Programming Books

We are all on the same journey, hoping to arrive at a later point in our lives where we are content and healthy. Our emotional health can be greatly enhanced by Dr. Schaupp's research and it's comforting and inspiring implications. To read the wealth of data, insight and support regarding the aging process is to experience a treasure of our own potential for the near and - hopefully - far future.

Dr. Schaupp has successfully created a scholarly, well-documented work yet one that is filled with heart as well. Her vignettes support her thesis that life can begin anew after sixty.

Dr. Diane Schaupp has written an engaging and optimistic book about our potential to shape our destiny after age 60. Although we may feel trapped by past decisions and habits, we have the freedom to make new choices. As a practicing therapist for many years, Dr. Schaupp has amassed the experience and wisdom to offer wise counsel about aging. I found particularly helpful her recommendations to focusing on our strengths and on the positive without denying our current reality.

PRIME TIME: FLOURSIHING AFTER 60 encourages us to embrace aging and reflect on our life's purpose. Dr. Schaupp, a practicing psychologist, has researched strategies for us to accept the aging process bringing clarity and richness to life after 60. After reading PRIME TIME I see how we become wiser and can make a difference in the global world.

Prime Time: Flourishing After 60 has a strong appeal to those who are professionals and individuals actively involved in their communities who wish to maintain their interdependence and dignity. Dr. Schaupp shows how aging does not mean losing control over one's future, but how with planning and forethought, one can still live a fulfilling and meaningful life with style and grace. Dr. Schaupp's coping strategies empower and inspire one in preparing for "elderhood."

Lotus Domino support for EJB programming mode

Bob Balaban is a Louts Notes and Domino guru. After working for Lotus for many years, Bob certainly new the nuts and bolts of Lotus Notes better than just about anyone.

This book was way ahead of it's time. I heard Bob speaking about Domino and Java at The View's advanced technical seminar in 1999. At that time many Lotus Notes developers were just coming to grips with LotusScript (although it was introduced in Lotus Notes 4) and all of the new web features associated with Domino; HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc.

While this book is now dated, it is still one of the best on programming Lotus Notes and Domino with Java, and the only one that focuses solely on that topic. Many other books have glossed over this topic altogether. Although a couple of others have provided good treatment. If you are new to Notes and Java then it could still be well worth your while to pick up a copy.

Programming Domino 4.6 With Jav

Programming Domino 4.6 With Jav

This is by far the best and most useful book I have purchased in a long time! Bob has great insights on the future of Web interfaces to data and how you, as a programmer, can effectively work in the new paradigm. He does an excellent (and concise) job of helping you sort out the architectural options for the web: cgi/perl/asp/activex/etc. The book then has a detailed explanation of everything you need to know to program Domino in Java. I found Bob's speculation on the CORBA/IIOP and Domino v5.0 technologies especially useful in planning our IT infrastructure. Please buy this book if you are curious about Domino and Java! If you are new to Java you should also find a beginners guide. This is not a 'learn Java and Domino' text for beginners. Intermidiate and Advanced users, however, definitely need this book before they write another Agent in Domino or another CGI script in Perl. This book will wake you up to the future of the Web, Domino, and Java programming!

THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT I'VE EVER PURCHASED FROM AMAZON, AND I MUST SAY THAT I AM COMPLETELY SATISFIED WITH MY PURCHASE. THE BOOK WAS IN PEFECT/BRAND NEW CONDITION AS DESCRIBE.

I received this book in only three days and it was in better condition than described...Not to mention the awesome price that I got for the book and expedited shipping!! My school wanted $113.00 for the book...psshhh.

This text is required for Psych 103 at Stony Brook Univ., LI, NY
It is excellent.

If you've ever wanted to learn as much as possible from an introductory textbook in the area of Psychology, look no more. This book has served as a tremendous assistant for Psychology, and various other areas of study where psychology is certainly related. If you enjoy learning about cognitive and other behavioral functions of the body, this book is a perfect match!

The authors' use of case studies and real-life examples makes this more than a textbook -- and much more readable than one. I found myself excited about reading each chapter. And I know I'll be looking up things in it in the future. My only quibble is that I found many copyediting errors that I hope the publisher will fix for future editions.

I bought this book as a graphic design student upon a teacher's recommendation and it saved my butt on many a homework project when I needed to figure out how to get something done. I've since gone on to become a professional graphic designer and though I'm up to QuarkXPress 6.5 this book is still valid and has still come in handy for looking up the odd hotkey or some odd paragraph formatting.

