Programming Books

The Best series of books to learn Network programming from. The BEST in the world. Nothing comes close.

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This book consists of "in the trenches" information Mr. Stevens learned over the years by reading source, testing thoroughly, documenting extensively, and assembling carefully all this data into one heck of a book on Unix programming. I feel certain in declaring that many who've developed code on Unix know instantly of Stevens' works. This update to his book appears just as thorough.

I do agree with a previous reviewer who was unhappy with the code samples' dependency on a header file in the back of the book. It's a clumsy technique, but it's difficult to imagine another way to accomplish the goals of including the header.

This book is excellent. I had previously bought "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by the same author and I loved it so now that I have to do network programming in Linux I got a copy of UNP. The book is well organized and has a lot more information than I expected (Raw sockets, Packet capture, IPv6 etc). Everything is explained clearly and with a lot of examples. It's a shame that the author passed away because I would buy any other book he wrote. Buy this book, it's expensive but It's so professional that is a "must have" for anyone that's going to be programming network applications in UNIX systems.

Thank you, Richard Stevens. Rest in Peace.

The book contains everything that I want to know about the Unix Sockets API. The book is well structured, and the explanations are generally good. I would give it 4½ stars if it was possible.

I do have a few minor gripes though. The text can be a bit dull compared to other books. I bought "Programming with POSIX(R) Threads" by David R. Butenhof at the same time, and this book is much more entertaining while still factual and correct.

I dislike that all the examples in the book uses a special header defined in the Appendix. That makes it impossible to use snippets of code from the examples to make your own applications.

Citrix MetaFrame XP: Advanced Technical Design Guide, Second Edition was a decent general read. In depth technical detail seemed to be lacking and was replaced by repetitive best practice lectures. However, I enjoyed the authors side comments and general personality that was interwoven into the reading. Overall the book is informative and well written.

We had 2 other books on Citrix Metaframe but the books didn't give us much detail so we started looking for a better resource. I found this book and recommended it to my Network Adminsitrator. I thought I won't get much from it because I don't work with Citrix everyday but when time permits, I read the book and 70% of the time I got the answers from this book.

Not a book for beginners. This is written for engineers and people who already have a good grasp of the basics of Terminal Servers and Citrix. No "how to" install in this book, but rather how to design, implement, identify and resolve your own problems, with a lot of real-life examples.

The style of the book (way it is written) makes a pleasant change from the usual technical books, as it addresses you like you know what you're talking about. You will come out with a clear understading of the issues you're facing and how to resolve them.

This book is self-published, which makes it all the more remarkable.

The book covers up to Windows 2000 and Mataframe XP FR2. I'm keen to see when the next edition comes out, and hpoefully it will concentrate on Windows 2003 + Metaframe 3.0

I had a real tough time searching the Internet and all other places to get some real stuff on Citrix and my search ended with "this" book by "Brain" Madden.

Citrix will notice a sizeable improvement in their sales if they include this book with their product. Everything is explained clearly with visuals and no filler material.

One of the best Tech Books to hit the market in recent times.

In my opinion, this book is the ONLY interesting published book about Citrix until now. I have read most of the available books about Citrix and Terminal Services and this is the only one I would buy again.

If you are a Citrix Certified Administrator, you will find this book very helpful. Personally speaking, I prefer it to most of the Citrix official documentation.

Take into account that it is a book for people who already has a deep knowledge about Citrix. It is not a guide for begginers. It gives you hints to improve your own Citrix project methodology.

Amazon guys, let me suggest this, please: If you are looking for a step-by-step begginers guide, have a look at Methodology in a Box (freely available at http://www.dabcc.com)

This book is the perfect starting point for a beginner. I started with a limited amount of programming experience. By the time I finished, I felt extremely comfortable with all of the concepts presented.

It's important to set realistic goals. You're not going to finish this book and start writing real world applications. Instead, this book builds the foundation needed to tackle more advanced concepts and programs found in other books.

This is an excellent book. I have completely read this book. I recommend this book for every student learning C#.

This is a great book for C# beginners like me. The book is very well written as it simulates the real class environment and answers every possible question that the beginner might have. I went to a 5-day C# training and I learned less there than I learned after reading this book. The author is a talented instructor, and I wish all computer science professors were like him. I am looking forward to an intermidiate C# book by John Smiley! Thank you, John.

