Programming Books

This book is filled with GREAT information for anyone interested in working with various 'toys' for Linux. I was privileged in being part of a class presented by Tom Weeks in regards to MythTV (he assisted with the chapter in the book) and it is great information!

If you are interested in getting the latest information for various additions to your Linux box, then this is a must-have. If you are even interested in any extra features you can configure on your Linux box then you will not be disappointed!

WARNING: Your pocket book might suffer after reading this book from all the new hardware you want to buy!

You can make really useful things based on the Linux OS, and this book makes it easy! Highly recommended!

Readers of this book will find it VERY well written. It appeals to everyone, from those more proficient in Linux, to those (like myself) who are still learning. I'd highly recommend this book!

This book clearly explains the details needed to accomplish all projects.

I recently saw Tom Weeks do a Myth TV presentation where you can build your own Linux based PVR, which is covered in his chapter written in this book. This is a great resource for the computer hobbyist, amateur or enthusiast of gadget-lover! Easy to follow and fun to read!

Nikoluas Wirth once said "language design is compiler design". This book is truly remarkable in providing a look behind the (LISP ) scenery. Everyone who write LISP progams should red it to get an understanding of the implementation and hence cost of the language features. Great reading!!!

This book is excellent. It is clear but not superficial at all.

Queinnec explains from the basics of Lisp implementation (evaluation of S-expressions) to techniques for compiling into C. You will find very good advice on how to implement macros and continuations. If you want to implement Lisp, Scheme or any other language actually, buy this book!

Also, there are exercises -- with answers! :-)

I'm not a professional reviewer. But I program a lot, and for a living. After more than 15 years of experience in algorithm development and user interface design, to name some extremes, I get the feeling that "traditional" computer programming languages like C (C++, C#, Objective C) and Pascal (Modula, Oberon, ADA)
and even oldtimers as Cobol and Fortran tend to develop, or rather mature, into languages getting closer and closer to Lisp, Algol, and their ultimate offspring, Scheme.
This is not without reason.
But although the many qualities of Lisp have long since been known in academia, they need time and, more important, good reference material, to find their way into the real world.
Lisp programmers know the value of everything, but the cost of nothing, it is said. Christian Queinnec neatly fills the gap in our knowledge in a book that is a hard read because of the density of the content, but also a fun book because all the source is there (available through the Internet, of course) to experiment with.
You will not only gain insight into the workings of your Lisp system. You will gain insight into the basic elements of computer programming languages and their reason for being, their implementation, and the benefits and costs they will bring you.
All in all, one of the best books on Lisp I have ever almost, but not completely grokked.

I sincerely believe that tomorrow's programming languages, whether they be called C** or Delphi 2010, will be closer to current Lisp than to current C or Pascal, and a way to efficiently implement these languages is available here and now.

The book covers all standard material like direct interpretation, compilation towards a virtual machine using bytecodes, and compilation to C. New material is found in the chapter on macro's , a subject that has regained much interest of late. A broad variety of programming styles is used to illustrate all concepts.

There is only one drawback to the book. It won't teach you Lisp, or Scheme. That is, unless you already know it.

This is an excellent book on Lisp implementation. You'll get a lot out of it, whether you are interested in writing compilers and interpreters (for Lisp or any language) or whether you just want to see how Lisp works. It is the modern day successor to Allen's "Anatomy of Lisp".

An unexpectedly good book.

If you're interested in implementation choices for Scheme and the Lisp family of languages, this is an amazing book. Its worth reading even if you never plan to implement a Lisp interpreter and just want to learn a bit of theory and history behind these languages.

The pinnacle of the act of teaching is to be simultaneously clear, simple, interesting, and complete. This is rarely achieved in person, and almost never in writing; "The Little LISPer" achieves it. I believe this defines what a teaching book can be. It is brief. It can be read in snippets, at any pace. It will maintain the interest of anyone who comes to learn. The reader is left ready to write Lisp code, no matter what background precedes it.

