Programming Books

I have read several books on this topic, but this book was very structured wich made it easy to follow. It gave a very clear explaination on both base- and advanced OOP programming concepts. Many things I'v not read anywhere else and many times I yelled 'AHA!' and 'WOW!'. Yes, it was great fun to work trough all the 'Fun with...' examples.
I really can recommend this book, however NOT if you are a beginner!
I also learned that I'm a Generic Type, because I drink a lot Of T. :)

This book covers what programmers need to know. The pillars of OOP are presented and clear examples are shown.

I refer to this book often because it gets to the "meat" of things rather quickly and is not for beginners.

My only criticism is that this book's examples are 90% console applications. Nobody uses this in the real world. But I understand the focus is on the code, but I still like the Deitel approach better. Use Windows applications NOT console, take the time to get the screen shots. (Just my opinion).

Don't get me wrong, I can easily translate over what he is trying to convey, but still I see great authors such as Francesco Balena showing most examples with the console window. I don't like this trend. But hey that's me.

Very good book though..

This is best VB.NET I ever had. This book explains OO concept very clearly with easy to understand examples. I am still in middle of the book. So eager to finish till end. Waiting to read more books from this writer. Thanks for Excellant Work.

This book covers just about everything: The .NET platform; VB language fundamentals; OOP; Assemblies and classes. In each chapter the author gives a simplified example and then progresses thru to a complete module. He explains each step in detail and give many of the most-likely errors.

This is not novices. The author expects some level of programming experience with VB, C, C++ being the best. It is also best for a Visual Studio 2005 environment, though it is not required. If this is you and you are looking to move to VB.NET, this book is absolutely for you.

If you are looking for a Visual Basic book that covers a lot more than books like Wei-Meng Lee's Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart than this book should be at the top of your list. As well as the basics this book is very good at explaining advanced concepts like Interfaces, IEnumerable Types, Generics, Asynchronous Delegates, and Multithreaded Applications. The author has an excellent writing style. He stays on track, does an excellent job at expaining complex concepts, and provides a lot of hints about how the topic he is writing about now is related to the big picture. Apress should also be commended for the graphical layout of the book. It is very easy to find information on a particular topic in this book as all of the book is divided into clearly labeled short sections.

A writer friend asked me to take a look at Producing Video Podcasts A Guide for Media Professionals by Richard Harrington and Mark Weiser. As an audio podcaster for two years, he knew I would have an interest in seeing what could be done with video to produce a show. Understanding my desire for quality in any avenue, he knew I would want to do it the very best and most professional way. This book is THE tool for such a purpose.

The authors give good definitions of industry terms that might not be familiar to a novice podcaster. The book covers a wide variety of features and gives step-by-step instruction on using the latest and ever-evolving technology and equipment, but it also discusses the business side of podcasting such as budget, hosting, publishing, and monetizing the show.

You'll be able to understand your audience and how to approach them after reading Producing Video Podcasts. The book is careful to keep beginning podcasters out of trouble with the copyright police by making sure the reader understands what music is safe for use on podcasts and where to obtain such material.

No book on videography would be complete without some information on RSS feed, YouTube, setting up cameras and microphones for filming, how to edit, and understanding HDV (high-definition video) standard sizes and frame rates. This book covers all that and much more. Filled with graphics, samples, tips, and photos, this is the complete handbook on preproduction, production, postproduction, delivery, and promotion of a professional video podcast.

Yvonne Perry,
Author of RIGHT TO RECOVER: Winning the Political and Religious Wars Over Stem Cell Research in America

I normally don't write reviews, but after meeting the author at a recent conference, I felt I had to spread the word. This is one of the best books on technology I have read in a while, and I read a lot of tech books for my job. If you know technology but need the video part it works, if you know video and need the technology part, it works, if you need both it works. The book just works. I have been following Richard's podcasts for a couple years, but have never read any of his books, my loss. If you are interested in video podcasting, this is the book for you. My only warning would be make sure you are interested in podcasting and not streaming. There is a huge difference and this book shows you the difference, then teaches you podcasting.

