Software Books

I got this book because i need it when i am working in my intern. This book is good for beginners and little above. It is easy to understand and the quality is great. It worth more than it cost.

This is an excellent book! Stanek's Pocket Consultant books go far beyond the typical. He always uses his comprehensive knowledge to weave a fabric that balances the aim of a program with the fiddling details that drive admins crazy. As soon as I had skimmed the IIS book I set it aside and read one section a day. Nothing escapes his eye, every section clears up something that I had always wondered about. Great stuff!

One of the good books in the market about IIS 6.0.

People who are interested MUST have a look at

MCPMAG(Redmondmag) IIS 6.0: Step-By-Step Mega-Guide, Part I & II as a quick reference.

This book is really worth every penny it costs. It is packed with useful information, well written, intelligent, and enjoyable to read. Just the chapters on IIS applications, side by side .NET configurations, and pooling are worth the whole book: it goes through every detail.

The in-depth coverage of every other subject is as accurate as it gets. I particularly appreciated the chapter about customization. But the book goes as far as covering in perfectly understandable terms the metabase, and more. Not to mention the incredibly accurate chapter about optimization.

This is an easy to read book with the detail you would expect from a pocket consultant. The author doesn't waste time with the basic chit-chat and does a good job of laying out the useful material.

Content includes initial setup, backup, performance monitoring/tuning and more advanced features such as registry and metabase settings. Advanced readers will eventually want to search for further information on some of these topics (scripting for example), but this is to be expected. The books leaves you feeling comfortable with what you've learned and with a good feel for where you might want to expand your learning in the future.

Most of my computer books end up getting re-sold or trashed, but I'll be keeping this one on the shelf for myself and others to use in the future.

This book is a MAINSTAY in my reference library. Though I do only limited back-end development in the applications I work on, this is the first book I look for when I need to be pointed in the right direction. I highly recommend it!

I bought this book as a complete Oracle novice, transitioning from Microsoft T-SQL to PL/SQL. I was worried about the transition being difficult until I read this book.

It is one of those very rare books that presents advanced concepts in a context understandable by users of all experience levels. The author often throws in tips about Oracle PL/SQL quirks to watch out for, as well as some very applicable information about how Oracle works internally.

I've since become more comfortable with PL/SQL, and the book also serves as a great reference. I highly encourage you to read this book straight through.

I recommend this well-written book to anybody wanting to learn PL/SQL, as well as anyone needing a great reference.

Although the information was accurate and useful, I think the strength of this book was it's clear and logical presentation. It is easy to read and very helpful. For example, I needed to know how to dynamically build the "where" clause for select statements and his chapter on DBMS_SQL gave me the tools to accomplish my task at work.

This is definitely an excellent book. No one should rank it less than 5 stars just because it was published in 1996. Please do some research before talk. Actually, Scott Urman has wrote a book, "Oracle8 PL/SQL Programming", which was published in 1997. Buy this one if you want to learn PL/SQL 8.0.

Oracle 8 is out and in this book it only covers to Oracle 7. It is a very well written book. It is a valuable reference however it was published in 1996. Still looking for Oracle SQL Plus 8.0 AND the PL/SQL Programming. I hope the author steps up to the plate and updates his work.

This book is easy to follow. The step by step illustrated instructions are easy to follow. Great book!

This is a wonderful book for those of us that learn by SEEING rather than just reading words on a page. Each project takes you step by step from start to finish. You see every screen. Listed in oder, it is easy to follow. Excellent for those of us "cyber challenged" users.

I absolutely love this book!! It is easy to follow and shows some terrific tips. If you're looking for a book to make some Photoshop CS2 editing easy go for this book. I rate it 5 out of 5 stars for what information I'm looking for.

I gave this book only four stars as it was a little to basic for me. This was the only reason!

There is lots of valuable information and it is very easy to follow the instructions to get the desired results/effects. Some things I had already learned either on my own, from another book, or from a two day Photoshop CS2 class I took.

Would recommend to beginners or maybe beginner/intermediate looking to expand with fast tips.

I bought "Hacking Photoshop CS2" use off of Ebay, Amazon has them new, but this book really paid for itself just in the first chapter of tweaking the Photoshop preferences, etc. Starts up noticiably faster on my laptop now! Would recommend that book highly for intermediates and up.

This book is very clear and easy to follow. If you need step by step this book is for you. I have found it had increased my knowledge of the software greatly.

This was a great find. I just wish I had read it sooner. There are things in here that every Access developer should read. Lots of good advice, techniques, and code samples. Very well-written and easy to follow. Right to the point. I especially appreciate the humility that Garry shows in his writing. He obviously knows more than most about Access, yet he gives credit where it is due and provides lots of links for the reader to go out and get the background themselves.

I have read some of the other (excellent in their own right) big books on MS Access, and there were a couple of "non-security" things in here that I did not find elsewhere (not to mention the security issues that were new to me). I highly recommend this book for anyone who may be creating a multi-user database.

Gary Robinson is a master at Access security and this book proves it! This is one of the books that stays on the shelf close to me when I am developing. It has great resources for setting up different types of security and he provides forms and code to help you develop security based on your needs. I highly recommend this for developers, especially those who are just designing more complex databases and need a good background on security. He is such a great resource that I subscribe to his newsletter now! I can only hope that he writes another book soon! A+

All of the other reviews pretty much say it all, but I wanted to place a more recent review in the list. Although I have just started using some of the basics Gary clearly discusses, I am anxious to get to the rest. Being able to secure Access has always been in the back of my mind. Now I know I can tackle the issue and get it done in a consistent manner that I can carry into all my Access projects. Thanks for the good work Garry.