The book is clean and concise and very logically ordered. The index in the back makes it very easy to find what you're looking for and if you can't think of the name for something you can find it easily by browsing since the book is so well organized.

Each element is plainly described and accompanied by a picture - don't let the greyscale images fool you, they get directly to the point so you can see exactly how to accomplish something.

I've seen a lot of XPress books out there, many 5-times the thickness of this book but all those other books seem to add superfluous text just to fill pages where this book gets to the point. Of all my books for design and design software, this has by far been my most helpful and most used.

Just what I needed to learn QuarkXPress!

If you're like me, and you'd rather jump into a manual than sit in a classroom, then this Visual Quick-Start is for you. This is the fourth VQS book I've bought and it doesn't disappoint. Actually, I'm a Quark Xpress power user, but needed to train some non-design trained coworkers on basic Quark usage. The simple step-by-step sections are easily digested and build on each other as you progress. Alternately it serves as a great reference is you just want to learn how to do a single task.

I'm a graphic design student and bought this book to aid me with the learning process of Quark. I found the book helpful and easy to read. There are parts that need more work, but it explains how to do things step by step. A beginner can use this book to guide him/her through the process of making a layout and using all the tools available in Quark.

I bought this book as a last resort because my Computer Graphics professor told us we would need lots of tutoring in order to pass with good grades. I was totally "Quark illiterate" before taking this course and buying the book. Honestly, this book explains a lot more than a tedious 3 week course in class could. The book has taken me step-by-step through all the process of learning style-sheets and type-boxes. This is all stuff I would have never been able to learn if not for the book itself.

Elaine Weinmann's very well illustrated and easy to read/follow excersises are what any student needs to reach their goal in QuarkXPress. My copy is different in color to the one sold here, but it looks exactly like the one my professor uses.
And, because the book is not really that thick, it can fit in either a backpack or a briefcase. The only main problem I have with the book itself is the paper-back style. It will fray and dog-ear pretty fast, so take good care of this "Bible for Quark".

And...for those whom are not too sure of their Keyboard shortcuts, thank God, they put them in the back of the book.
At least I don't have to search my binder for my photocopies! That little extra is a Godsend. Especially when you are being tested on the shortcuts.

Get the book. Hope my review helped you.

The book came very fast in the mail. It was new in quality. I am able to teach myself Ruby from the book.

Superb introduction to Ruby and important programming idioms that every Rubyist should know. Shows you a small chunk of code, with significant lines numbered, and follows the code with descriptive paragraphs that show you what the code is doing. In effect, you learn how to read the code as you go through the book, starting with basic material and getting more advanced as you go along. VERY nicely done.

If you want to learn Ruby quickly and you can only afford to buy one book to do it with, this is the one I would buy! It has interesting little projects with well documented code which introduces you gradually to more advanced topics in the language. It is not a cookbook, but rather, a very well picked selection of programmes where new concepts are thoroughly explained and older concepts are reinforced. There are "hacks" to just about every script and I was able to learn more from this than I did from grinding through the Pick Axe. Amazingly, now when I pick up the Pick Axe it seems accessible!

Well worth the investment!

Ruby By Example seeks to teach Ruby by introducing a series of small scripts, explaining how they work, often by showing some examples in irb, Ruby's interactive shell, and reinforcing the explanations with some suggested modifications to the script to highlight the principles just expounded. The closest examples in other languages I'm aware of are Dive Into Python and (to a lesser extent) Wicked Cool Perl Scripts.

This is a very nice idea, and there are some examples that are a cut above the usual fare: chapter 9 includes a Bible Code generator, and an implementation of the 'methinks it is like a weasel' sentence natural selection program from Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. There's also mention of memoization, profiling and benchmarking, the Schwartzian transform for sorting, and even Symbol#to_proc. There's also quite a gentle introduction to Rails, which is probably sufficient for someone new to Ruby and Rails to move onto Ruby for Rails.

However, the execution isn't always perfect. Probably the biggest downside to this pedagogical approach is that there's not really one obvious place to describe how a particular feature works in depth, or the focus moves away from its practical use in a script. As a result, many of the explanations are compressed. Chapter 1 provides a 'crash' description of object orientation in 9 lines. Chapter 3 first mentions hashes, but compares them to functions, and not to arrays. Tail recursion is defined in a 4 line footnote in chapter 7. If you already understand these concepts, you'll be fine, but they won't teach you anything. If you don't, they aren't very helpful. At a couple of points the book also insists that everything in Ruby is an object, but code blocks (among other things) aren't until they're wrapped in Procs. For the more functional-esque techniques advocated in the book, this is a subtle point which could trip up a beginner.