If you are interested in Video Podcasting as a Professional, then this is the resource for you. The book is a treasure trove of knowledge with a great support web site as well providing you additional information, forms and tips that any video podcaster will find useful. If you have never done a video podcast from beginning to end, you will be shocked at the details and the steps required to do this properly. Richard and Mark have put a lot of detail in their book and what has been great for me is that when I ran in to a problem on the book's website, Richard responded to me very quickly and helped me with my problem. I would completely recommend this book to anyone currently doing video podcasts or simply interested in the process. If you are looking to do video podcasts professionally, then this is a must have book.

This is the book that I've been waiting for Richard Harrington and Mark Weiser to write. These guys know video Podcasting cold - from brainstorming, to gearing-up, to production, to promotion. They've been in the trenches since the beginning and know all the pitfalls and how to overcome them to achieve success. Great, great stuff! I'm so glad to have all this knowledge in one place so beautifully laid out and easy to read. This is where the industry is going, and this book will become the bible for video Podcasting.

This is a great book. It goes through all the steps of making a video podcast with examples. The resources on a companion site also offer additional support.

I had little knowledge on the subject of AJAX, but this book enlightened me. I could scope out the capabilities of this technology by reading a few key chapters. Now I understand the AJAX used in the enterprise level application I now maintain, plus a lot more. If you're a .NET programmer, I think you'll like the way this material is presented.

Matt and Dan's ASP.NET AJAX book is an excellent one. It is packed with useful content, and contains a lot of great code examples that demonstrate real-world usage examples.

The book covers all of the core ASP.NET AJAX Scenarios:

- Server-Side Controls (UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress, etc)
- Client-side libraries
- Networking Stack
- Application Services
- AJAX Control Toolkit

Matt Gibbs is the development manager of ASP.NET at Microsoft, and led the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 development team - so obviously knows his stuff well. Dan Wahlin is a great trainer and presenter of ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX. You are in very good hands with them.

I highly recommend this book.

Very well-organized, easy to follow and provided a great starting point for the ASP.NET AJAX framework. Even if you've been surfing the ASP.NET AJAX documentation you'll still pickup some good tips and information from this book.

I have nearly completed my first tour through the book. It is well-organized, written with considerable clarity, possesses a reasonable number of focused examples, and covers ALL the bases in good depth, including deployment and custom controls. Some very minor deficiencies are a scattered few forward references and a muddling of the details of JSON serialization when accessing web services, but the errata and future printings will hopefully clear these up soon.

Thua I strongly recommend it as the FIRST book to introduce yourself seriously to mainstream AJAX 2.0.

Just got a copy of this new book on ASP.NET AJAX and it looks great. It should be because Matt is the Development Manager for ASP.NET so he deeply understands the product. He has also worked on several other books and I can personally attest to the fact that he can indeed form complete sentences. ;-)
Seriously, this book is straight from the source and contains good, detailed information about the ASP.NET AJAX release that applies equally well today and in Visual Studio 2008

Not a typical Wrox title, generally these tend deal with specific technology in "no-nonsense" fashion. This book has more theory in it and is not technology specific, you will find it valuable if you program in just any version of Visual Basic .Net and any type of application. Not likely to become obsolete very soon, since basic premises of refactoring will continue to be relevant even in upcoming versions of VB.

Arsenovski has done a great job with this book. It is clearly written, easy to follow and very practical. A great one to keep on the shelf and reference as needed. The free tools that he covers in the book are a bonus! They really help to get you applying what you've learned quickly.

I highly recommend this book for any .NET developer, not just those who use Visual Basic.