I read this book in high school in 1982; it taught me enough that five years later I aced a four-credit independent study class in Lisp (at an Ivy League college) without any further reading. Hey, I *told* him I already knew Lisp! Dr. Friedman, I hope you come across this endorsement some day; please accept my thanks for creating this wonderful little gem. (Pass the pizza, please, I have a little more to write...)

I cannot endorse this book highly enough. If you want to learn Lisp, I know of no better place to go.

When I was teaching mathematics at a small college in the 1980's, like everyone else we were expanding our computer science department. In talking with a colleague, our discussions went to the area of programming in Lisp and Prolog. This generated some interest in me about Lisp, so we purchased an inexpensive Lisp interpreter and I read this book. As I worked through the examples, the contrast with Basic and Fortran, the two languages I was familiar with, was striking.
Despite my initial difficulties, I continued to slowly plow through the examples and began to appreciate the power of Lisp. It took some time, yet was well worth it. The examples take you through the features of Lisp using the programmatic equivalent of baby steps. Even though this edition was written almost two decades ago, it is still an first tool in the learning of Lisp.

...it's been obsoleted by its own fouth edition. No place on the listing for this book do I find a hint that this is the third edition of a book currently in its FOURTH edition. They renamed the book The Little Schemer for the fourth revision. Buy that book instead.

I'm still struggling with lisp, but this book was simple, to the point, and clear. I didnt even get annoyed by his goofy attempts at humor.

I gave an earlier edition of The Little LISPer a glowing review in Byte in 1980. It was then the best introductory book on programming, regardless of language, and I still haven't seen anything to compare with it.

The greatest strength of LISP is its firm base in the essentials of the mathematics of computability, including Goedel's recursive functions and Church's Lambda calculus. It uses a single data structure, the linked list, and a minimum of programming primitives, all with well-known mathematical properties. For those who don't know the mathematics, this base in simple concepts means that LISP is one of the easiest programming languages to understand, and at the same time one of the most powerful.

The greatest strength of Little LISPer is its easy and natural sequence of steps for introducing data types and structures (numeric, text, and Boolean atoms organized in lists and trees) along with the recursive programming structures that are natural for creating and processing them.

I have just ordered the third edition for my son who is learning programming (if he can get it away from me).

For me this was really helpful and after reading I understand a lot more of metafors and utilization of language in very specific ways to guide client in a more useful direction.

It has transcripts from when he worked with diferent clients diferent problems and gives the "tricks" - important things to notice that make all the diference. Sometimes explains in detail so anybody can understand and at the end of the book has a transcript (of someone who wants to stop eating so much) broken down in small pieces in the left and in right he tells what are the presup., nominalizations, conjunc etc.
In the apendix you'll find the milton model.

As any other RB product you have to read it again and again and again.... cause you'll always find more and of course go do it with people !

Sebastian Stefan
Romania

This book is a wonderful inside-look into actual NLP interventions, essentially transcripts of actual change-work performed by the master himself, Richard Bandler. I'm not going to explain NLP here, because if your unaware of Richard's work, this book will as useful to you as lasik to a blind man. For those that are initiated, this book serves as a wonderful resource to give you an idea of what an actual session should be like, and the final trascript is broken down to the linguistics, excellent for tracking patterns. These transcripts were taken from the famous Howard University tapes, now being sold on Richard'd website. His idea's on the use of humor slapped me in the face like a wet towel across the buns. So if your a fan, your going to love it, if your a newbie, your better off getting Frogs into Princes, or Using Your Brain for a Change. For therapists, this may be an interesting, and eye-opening read to give you an idea of how fast change can be assisted in clients. Remember, NLP is not a set of techniques, it's a methodology with an attitude, and this book let's you take a peep into the wizard's chamber.

This was a great book. I enjoyed every page of it. It brought together ideas I have read and a made them more practical for me. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand how to use NLP is some of the possible ways.