Also, some of the examples are weak. Chapter 4 rushes through regular expressions, using them to compress whitespace, but why not also mention String#squeeze? Chapter 5 uses regexes to deal with XML and it gets the job done, but advice on using a real XML parser might have been more useful in the long term. Chapter 6 contains a truly contrived Buffy the Vampire Slayer-related example.

This isn't a bad introduction to Ruby, and it's a very admirable attempt to do something different, but I wanted to like it more than I did. If you already know some object oriented programming, this could make a good companion to a more tutorial-style book, like The Pickaxe.

'Ruby by Example: Concepts and Code' is the perfect reference for anyone that wants to learn how to use Ruby, one of the hottest programming languages to come around in some time. With over around 300 pages of content spread across 45 examples, this book will give you all the basis you need to go from a non-Ruby user to someone writing good code immediately!! I think that the No Starch line has some of the most unique layouts you will find from any publishing line. Chapters are usually broken up into small manageable chunks that make it easier for the reader to actually learn and dissect the information they are taking in, fonts are clear and concise, and it's just an enjoyable easy read all around. While this may seem low in importance I don't think that's the case at all. Especially for a book where the user base is someone new to a language, environment or tool, I want a book that is easy to learn from, fun to read and makes me actually want to LEARN and look forward to the next chapter(s). If you want to learn Ruby and build on your development skillset, pick up this book and move to the fast lane!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Excellent book. I work in the security space and ended up talking with folks in our Human Factors department about trying to do some work in this area. Other priorities prevented things from going forward. Now they have been re-organized to another department. Does anyone have any hints on how to "sell" this type of program to folks? This book spurred me to action.

Are you a security researcher or professional? If you are, then this book is for you! Editors Lorrie Faith Cranor and Simson Garfinkel, have done an outstanding job of writing a practical book that will help you realize the need for increased security usability in your systems.

Cranor and Garfinkel, begin by stating their premise: that security and usability can be synergistic. Then, the editors take an in-depth look at techniques for identifying and authenticating computer users to systems that are both local and remote. They continue by examining how system software can deliver or destroy a secure user experience. Then, the editors explain how this book is devoted to systems that allow people to control the release of their personal information, enabling them to use the Internet in relative anonymity if they so desire. Then, they look at specific experiences of security and software vendors in addressing the issue of usability. Finally, the editors discuss their collection of classic papers on security and usability that everybody should read.

This most excellent book discusses case studies of usable secure system design, along with the latest thinking about how to approach this problem. More importantly, the content of this book will give developers important insights that will lead to successful designs.

Lorraine Faith Cranor & Simson Garfinkel's SECURITY AND USABILITY: DESIGNING SECURE SYSTEMS THAT PEOPLE CAN USE examines the future of computer security with an eye to consider not only the factors which make a system secure, but how privacy design pitfalls, web bugs, and other issues can affect security choices and effectiveness. Most security titles advocate complex systems which are hard to use, but the authors maintain this belief to be wrong, and provide insights into the future of security which presents over thirty essays from leading security experts around the world.

This isn't a typical O'Reilly book, and it's definitely not an "animal" book. I think that's something that's thrown a lot of people for a loop the first time they see this book. That change is good, however, because what O'Reilly has delivered is a book whose contents will stand up much longer and be more useful than most of the books out there on any technical subject, from any publisher. By having various viewpoints in information rich, managable pieces so well organized, the book itself is usable both as a read through from cover to cover and as a reference.

Security and Usability (S&U) is targeted at two main camps. The usability camp who doesn't quite understand what a security system is. They think in terms of making the user's experience with the software better, and often that means making the design more accomodating. That's great, and very valuable, but sometimes that's been known to compromise the system's security.

The other camp this book targets is a security application or a security system designer. Often this camp doesn't have a great grasp on usability. We (I think I fall into this category) tend to be power users and build systems that work for power users. When regular users (read: "everyone else") encounter such a system they're usually stuck, and understandably so. S&U introduces many usability concepts and paradigms to the software or system designer and provide a springboard for better results.

Make no mistake, this book wont make you an expert in either field, but it will give you a deeper understanding and a strong foothold at improving both scenarios. If nothing else, it gives both camps the vocabulary to start talking and working together.