I am working with group of developers that came to VB .Net from VB6. Currently we are in process in improving the way things operate using some agile stuff. The overall disposition is pretty good, team has already been formed and things like daily stand-ups, client involvement or short iterations are generally welcomed by all. However, when more technical, code level stuff is discussed, there is more discussion (if not opposition). These folks pack years of experience and will not accept that you can teach them their job just like that. There is no way you can force things like unit testing or refactoring. You have to be able to hold your ground and answer all the questions with some good arguments.
This book gives you in-dept view of refactoring with a lot of practical, code examples. This means that you are well prepared to answer any uncomfortable question. It builds up gradually, so it is easy to follow.
Almost every chapter ends up applying the stuff that was just exposed on a sample application with a lot of code. Surely author spent a decent time on this title. You can download the code and see it progress from chapter to chapter. This gives a great insight since you can read and debug the code at the same time and not just some toy or isolated example.
Here is chapter to chapter break-down of the book.

Chapter 1
Intro chapter, defines refactorings end code smells and explains the kind of baggage VB carries because of its origins. Cool section on misinterpretations, this will prepare you for some tough questions that might come from uninitiated developers or managers.
Explains the importance of writing simple, comprehensible code. For example:
Dim oXMLDom as New DOMDocumet() vs Dim portfolio as new DOMDOcument.
The first statement gives you no idea of what first DOMDocument represents, in second it's the portfolio, and if you know the application context you will know what to expect.

Chapter 2
Teaser chapter but also good single-chapter sample of some typical refactoring work. Captures well typical process of development of VB applications. Starts out with few event-handling methods, ends up with number of domain classes and some inheritance thrown in.

Chapter 3
Chapter on refactoring tools, also gives you some insight of how different tools like refactoring add-ins and unit testing framework fit the big picture of agile development process.

Chapter 4
Intro chapter on application that is used to illustrate refactorings throughout the book. Explains the business case, requirements, lists some use cases. It is important to understand the context of the application to be able to follow-up on refactorings. Also some funny stuff here, like freshman developer that takes pride in copy-paste development.

Chapter 5
In-dept discussion on Static vs. Dynamic and Strong vs. Weak Typing that is rarely dealt with in such depth. This is basically controlled with Option Strict and Option Explicit options. If you program in VB, you must be aware how these work out.

Chapter 6
Chapter on error handling, especially legacy vs. structured error handling. Again, something everyone should know, but rarely explained in such depth. Cool stuff is step by step recipe for converting legacy to structured.

Chapter 7
Deals with some core refactorings like Dead Code Elimination, Scope Reduction etc. It's like cleaning up your code for some serious refactoring stuff.

Chapter 8
First step in structuring your code is getting serious about the problem (or business) domain. Also explains Rename and Safe Rename refactoring, talks about Interface vs. Abstract class, Open-Closed principle etc. some serious OO stuff.

Chapter 9
Some core refactoring stuff. Teaches you how to eliminate duplicated code and why it is the worst thing it can happen to your code. Explains Extract Method and Replace Magic Literal with Symbolic Constant variable. Nice and simple example based on circle geometric shape on how procedural design is transformed to Object Oriented design (Module and Shared method rings a bell?)

Chapter 10
If only method extraction would be as simple in real life... This chapter goes further with method extraction and deals with some common problems like temps.

Chapter 11
Where do objects come from? How you design classes? Some core OO stuff in this chapter, including Extract Class, Move Member (Method or Field) refactorings, smells like Database Driven Design or Data Class, Large Class, OO principles like Single Reasonability Principle etc. Lot of stuff and handful of pages in this chapter.

Chapter 12
Build upon previous chapter. Deals with inheritance, polymorphism, genericity. Explains the difference between class and interface (or implementation vs. interface inheritance), difference between delegation and inheritance and criteria to chose one or another, list some common misuses of inheritance etc. Again, a number of refactorings like Replace Inheritance With Delegation or Extract Interface, Extract Super etc. Some heavyweight OO concepts in this chapter, takes a time to digest.

Chapter 13
Explains what is important when taking a birds-view of software. This chapter is especially important for software architects. Talks a lot about dependencies in software and why you should minimize dependencies in your code.