It took me a while to get past the 60's covers on Bandler's books and longer still since I had to get past a lot of the writings I've read by others on NLP (most read like papers presented at a Star Trek convention).However,once you get past the covers and the BS spouted by many NLP "experts" it is refreshing to read Bandler's work. It is very down to earth, uses humor effectively, and the stuff makes sense. This is not the book I would recommend starting with, but do start with Bandler's earlier works if you want to know the real possibilities of NLP.

You could say that this is a book in six chapters, plus an introduction and one appendix - the former is taken of an interview with Bandler in 1990, the latter covers the NLP "Milton Model" in some depth.

Excited?
You would be if you knew what is in those six chapters!

According to the back cover blurb (taken from the Introduction):

"*Magic in Action* shows the ways in which I use humour and speed to work with clients. It gives the layman an idea of what an NLP session should be like."

Basically this is a set of trancescripts (pun intended) of Richard Bandler doing brief therapy the NLP way. They cover topics such as a rather unusual form of agoraphobia, fear of authority figures, weight loss, changing limiting beliefs, etc.

More than that, however, they show Bandler using many of the core NLP techniques to facilitate lasting changes, typically in less than 30 minutes.

An additional feature of the first three sessions is that they are taken from a project at Marshall University, West Virginia, and in two cases include a brief follow-up interview that took place about 8 months after the therapy session.
(Only two, because in one case Richard and his client went straight out and demonstrated that the client's agoraphobia had already completely disappeared.)

As the previous reviewer has said, this is a book that will bear, indeed requires, several readings to get the most out of it. Bandler himself (or was it the unnamed editor?) recommends that, after having read the whole book, you start again, annotating each transcript in the same way that the final chapter has already been analysed, to better understand how Bandler has used various linguistic patterns to achieve his results.
Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

The book gives some interesting insights into the attitude, motivation and practice of the originator of NLP. At the same time, though Bandler certainly isn't prepared to spoonfeed his readers, it is as good a teaching tool as any book could ever be.

If you're serious about NLP, this book is a definite 'must read'.

This book was very helpful to solve my interoperability problems w/o building crazy wrapper code. I had two huge issues, I was struggling to build an XML web services bridge channel between my j2ee application and microsoft C# application. I had several issues with encodings and XML content issues. I had integration problems with couple of j2ee applications with VB app. This book helped me to solve them.
This book is perfect balance for understanding all microsoft <-> j2ee integration specific concepts and code guidance. Simon guest done terrific job explaining the concepts with good level of details to support both from j2ee and .net perspectives. The author has so much grip and clarity on the subject, makes it so simple for understanding and illustrations and very clear to read. A must have for java and .net developers.

It's an essential resource for any architect or developer who is involved in integrating the two platforms, J2EE and .Net, with enough breadth and depth in both being a technical reference as well as offering practical examples and solutions. The samples are working applications that can quickly jumpstart design and development, providing enough understanding and is presented in a clear concise manner.

It has helped us resolve some rather complex interoperable challenges that we've had with some of our customer applications, and saved us an immense amount of time and resource in research.

If you are looking for a quick start to resolving a complex problem, this would be a great place to begin.

Kudos!

Today's Enterprises are heterogenous environments that make writing reliable efficient applications a nightmare at the best of times. This book gives the modern developer the tools and strategies necessary to successfully build and deploy heterogenous applications in today's Enterprises.

It is nice to see that readers are offered many different strategies for interop including both webservices and binary.

In addition, the companion CD actually contains TONS of usefull stuff including all the code, and usefull 3rd party applications.

Truly a must have.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is what J2 enthusiasts cling to when discussing .NET technologies. Simon cuts through these biases with concise, helpful guidance of how to interoperate. IBM and Microsoft both have committed to interoperability and Mr. Guest's book shows how that has real-world applicability. This book shows how an IT organization does not have to commit to J2 or .NET, but BOTH can interoperate and solve the problem. This book is no-nonsense and gives both audiences of developers equal perspective and guidance. Both platforms have their own value. This book attempts to bring synergy and achieves success in doing so. Bravo!