One of my favorite chapters in the book outlines how ZoneAlarm was designed and implemented, along with some of its issues along the way. This is a remarkably successful application that achieves both good security design and utility while being usable by a large portion of the population. Such a study - and the book has many similar studies to back up viewpoints - is an invaluable aid in getting the message across.

If you write security software, design security systems, or work with a team that does, by all means look at this book. It will improve your product.

I was really hesitant when I got this because I tend to hate collections of academic papers. They're often hard to read, heavily redundant, and jargon filled. This book isn't, and my copy is already dog-eared, and filled with turned-down pages. It is chock full of useful advice, interesting stories, great references, and useful lessons learned. If you build security software, or software with security implications, you should buy this book.

Once you've bought it, it may help to skim the first few chapters, which set the scene, and do contain a fair bit of redundancy, probably unavoidably. If you get bogged down, skip forward, there's lots of great stuff.

[Disclosure: I got a review copy from the authors, but have since bought a copy for someone else.]

This book is a must have to a DBA. It contains all the little gotchas in managing SQL Server. All the items that we come across while searching for something that I think"Man I gotta remember that". 99% of them are in this book, so I don't have to print them out and maintain a seperate library.

Not a book to buy if you are looking something to read to learn SQL Server. This is a reference for someone who already is using it extensivly.

Ross

Overall, this is an excellent book that covers a wide variety of topics useful to any SQL Server 2000 DBA. At this time, though Apress hasn't posted the Table of Contents on Amazon.com, the Table of Contents is posted at the Apress web site.

I took away one star for the CD. It is extremely handy to have a copy of the book on the CD in PDF format. However, rather than having a single PDF file with a Table of Contents linking to each chapter and topic, each chapter is contained in a separate PDF file on the CD. Unless you know which chapter you want to reference, it is tedious to look in separate files for the Table of Contents or the Index, then try to guess in which file the item you are looking for can be found.

A less significant complaint is that the CD holder is found about three-quarters of the way through the book, rather than at the end of the book, which makes it more difficult to quickly flip through the book.

Other than these minor complaints, it is an excellent book.

This is an easy to use reference book. It has a useful index and directions are written in a step by step format.

This book has 100s of relevant and useful "How Tos". Very useful.

Not a tutorial, but a practical working guide to administering SQL Server 2000. Lots of "How to" items covered.

You don't need to read the entire book in order to benefit from it. Specific topics are covered using Checklists to make sure you don't miss anything important. Highly recommended!

This book is one of the best programming language books I've read, along with "Oh! Pascal!" by Cooper and Clancy. It's use of humor and simple, straightforward examples, grab your attention right away and keep it through the entire book. It's hard to believe a programming book can be hard to put down, but this one was.

It also explains complex concepts in simple, elegant ways, just like good programs should be written.

I would recommend it to anyone learning FORTH, and I would recommend sections of it for people trying to understand specific concepts in any language. For example, the explanation of stacks was excellent!

I bought my own used copy of this book, but it is available in its entirety online, so it is unlikely to ever be reprinted.

Somebody REPRINT THIS BOOK!

"Starting Forth" is the only Forth book I own. After reading it, I was able to implement a Forth runtime system, compiler, and interpreter, from scratch, in 8086 assembly - the results can be found at home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/jkf.html . I credit this mainly to Leo Brodie's skill as an expository writer. The book is a gem; if someone were to reprint it, I for one would buy several copies, just in case.

The reason no one will reprint "Starting Forth" is that Forth is not sufficiently trendy. If we rename the language "JavaForth", we'll be drowning in reprints...

Sigh.

This book is a very clear introduction to programming and the stack. The cartoons are very entertaining and descriptive, and the book would make light reading even for beginning programmers. Those who program, but not yet in Forth, will also be happy with the quick introduction.

Why on earth is this fabulous book out of print?

A wonderful book. I bought mine in 1980, and a week later I had an old Northstar Z-80 computer running real-time behavioral experiments in FORTH at (so it seemed) blinding speed.

We need this book!

I bought "Succeeding with Use Cases" primarily for Part 3 on model-based specification. The book gives a "Blue Collar" approach for specifying operations in terms of change of state. The approach is highly pragmatic and aids writing precise, testable specifications. The author clearly explains what to do. I highly recommend this book.

Example after example; model after model! After reading this book, I was ready to begin implementation! Chapter 3, Operational Profiles, will convince and evangelize engineering and management. The degree of detail is perfect for the professional. Great Work!