Chapter 14
Single chapter for huge subject, still a lot of material covered. Design patterns are the most advanced subject in OO, so refactoring your code in order to make use of patterns is in no way child's play. Mostly deals with creational patterns. First mention of Dependency Injection in some VB book I come across. Now taking into account that Unity application block [...] has been released in April, this is really cutting edge stuff!

Chapter 15
Talks about latest VB improvements that come with VB 2008. Starts with XML enhancements like XML literals and then the rest is about LINQ. Explains a LINQ implementation called LINQ-to-SQL. This is first Microsoft Object-Relational Mapper (ORM). Again, cutting edge.

Chapter 16
If you still deal with VB6 code, than you know that migrating to .Net is no easy ride. This chapter explains some techniques that will help you migrate your code and make it .Net in sprit, not leaving it crippled by simple migration that will only make it execute in .Net. VB6 lacks inheritance, generics etc, so you need refactorings to make it VB .Net.

This book has no real competition as far as I know, no book on refactoring or agile for VB .Net developers. The one that come close is Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# (Robert C. Martin Series) but it is for C# developers and requires a lot higher starting point.
When other books come up, I am sure Professional Refactoring in VB will continue to hold its ground. Highly recommended!

Really great book on refactoring. Although it is based on Visual Basic examples, same advices can be applied to C#, Java or any other OO language.
Martin Fowler finally has a fair partner on my shelf ;).

First of its kind for VB.Net developers. While it does not contain a complete catalogue of all known refactorings, you get a thorough study case used throughout the book, tooling, how to use refactoring for upgrade of legacy VB6 code, a chapter on VB 2008, some important object oriented principles and even short intro on refactoring to patterns.
This book is deep and takes a while to digest. However, it's not about showing off some irrelevant academic knowledge. Author is not afraid to mention "Dependency Injection" or "Single Responsibility Principle" but all of these are demonstrated to be relevant and get illustrated through very practical and real-life examples.

Has some great tips and examples for doing some things fast. The code samples are good, concise, and point you in the right direction even if they don't show you a direct solution.

Great book, alot of useful tips/tricks for any level. Also clear and easy to follow.

I have learned lots of little tricks from this book and recommended to other SAS programmers. I have about 3 years of programming experience and this covered some techniques for tasks that we not obvious to me. I enjoyed his other book as well.

I agree with the previous reviewer, especially on the point that the book could benefit SAS beginners, not just the more seasoned programmers: it is clearly organized, and makes it easy to look up the topic of interest.

An excellent, information-packed and well-organized book that's definitely worth the purchase price and would be a good investment for experienced and novice SAS programmers alike.

An excellent guide for understanding BAPIs and RFCs, complemented with good explained VB programs which are useful for learnig how to develop interfaces whith SAP using VB.

I bought this book knowing VB but was new to R/3. Within days I had a working interface to SAP. If you want to use COM objects to connect to R/3 and make remote function calls this is the book. Great examples on using late binding too if you want to put the functionality into a dll without having a control bound to a vb form. Of the many computer books I've read, this is one of the best.

Details with examples. Good for all SAP R/3 tools and application developers. Explains BAPIs, RFCs, bussiness object repository (BOR), SAP DCOM Connector component etc.

"Professional VB SAP R/3 Programming" - demonstrates how to combine existing Visual Basic tools with the new extensibility tools, so that you can develop robust enterprise applications based on SAP R/3 from a non-SAP programming environment. It also explains the fundamentals of SAP, including the new SAP tools and technologies. SAP R/3 business objects and BAPIs are implemented and a guide to the SAP Business Framework is illustrated. The SAP R/3 Automation tools are used to replicate SAP functionality from VB and the DCOM Component Connector is used to generate business object proxies, aswell as programming the core components of the DCOM Component Connector. Browsing the SAP R/3 Business Object Repository is demonstrated and working code samples of both inbound and outbound SAP R/3 operations are included...

I'm not a VB programmer. I obtained this book to better understand how BAPI's worked and could interface with external applications based on a project team demand to develop better masterdata loaders. The first three chapters alone are goldmines of information that are neatly tied together and explain the concepts and framework used. After reading them I understood why SAP went this route and better understood some of the potential areas where BAPI's could assist our development team. The latter chapters get into more VB oriented issues but are useful regardless of VB experience (or lack thereof). Our VB developers all own this book.

