter of the book starts with a work of art by why the lucky stiff!

Really found this to be an excellent guide to the Ruby programming language. This is definitely not just the API rehashed in print.

The difference in the style of this book and some others, in my opinion, is the difference between a map and a travel guide. A map may show you what and where things are, and may even be useful for figuring out how to go between locations, a travel guide will often include maps plus the inside scoop on what is interesting.

This book is similar. The writing style is like having an expert sit down and explain to you the various facets of the language, how to use them, points that are notable, etc. And all of this content is within a reasonable 400 pages.

Highly recommended.

The Ruby Programming Language is my new favorite Ruby book. I personally think it is a better text than the famous "Pickaxe" book. While the Pickaxe has a great class/module reference (it's over half of the book, after all), the actual explanations of how Ruby works in The Ruby Programming Language are clearer and go into much more depth. Most importantly for me, The Ruby Programming Language covers some of the more complicated topics, such as metaprogramming, with MUCH more depth. From the Pickaxe alone I had trouble understanding how some of these Ruby features worked. But with this new book, it's much clearer.

If you want the defacto Ruby book, this is it.

I wish every book about a programming language was written like this one:

First, it is fairly compact and doesn't waste space (and your time) explaining to you what is a byte or a register, like some 800 page "volumes about everything" do. It correctly assumes that the reader is a programmer and explains the language, not the programming.

Second, it covers Ruby in depth. Read this book and you'll easily understand the most craziest Ruby code examples that could be found inside of Rails and other popular libraries. Moreover, I've found a few tricks in the book that I don't believe I saw in the wild.

And finally, author's language is very clean, free of buzzwords and needless repetitions. As always with O'Reilly books, this one is also very neatly structured and makes an excellent reference book.

Buy it.

Very, very dense reading, but very complete as well. Aspects of the language that were only glanced over (or even ignored entirely) by the "pickaxe" book are covered in great detail. The only downside is that you have to look at several of those horrible high school notebook doodles the wannabe Murakami "Why" produces whenever people convince him that he's either "clever" or "talented."