I was really happy to see Richard's new book. I have always thought that if you are going to go to the effort of writing good use cases, then you should make use of that information as much as possible in the project. This book has a prominant place on my professional bookshelf, and I refer to it often.

Richard Denney gives some great information on using your project use cases in project management, quality control, and reliability. He has a wealth of experience that he shares throughout the book. His book is well written and easy to understand. I am not aware of any other book that covers this information in the context of a software project.

Once you are comfortable with writing use cases (and of course I must recommend my own book Applying Use Cases: A Practical Guide for that purpose), then definitely start exploring what you can do with the use cases once they are written by getting a copy of Richard Denney's book, Succeeding With Use Cases: Working Smart to Deliver Quality.

This book is about uses of use cases in software engineering. The focus is on doing and managing projects.
Topics are among others selection of standard products, management of project portfolios, or grounding projects in business goals. The last topic is an application of use cases to QFD, a process originally from the automobile industry. Other topics are reliability engineering, modelling and project management (this list is not complete).
All the topics of the book have use cases as a common factor. It is not an introduction into use cases. The application of use cases in this book goes further than what is described in the Rational Unified Process for example. Therefore other books are better in introducing the topic of use cases.
Demo excel sheets are available from the author. The examples are worked out excellently and instructive. The book focuses on the practicalites of software engineering and addresses primarily project leads, designer, architects and testers. Most of the material was new to new, although I have been using use cases for years. It will have the most value for organizations already modelling their software. In my opinion extreme programmers will not find it as useful.

I'm a software engineer, specializing in requirements and software quality. I've known about QFD and the House of Quality for over a decade, and I've been using Use Case methodology for years. This is the first (and perhaps the only) book which combines the two methodologies and explains in a straightforward yet sufficiently detailed way how to use these methodologies. If you are struggling with many requests from multiple customers and are trying to identify what is really important, you should read this book. In particular, if you want to satisfy the customers who drive your business, i.e., generate revenue, you need to read this book. This is a low-tech approach; all you need is a spreadsheet. Understanding Use Cases, QFD, or House of Quality is not a prerequisite. Even if you are already familiar with these methodologies, I think you will still learn a lot from this excellent book.

I loved this book. It covers the history of Open Source and explain WHY people do open source and HOW they make it happen!

The Success of Open Source in a not a just wistful paean to Linux as the title would suggest. Rather, it is two books in one.

The first book is one of the very best recapitulations of the open source movement and all of its predecessors. The second book is about how something that just seemingly shouldn't work, works so well, and how those principles behind its working extend to more than just the open source movement.

The author, a university professor, draws liberally from the traditions of historians, economists, sociologists, and psychologists to paint a compelling picture of why the forces behind open source are not going to go away any time soon. Read in best companion with The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which IS a bit of a wistful paean to Linux, it illuminates its subject wonderfully.

Steven's book brings a rich articulation of the social practices innovations unleashed by the Open Source collective: a new understanding of private property that better fit the tech forces and the challenges of the present. His book it is not a model; it is not the list of the 10 reasons why...; it is not the defense of an emerging theory; but an historical account in which anecdotes, facts, historical moment, tentative hypothesis, set the background to allows the reader to reshape her/his own questions. The book gave me a perspective I have been testing with IT architects, programmers, software designers...I feel myself much more prepare to engage in conversations about the future in a meaningful and effective way. Thanks to the author!

For the serious reader (and who indeed thinks open source is hilarious?), Weber provides a detailed history of how this idea developed. He traces it from the advent of unix in the 1970s, and the generous (ie. low fees) licensing terms by ATT. Which led to the BSD Unix that flourished in the 80s. Also during this time, GNU took off.

But the bulk of the book deals with the 90s onwards. Especially as linux grew from Torvalds' seminal contribution. Its intellectual roots in unix and GNU are studied. We also see the rise of the Free Software Foundation and Apache, as articulate enablers and promoters of open source. All of which was aided by the invention and meteoric growth of the Web. This played a vital role in enabling a global audience of programmers to hear of and contribute their efforts.

I'm a commercial software developer, and found the author's history of the UNIX culture and the story of its evolution into what we now call Open Source to be fascinating. That alone made it a good read for me. Add in the thought provoking analysis of the "whys" (the real point of this book), and it's a killer combo.

Warning: the book is *full* of sentences like "Pluralism at many different levels is being enabled by communications technologies and by experimentation with property; together, these are reducing the marginal cost of adding voices toward an asymptote of zero." Despite that, I've been able to read it at the pace of a thriller, not a textbook.