This book really helped me to have a kickstart to become a professional access programmer.... it contains the best tricks to do whatever you want with Access....Besides the writer has writen the book in a way that is very comprehensive for every one....After this book I`m a real fan of Rick Dobson...He knows how to lead you to make you professional....

I have read your book and applied some of the programming methods mentioned in it and found it very helpful.

I have 20 years of software development experience mainly in the
mainframe area both here in Sydney, Australia and Boston, Mass. I recently decided to start my own consulting firm and develop business applications using Access. In the past four months, I have used your book to learn Access in order to develop an
inventory and billing software package for one of my clients. I can honestly tell you that I learned a lot from your book, and I can even say that without your book, I would've not been able to finish the project.

Being a seasoned Access Veteran, I found the book most helpful in explaining ADO (New in Access 2000), explaining class modules and using Access with SQL Server. Most MS Press books in the past that have dealt with Access / VBA have been fairly "light" on these subjects, but this one goes in depth on these subjects. Also the chapter on XML does a good job introducing the platform to novice developers.

Next to The Access Developer's Handbook Series by Litwin, Getz etc..and F. Scott Barker's Power Programming, I would say this is a "must have" for any serious Access Developer.

This book builds on Dobson's prior book "SQL Server with Access 2000" and ferrets out good solutions to some everyday needs like image processing and dynamically populated combo boxes. I'm a small business owner whose time is precious, but needs to get big picture solutions so not to be reworking stop gap efforts to streamline my operations.

Being pressured to grow my application to many users (both trusted LAN and anonymous Web) and being comfortable with the graphical interfaces of Access, I found the the need to learn about programming ADO recordsets, Data Access Pages and ASP while determining the best solution. I have been overwelmed by the flexibility of MS solutions and options that are possible and needed some guidance in plain language to explain such terms as Objects, Properties and Methods, and what they meant to be programmed. Chapter 2 does a good job of that which is followed by a useful summary of the ADO library. Data Access Projects are lined out well along with some practical tips to incorporating SQL Server 2000 as a data source. He further builds upon this model and shows how to dynamically (!) create web pages from the Access Project using MS Frontpage XP, the resultants being Active Server Pages! I have found while the Access 2002 graphical tools are helpful, Dobson explores how to control the code behind the power of the XP Office release.

I have found the code to be tight and well commented. I'd urge anyone interested in harnessing the full power and speed of deployment of Access 2002 and the Office XP suite to add this book to their "How To" library.

This complete reference book is actually three books in

one. It is the clearest available introduction to VBA

coding. It provides explanations with a huge collection

of Access VBA code. And it is a thorough presentation

of what is new and powerful in Access 2002, especially

concerning integration with SQL Server.

This book is just the thing for anyone who wants to

become a serious Access user or developer. It is the

answer to the prayers of many Access users who have

wanted a reference that would finally take them from

the limited GUI Access interface into the more full and

flexible features of VBA coding. The coding in this

very large book is so extensive that I bet you could,

if you wanted to, do every future Access project with

just code and without reference to the GUI interface.

You can tell that Rick Dobson loves to code and to pass

on what he has learned.

The explanations are very readable and give you the

background necessary to actually understand why things

work the way they do. Much attention is given to

keeping you out of trouble by conveying a very clear

understanding of operational issues not covered

elsewhere. This includes successful integration of

different versions of Access and SQL Server, getting

the reference libraries correct, and even using Access

with FrontPage (now included in Office XP

Professional).

If this reference indicates the way Microsoft Press

books are headed, then I am going to look to add more

of them to my reference collection in the future.

Clarity, comprehensive, and Code, code, code!

Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework? Well, this is the book for you! Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again. I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces. I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap. The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation. Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET. It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET. It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable. The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area. You have GOT to buy this book!