This book is a godsend for anyone who wants to learn how to successfully integrate .NET and J2EE software systems. Simon's writing style is clear and engaging, the book is well structured, and there are copious examples which provide concrete examples of each aspect of .NET/J2EE integration. One of the book's distinguishing features is that it covers a wide range of scenarios, such as XML data interchange, web services interoperability, messaging with MSMQ and the integrating with the presentation tier. The book ships with several useful third party Java products on a CD that allow the reader to immediately try out the code samples. Highly recommended!

Best Access VBA book I have ever bought, and I have bought several.

Callahan is a great author, knows his application, and is great at explaining something that looks complicated, making it very simple to start programming your access forms and objects, jumping right into the nitty gritty.

Useful even if you use Access 2003. I have not bought Access Vista, but it's as good and still functional for Access 2003.

I have worked with Access97 for several years now, but the person designing the databases worked strictly in macros. I had read enough of the developer's books to realize that isn't the proper way to go, but those books were over my head since I had never had any programming experience. This book fit the bill because it assumed I knew nothing else. I think if I master this book and the Access Macro & VBA handbook by Susann Novalis that I will then be ready for the developer's books. Novalis described it as: intro books - walking; intro VBA programming - running; developer books - flying. I really want my databases to fly, but I have to learn to run first.

Great tutorial with specific examples that walk you though customizing Access DBs with a business purpose in mind. Really great book, I highly reccommend it to anyone who is planning to learn how to build customized access applications. Worth every cent you spent on it.

Mr. Callahan provides a well-organized, easy-to-follow tutorial on application development in Microsoft Access 95, emphasizing Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). This book is an excellent introduction to Access programming. Hands-on training is provided on the accompanying diskette.

I love this book. I learned more in 3 hours with this book than I did in a month of wading through various Access and VBA tomes. It is a perfect fit for the fairly technical Access user who is new to Visual Basic. Is your database dying under the weight of its macros? You need VBA and this is the book to teach it to you.

This particular series of instructional books (meaning the "QuickSteps" series) has always been one of my favorites -- they're concisely written in short paragraphs with decent descriptive pictures to help anyone learn just about any type of software application.

While I found this book to be fairly complete, I'd still only recommend it as a desk-side reference manual to use along with Microsoft tutorials themselves. While it is a cleverly written book that is not as cumbersome to use as other reference books on the market, it does not address all of the finer points of Excel.

All in all, it's a great reference book, and let's face it, sometimes it's just easier to review a chapter a few times to digest material rather than stare at a computer screen until you become cross-eyed.

All in all, I'd probably give this book a 4.5, but since that's not an option, I'll have to stick with 4 stars.

I'm a soon-to-be-graduating Psychology student at the University of Washington and I am writing this review from the perspective of some one using excel in Social Sciences.

I found this book extremely suited to my needs...each step was very clear and precise and it was easy to find the chapter or section that was most applicable to what I was working on.

It covered all of the functions of Excel that I have used in my classes thus far. Although my intro. classes had a very brief introduction to the functions I needed, as I progressed into higher level classes and used more and more Excel I found that I needed additional specific instructions for my work. This book was very helpful in that way, and saved me the bother of forever emailing questions to my professor, as I had done before I received the book.

I actually used Excel the most to analyze the significance of data from an experiment that I had designed and to graph the results. This required quite a few steps and it was helpful to have a guide to look at as I went as opposed to trying to guess what came after the basic skills I had previously learned.

I also lent this book to a friend who works in American Ethnic Studies and used Excel to organize and make tables of data for her thesis. The American Ethnic Studies major has no background in science, so was in the position of having absolutely zero knowledge of Excel. However, with this book alone, she was able to complete the Excel portion of there thesis without any additional help.