Have you ever thought you wanted to learn how to program, and bought a book on programming that didn't teach you anything? Or maybe you took a class that had a required textbook that was worthless? Did you get discouraged, and think programming just wasn't "for you"? That maybe you just didn't "get it" like those other people that seemed to have no problems learning to program? If so, then this book is for you. If more computer programming books were written like this, I KNOW there'd be a lot more programmers in the world. It's not about intelligence, it's about LEARNING STYLES. This book is more narrative than just lines of code to interpret. John Smiley talks TO the reader, not AT him. He puts you in a classroom setting where people ask questions, even DUMB questions that you yourself may have wanted to ask. And guess what? He ANSWERS the questions. If you've been stymied in one way or another from reaching a point of confidence with programming then this book is for you. I give it 5 stars because that's the most that Amazon's system will let me give it. If you don't believe me, hit the library. Then buy the book to put food on this man's table, and have this awesome book in your personal library.

I am taking a series of classes from "someplace" with the intention of making a carreer change. "Someplace" offered to get me from being a non-programmer to an MCSD in 8 months using Microsoft official curriculum (MOC). An ambitious undertaking to be sure.

I have found the MOC to be of very limited help. Wow, that's an understatement.

Anyway, I have been using other resources to supplement the training and this book has been the best.

The book starts with understanding the requirements of a program. From there the author walks us through the process of building a program and incorporates a lot of very practical and useful concepts. In general, the book has followed the progression of the MOC "Programming with C#". Whether by design or not, this has been very helpful.

The book is written in narrative or as a story unfolding. The reader is included in a small class learning to program. The other students in the class ask questions to the instructor (John Smiley) and in general greatly facilitate the learning process. This narrative makes it a lot easier to follow and the simple program turns out to be full of lots of very useful training opportunities.

At first, I was underwhelmed that the author had chosen to use Notepad and the SDK to create the programs. However, having finished the book and being halfway through the MOC course (which uses Visual Studio) I am glad that he does. Visual Studio tends to be expensive to get your hands on, and while it does have some VERY helpful functionality in terms of writing code, for the beginner, a lot of the stuff it does seems like it is overwhelming for the "newbie" (at least it was to me.)

Many times, I would complete similar exercises using the notpad/SDK method in 1/3rd or 1/4 the time it would take me to do it in Visual Studio. For the most part, this was because of all of the "helpful" stuff that Visual Studio was doing. Don't get me wrong, it is a great IDE, but for a newbie like me, I think Smiley's approach was better.

I have bought many other C# books and I will be doing reviews on them as I read them to supplement the material. I've also been taking video lessons from LearnVisualStudio.net.

I hope John Smiley will create a book on Visual Studio and Intermediate and Advanced C#. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it HIGHLY to anyone just getting started.

I'd been meaning to buy this book for over a year and was not disappointed. It is very well written, easy to understand and goes quite into depth regarding OS X.

I enjoyed the writing style of the author, well presented information with bits of humor to keep it interesting. I enjoyed reading the history of OS X and learning how all the parts were brought together to create the most enjoyable computing experience I have ever had. The technical information and programming examples are extremely helpful in better understanding how things work under the elegant aqua interface.

It's enormous! And every page has information useful to someone who develops on the Mac. This book is the ultimate tome of reference for the serious Mac developer. It's also a significant contender as a tome of reference for IT support for the Mac. Finally, it is the best reference for someone with a Windows background who's wondering if Mac OS might be superior technically (leaving aside user interface). (it is.)

All the gory details of how a Mac OS is put together from Mach to Cocoa are covered and then some. The author is a hard-core expert who put a lot into this book. Well worth the price!

This well written books contains everything you need to know about the internals of Max OS X. This book is enormous and really goes deep into the internal of the OS.
This reading gave me the satisfaction of understanding the inner working of Mac OS X which now make my work as a software engineer much easier because I know what is going on.
The book is well balanced in that it cover all the different aspects of the operating system without getting into unecessary details.
One small complaint is that the chapter describing the hardware architecture focus on PowerPC systems. I would of course have rather have a detail explanation of the Intel platform. Maybe in a second edition.

This is analogous to the Windows Resource Kits for OS X, only better. The many examples, most using some sort of code to make their point, combined with the depth of topics covered, makes this the one book really serious OS X coders and admins need to have.

Like it's cousin, the MS ResKit, it's dry, concise, and may scare off some folks. And like the ResKit, it's just as essential as a learning tool and reference book rolled into one.

I've seen many reviews that talk about this book as a book for programmers. I don't believe that for one second. I've heard many references to the old days when all admins were programmers and heard tell of greybeard hackers who are equally proficient at both coding and admin work. This book does a similar job of blending the lines between the two tasks, illustrating concepts and giving examples using C and scripting as well as using human readable english. As a non-coding UNIX and OS X aficionado, I look forward to broadening my knowledge of both programming and unix administration as it applies to OS X via this awe-inspiring book.