Hi, All!
I am the lead author of this book. Together with Michael Saltzman and Robert J. Oberg we tried to make this book as good as possible.
The book will be useful for you whether you are an experienced Perl programmer that wants to learn .NET technology or you are new to Perl.
The first part represents a tutorial of Perl itself. In the second part we dive into exciting world of programming Perl inside the .NET Environment.

I hope you will enjoy reading and our code samples will be useful and helpful for you.

Happy reading and programming!

This book was not only extremely valuable to me in understanding how to use Perl in the .Net Environmental, but also contains the best presentation of how to build pure Perl Modules that I have read to date. These concepts really jelled for me after reading and utilizing the examples presented in the book.

With my limited experience in object oriented programming, this book presented the topics in the right order to overcome my lack of OO experience.

I did have a few instances of failing to find specific terms in the index.

This book will continue to be a valuable resource as I continue to refine my Perl skills in creating perl modules and utilizing Perl in the .Net environment.

Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework? Well, this is the book for you! Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again. I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces. I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap. The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation. Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET. It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET. It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable. The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area. You have GOT to buy this book!

Can you mix Perl and Dot.NET ??
I didn't think so till now.

I found the mix of Perl and Dot.NET quite strange - that's why I was surprise to see a book on that matter.

I felt very curious to see how can it work together.

Perl has lots of advantages that make it such an enormous success - very easy to write fast and efficient code.
Ask any unix admin / programmer.

The way Perl works with the rich options of Microsoft's new engine is good. I like the combination. It works well, the examples are quite good.

The first part of the book looks similar to every Dot.NET one can find, but the second part is the value for this book - and that's why I liked it.

Good techinal explainations and examples.
It was a good investment for me.

I've read and/or studied just about everything I could get me hands on regarding using Basic with my PIC's. This book is by far the best.

The author did a fantastic job! It's really a shame that MBasic is an OBSOLETE product that hasn't been updated in several years and does not include any new Pic processors that has been released in the last couple of years.

What Jack Smith has done in this book goes far beyond what the title indicates. It is an excellent tutorial, AND an excellent reference book AND a great project book.

Unlike many programming books, this one also demonstrates the author's engineering expertise by providing details of circuity including the hows and whys of interfacing to PICs, reasons for component parts and values selection, timing charts, 'scope pictures, etc. His choice of projects is excellent, and touches on virtually every application in which a PIC would likely be used.

He also provides a CD loaded with support documentation, source code for all the projects for both the current release and 5.3.0.0, which is due out shortly. He details the differences between the two versions, and provides lots of info on undocumented commands and errata in the MBasic manual. He also includes a free version of 5.3.0.0 which is limited only in the chip it will support, which is one of the best and most popular ones in use today.

As far as the "obsolete" comment made in an earlier review, all I can say is that MBasic has the best feature set of any Basic compiler for PICs that I have seen for the chips it supports, which includes all the most popular ones, incuding my favorites, the 16F876 and '877. The fact that Basic Micro obviously worked with the author to provide a pre-release version of the next release tells me there are no plans to obsolete the program.

I own MicroBasic Pro 5.2. Although the BasicMicro's manual is large and informative, it left out too many facets and explanations for features. In fact, knowledgeable users were constantly alluding to 'hidden' features and undocumented commands and/or extensions in the forums. New and intermediate users were operating at a disadvantage for this reason. This book easily fixes all those shortcomings. The contents cover both the present version, 5.2, and the newest yet-to-be-released version, 5.3, represented in the demo version on the CD.

Jack Smith has done a real service to everyone seeking a pathway to develop projects with one of the industry's most popular and best supported processors - the Microchip PIC. He has documented all the compiler's features, in a clear and concise fashion, that allows the user to realize all the power of this compiler. Every chapter clearly explains the hardware and software relevant to the chapter's subject, and provides numerous useful code examples to get the user started.
The chapter on using ISRASM, MB Pro's interrupt handler, and the chapter that collects together and summarizes all the previously unexplained commands and features, easily makes this book a 'must have'.