From a student's point of view, this is a great resource if your field involves any use of Excel.

I don't use Excel all the time. But when I do I don't have time to troubleshoot problems.

This hands-on, user friendly book has helped me conquer Excel. The text is readable and well organized. The visuals are clean and fully support the instructions.

I found that you can start from the beginning and teach yourself EXCEL with simple step by step instructions or you can flip straight to your topic of interest and further build your skills. This is a great tool for all levels of expertise.

I manage a medium-sized network and support a large number of fairly savvy users. That is, most users know how to do their specific tasks very well and are willing to learn new things. But they are not willing to sit down with a book full of dense text. This is where the "Quick Steps" books come in handy. I keep a number of these books on hand and when a user requests assistance, I give them one of the books with the appropriate page bookmarked. Steps are outlined in full color with lots of pictures and pointers and tips. Additional information is set off in side boxes so users can learn more if they choose. What I have found is that once a user completes a task successfully, they get fairly excited about the experience and browse the book to learn more. The books really stimulate users to experiment with things they would not normally bother to learn. And that is where this book excels. It is a "browser." Users don't feel like they need to start at the beginning and read through to the end. I get lots of grumbles when I ask for the book back so I can pass it on to others.

This book is also great for new users. I tell them to spend a few hours working through the steps, which are easy to follow and can be done at a fairly fast pace. Most users think the full color layout is fun to work through. The down-side is that like any book, space is limited, especially with the fully-illustrated format, so you're obviously not going to find everything in these books, but I do feel they contain a good balance of material and are appropriate for corporate libraries.

Marty (the concept author for the Quick Steps series) and I are fellow writers and that is how I learned about these books. I must say that they have helped my users enormously and relieved my support task. Hey, it's the 21st century. Anyone working in an office should know how to work with operating systems and common applications. Most people can do that if they have easily accessible references and refresher material like these books. Thanks to Marty for developing the "Quick Steps" concept and to McGraw-Hill for publishing this series.

I am an infrequent Excel user, so I needed a good reference book that is well indexed. That's exactly what I got with Excel 2003 QuickSteps. It's easy to find what I need when I want it. It's very well illustrated and contains a lot of great tips. The author does an excellent job of explaining the material.

As a SQL Server DBA I am often called upon to deal with 6.5 installations. All my training has been on 7.0 and while many of my peers may have gotten their start on 4.2 or 6.0 or 6.5, I learned on 7.0 and it is different. The 6.5 DBA Survival Guide has helped me to figure out how to do things in 6.5 that are done quite differently in 7.0. I have found it to be an excellent resource manual for making sense out of how things work. Online help in 6.5 is a great disappointment compared to 7.0 so a book like this is essential.

I don't know how to compare this book to others on 6.5 because I have not read any others. But my readings in this one have compared very favorably to what I have read in dozens of references dealing with 7.0.

This book gives you the information you need when you need it. The authors will tell you what works, and what doesn't. You get the right answers, not just the Microsoft answers.

This book is more clearly defined than the Microsoft manuals. Buy it! It's money well spent!

Basically, a well-written, high level 'cliff notes' of the manuals. The target audience is casual and beginner users of SQLServer, not power users. Power users and budding DBA's should try SQL Server Unleashed by the same publisher, or SQLServer Secrets from IDG.

No other book on the market even comes close with respect to the DBA specific aspects of SQL server. All the rest are a mix of developer/DBA material. If you just want to know how to administer SQL this is definately the book for you!

I like Kate Gregory's writing style and her ability to get very complex and detailed information presented in an interesting and informative manner. I especially appreciate her ability to describe the interop capabilities of utilizing both managed and unmanaged C++ code. This book is the best that I have found in explaining this complex subject in a clear manner. This book is a little too complex for a beginner.
I do not normally write book reviews, but this is an outstanding book by a very proficient author.