This book is so great - I bought this a long time ago, back when I was first learning HTML. I can't tell you what a great resource it was for me. I learned so much, so fast from this book. It really is a simple, straightforward guide to HTML and it actually teaches you a lot about what you are doing so that you can learn and apply these concepts to your own projects. It's a guide that beginners should definitely turn to, but is great for people who aren't just beginners as well because it has tons of cool stuff that you can learn even if you do know a bit about HTML. Plus it would be a great reference guide while building a website for yourself or for someone else. And another great highlight of this book is that its not skimpy or condescending like some of those 'for dummies' books.

Started recently with showing interest in the HTML language. It became clear that in the huge amount of books covering this subject, I was keen on getting something simple, easy to understand and a very handy reference guide. I belive that with this book, it cannot be made any simpler!! Even for non IT minded persons.

The book covers all, from starting a web page, building CCS, what and how JavaScript is working (did not had a clue what it was) up to special features that can make your web-site just that more interesting.
Even now, as a reference guide, it is just what I needed.

The visually part of it - if somebody is not known with the "Teach yourself visually" series - is so clear, the results are showing.
Later I have bought the Dreamweaver MX 2004 from the same series. Even though Dreamweaver is pretty clear in itself, I still come back to this book for some handy tips and how to do.

Worthwile? I do think so!

Great for beginners to intermediate users. Clear instructions, great color graphics, simple but fundamental instructions, powerful in its simplicity. Mouth-wateringly good! Grab this.

Following the advice of the others on this page I duly purchased this book. I can now safely say it will be my LAST time following the general concensus! What is WITH you people?
A photographer/grafik designer by trade, specialising in print-based media I have never done web-based work (other than actually designing pages and buttons in Illustrator - and then having someone else doing the converting, assembly etc.) so I decided to buy a book and have a go. To get straight to the point this book is a piece of crap for the following reasons. 1) (despite professing otherwise) It is totally incoherent, and follows a very illogical progression pattern. 2) The grafiks are so sadly outdated and amateur-ish I cringed every time I opened the book. 3) It fails to empower the reader to move freely and thus visualise their own ideas. 4) It is VERY incomprehensive. 5) It is very hard to navigate, has no real index, no thumb tags etc.
It is like a 'Big Mac' - it looks yummy and filling and when you take a bite it SEEMS to fill you up, but soon you are hungry for more REAL FOOD. My advice? Go for a less disturbingly 'visual' format that provides you with the building blocks to build your own house.

Although I consider myself fairly computer savvy, I know absolutely nothing about webpage development. Until now. With this book, I was able to create professional looking webpages in literally, minutes. This is my first and only book I've purchased about creating webpages. I can't say that other books aren't as useful, but I can say, that this step-by-step approach, is fool-proof. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in creating webpages, with little or no prior knowledge of webpage development.

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.

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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!

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.

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.

At 43 years old I too was wondering if this was just for kids, but it definitely is not. It opens your mind to move beyond the following the step by step instructions in most all the other books out there. One must remember the kit was called Mindstorms for a reason, so you can develop your own ingenious creations. This book helps you do just that. As for the story, it is written in a mature fashion and is integrated perfectly to hold your interest, adult or child. My mind drifts back to those old movies with the Mummy, and pyramids and tombs. Hootloads of fun!

did you really write this book have not read it yet but it's being shipped to my house.

I bought this to introduce my grandchildren to science projects. Their ages are 7 and 10. We have no special contest or competition to enter. Not sure exactly what I expected but I was not disappointed. This has awesome potential for learning. Actually, my grandkids were impressively advanced in what they could accomplish. The suggested robot to build was fairly complicated. My 10 yo took charge, with the 7 yo taking his turn. When completed I could not get close to the control computer. They took over!!! The kit could use some better instructions. I recommend one of several additional books to get a better feel for it. Next we will try the programming. Good way to spend lots of quality time with your kids. Just make sure you have big blocks set aside! Love it!

This book is a wonderful introduction into program and design with the NXT, and yes, we've been using the RCX as well. The book is well laid out. The story is engaging and gives the tasks purpose.

I really like the templates provided in the book. It gives anyone a method of organizing their thoughts, so they can go ahead with the building and programming and know they're headed down the right path.

I bought this for my children because I have no interest in robotics or programming, and I've enjoyed it as much as they have.

The value of this book is not in the number of documented designs, but how it teaches you the process to come up with your own designs. It even does it in a much more entertaining way then my engineering classes did. Understanding the design process allows you to create any number of robots that do what you want them to do and this is an invaluable life skill. That is what this book teaches you. It allows you to try to come up with the solutions on your own, or build the solutions the author came up with. My son and I plan on going through the book a second time and using the processes taught come up with our own solutions. This book is definitely worth having.