The demo compiler supports only the PIC16F876 and its -A version. At present users report that this program doesn't work with Win9x or ME machines, but is OK for Win2000 and XP. This is probably due to the 32 bit nature of the new software. This may change, so refer to their forums and home page for news about this. Basic Micro promises to upgrade from the present version to version 5.3, when released, for free.

After two years of experimenting with different BASIC compilers, I find MB Pro easily the best of the bunch. It has a mix of features and a command set that, for the money, easily makes it a real value. Check it out at basicmicro.com.
If you decide that MB Pro is the compiler for you, then make it a point to buy this book to achieve maximum return on your investment.

This is much more than just a fantastic replacement for the MBasic manual (although it's very good as that). I haven't seen any MBasic tutorials with this much depth anywhere.

It's an AMAZING resource, easily one of the best-written textbooks on any subject that I've seen in a long time. It's laid out in a tutorial format, with each chapter building on the ideas in the previous pages. The book is also easy to use to find specific techniques as you would with a reference book, either with the index, or with the thorough way Jack cross-references related chapters within each chapter.

Jack introduces one or two major concepts in each chapter, such as working with digital outputs, I2C, stepper motors, or HSerial, and then shows how to design the electronics parts of the concept as well, and gives solid reasoning for how he's making design choices along the way. He has a deep understanding of both computer theory and electronics design, but presents both of them in a friendly, non-jargon-y way that I think many experience levels could understand.

It covers everything from the stock MBasic commands, to how to use in-line and standalone assembler where needed, to the undocumented (except in the forums) commands hidden in the language. You even get a CD with a FREE version of MBasic Pro 5.3.0.0 called MBasic876 (It is limited to the 16F876 / '876a parts only, which is not a huge limit). Jack also explains the differences between 5.2.1.1 (the current full release) and 5.3.0.0, AND gives working code for both versions! He even documents all of the mistakes he - and others - have found in the 5.2.1.1 manual, saving much frustration when learning the language.

If you wanted to use this as a textbook, there are "Ideas for Changes to Programs and Circuits" at the end of each chapter, that would make good homework assignments.

The CD also contains all of the code examples from the book (in both 5.2.1.1 and 5.3.0.0 versions, with comments), Linear Technology Circuit Simulation Software\SWCADIII (LTSPICE) circuit simulation tools, and datasheets for all of the parts used in the book.

An extra bonus is the nearly page-long list of references at the end of each chapter, containing information about everything from good 8-bit microcomputer design guides, to where to find current datasheets for the parts used in the chapter, to great freeware resources for the PC.

So far, I have found answers to every question that's stumped me even after reading the Basic Micro forums.

I hope some others can enjoy this as much as I have. It's made me excited again about how much MBasic allows you to do with a PIC.

I would def. buy something from this seller again. He was wonderful and fast. He saved me from failing my class.

A good book. Topics are all well explained and good programming examples are provided. The target audience is more for people with little or no programming experience. But, experienced software developers can gain some insights, too. Overall, I highly recommend if you are looking for a book on this subject which doesn't contain in-depth technical details.

I bought this book for a class that I took at UC Berkeley and it's a great book because it teaches the reader xhtml and java in a simple way. I was amazed as to how easy it was understand all the terminology in the book. Usually I sell off my books at the end of the semester but this one was a keeper.

I got this book for a class, taught by Lagerstrom, and loved it. It does a great job explaining XHTML and JavaScript. I had never been exposed to any type of programming, but this book made it simple. When I originally bought the book, I was sharing it with two other people. However, we all found it so helpful that we had to each buy our own to keep it on the shelf.

Wow. Very few programming books I've read do much for me. Most of them are of no more use than a reference manual. But this book....this book is different. After just an hour of reading, I now understand the basics of JavaScript. The book does a great job explaining it. The other topic this book covers is XHTML, the successor to HTML. I admire the author's constant reminders to remain standards-complient in XHTML. Good job.

I got this book for a class, but I'll be keeping it forever. Scary, eh?