I've purchased serveral books on .NET and this is the first I have finished. I really liked the fact that the book was short and to the point. This made for a quick read.

One of the surprising things in the book is how she takes some time to explain her methodology to application development and give some great examples. You won't find that in any other book.

If you're a C++ programmer looking to move into .NET I highly suggest this book as your first read. You won't be dissapointed.

This is an excellent book to start learning C++ .NET 2003. As with many people out there, I find myself often disappointed with the Microsoft on-line help and especially with the fact the many examples are only in VB.NET or C#.NET. I am one of those guys that goes to the local Book Superstore and sits in the corner reviewing several books on a subject trying to find a good selection. If you want to learn C++ .NET, I challenge anyone to go find a copy at a bookstore and look through it. I think you will buy it like I did.

Kate Gregory does an excellent job in describing how to work with Managed and Unmanaged C++ with .NET. She also provides excellent overviews on many aspects of C++.NET. The book doesn't cover everything about C++.NET, no single book possibly could. It will always depend on the target audience. But this is a great book for the beginner and intermediate developer. Her writing is clear and concise with example code that is easily understood.

Bottom line - If you want to learn C++ .NET - CHECK OUT THIS BOOK!

This is a very good quick read text to use in moving from C++ to Mananged C++ or .NET. Very clear writing with succinct examples.

I've been programming in C++ since the borland D.O.S version, and now I'm inside the .NET world. I think this book is good enough to understand the changes between versions

That's it. It's the best book for learning modeling in a practical fashion. The learning from this book is practical and you'll learn to build practical and useful models.

This is an excellent book if you want to go deep understanding the true meaning of basic math programs.

If there is anything that I would hold against my favorite Operations Research books - it would be the lack of emphasis on model and structure. Williams' book fills in that gap and is an essential companion to every Math Prog book. It is not a cookbook where one can look up a particular problem and the possible ways to model it. Instead, it takes a systematic and very sensible approach to modeling.
The three chapters on Integer Programming Models are amazingly easy to understand and were a real help during a graduate course in the subject. The huge number of practical examples in Parts 2, 3 and 4 of the book is the real value of the book. I would be hard-pressed for space to describe the range of problems that are modeled in Part 2... Part 3 covers a good deal of discussion on these formulations and Part 4 follows it up with solutions. Though solutions are not discussed in detail, they are a great help for someone who has worked hard through the problems and needs a verification of the solutions.
Another useful section in the book is a chapter on the interpretation of Linear Programming solutions. For a person without a Math Prog background (say, a manager), this kind of material is very useful. In fact, it once served as a good refresher for me in a hurry... and an excellent one at that.
The only sore point is a very limited discussion on nonlinear models.

This is one of the only books I have ever encountered that focuses on the practical aspects of model formulation. This is a frequently overlooked aspect of optimization, but models that are well formulated will often result in superior performance. It is particularly strong in the formulation of mixed-integer problems, with a variety of tips for linearizing variable products and for incorporation of logical constructs. It also shows how to model SOS1 and SOS2 variable types. One other area that I found to be particularly useful was a section covering convexity analysis. This was the only book that I've read that did a good job of explaining the concepts and ramifications of problem convexity. Finally, the examples in the book cover a wide range of practical problems. Most are fairly simple, but do a good job of illustrating important techniques.

I highly recommend this book for linear and mixed-integer modelers. However, if you don't use these types of solvers in your work, the book is less likely to be valuable.

Some books are good for mathematicians, some books are good for managers. This book is different. Williams did a good job to combine both mathematic and application perfective in a single book. Even you have only high school background, this book is readable. For senior researchers or grad students or strong math background person, this book is still enjoyable to recall your fundamental of math modeling. The references are not quite updated, however. Also, this book should added some current optimization tools. Even though the title is model building, not solving, it won't be harmful to have the metaheuristics (only introduction) or KKT.