A good book will find the reader. I would like to thank Mr. Robinson for a well written read. Besides all the other things I have in my life to do I was able to finish his work in about two weeks. I have read all the other reviews; there is nothing I can add. I can however tell you that if you are into Access database (and you know if you are) then this book is an imperative. I have had many books on Access database pass my way, nothing compares with Mr. Robinsons' book on security and protection.

Mr. Robinsons' is the first technical book on Access I have ever read from cover to cover with a never ending want to turn the page to see what Mr. Robinson was going to teach me next. I'm going to begin a reread of his work and this time I'm going to use the examples with both Northwind and my own database to incorporate his methods; especially enjoying combining the OS and workgroup security to provide my data a secure base from my clients, friends and enemies.

His book provided me ample margin to take copious notes along with my read, it will prove helpful in preparing for deployment. Mr. Robinson is a professional database administrator and this book is written as from such, you will think like he does at the end of this read and be the better for it. Mr. Robinson is a wonderful dbase admin, author, and now teacher. Again many thanks for his efforts and a heartfelt appreciation for my newly gained knowledge. Should Mr. Robinson ever have a worldwide tour on the subject, sign me up.

All of the reviews are positive, I suggest a review of Mr. Robinsons' Table of Contents and more important, the wonderful Index. A review of these documents will give you better insight into the level of Access database security Mr. Robinson clearly and distinctly explains. Mr. Robinson has the world's attention on this security subject and rightfully deserves it.

The Table of Contents and Index may be found at:

View the table of contents (http://www.vb123.com/get/AccessSecurityBook_TOC.pdf)in PDF format.
View the index file (http://www.vb123.com/get/mapindex.pdf) in PDF format.

Tom Pickett
May 9, 2006
Berea, South Carolina USA

This has got to be the best MS Access resource book that I have purchased. Like others, I have found MS Access security hard to understand but with Gary Robinson's help I am now getting a grasp on how I can keep sensitive data secure. The book is aimed at those who are new to security as well as those with experience. Also, the downloable database, with forms and code that you can easily use in your own applications, is a real time saver.

I especially like how he has broken down the overview for each chapter with segments aimed at Developers, DBA's and the IT Managers. In these overviews he explains what in the chapter is important to the reader by their role. The book is arranged so you can easily locate the information you need and not have to go through the whole book to be able to accomplish your security goal. But I recommend that you do read the entire book as it has so much to offer! I am on my second read through.

I learned a lot from this book; lot of knowledge yet very light reading.

I am designing a network with managed switches that incorporate all the cool layer 2 stuff that I have not had much experience with, so I decided to get up-to-date and bought this book. What a wise choice I made.

About 10 years ago in my communications classes I studied Ethernet, transmission/arbitration using CSMA/CD, frame structures, etc, but forgot much of it. "The Switch Book" has everything I learned in my EE curriculum and then some. At 650 pages, almost exclusively dedicated to layer 2 of the OSI model, this book is extremely comprehensive. Considering its breadth, it is a very easy read for self study and would also make a good reference. What makes it an easy read is that it does not regurgitate the RFCs and IEEE Standards. It contains tons of examples, graphs, network diagrams, and footnotes. BTW, the footnotes are full of humor; oh, and there is even a funny poem on link aggregation. When the book gets overly technical (e.g. hardware implementations), Seifert tells the reader he can skip the section without losing continuity.

This book as helped me debug a problem I had with Spanning Tree and Link Aggregation (trunking). After reading this thick book, I feel confident that I can put an analyzer on the wire and know exactly what's happening by watching the bitstreams. Frame formats for everything are graphically represented. Even some cool stuff, like LACP, GARP, GVRP, and GMRP are covered. Ethernet, FDDI, and Token Ring are the three LAN technologies covered.

All chapters follow a similar format. Each chapter starts with theory and some (usually visual) examples. Then some technical software/hardware implementations are explained, followed by configuration and more examples. Usually, the end of the chapters discuss the history of the technology and the official standard (IEEE, technical pub, RFC, etc.).

The author mentions that much of the material was written in mid-1999. Considering its age, it is still very relevant. The only two technologies that I can think of that weren't around when this book was written are "Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol", although STP is covered, and 10GbE, which is negligible.

The bottom line is, if you need to understand layer 2, you need this book.

This is the best technical book I have ever read. Not only is it very informative on the aspects of switching, it is extremely well written and keeps the reader's attention. I have recommended the book to many engineers and none have been disappointed.

The book is especially valuable to those who do not have much background in switching. The concepts are explained in plain language and the book provides many references for further reading.

The only negative is that the book is getting a little dated and so does not contain information on some of the latest standards and product developments. Hopefully a new edition will come out soon. But even so, I highly recommend this book.

I have read 100's of technical books on many different subjects. I have to say this is the most well written book of any.

The author clearly knows his subject matter and explains things well. He even tells you when a particular section can be skipped without loss of meaning to the rest of the book.

I hate technical books with lame jokes. His jokes are FUNNY and worth reading.

This is a great book if you want to learn about switching concepts. The book is very detailed and a surprisingly easy read for its technical contents. It has the right mix of history and logic behind the way protocols were designed.

I know several programming languages and wanted to use Perl on my website. Within days I was able to take existing scripts and modify them to use on my site. I was able to generate several program to help maintain the site within weeks. Great book!

This is the first and from what I found "ONLY" book for a novice. I have read numerous titles on Perl and was always left with basic questions. If you want to understand Perl, read this book.

I read Beginning Perl, 2nd Ed (BP2E) to gain some familiarity with Perl 5. I do not plan to really write anything in Perl, but I find myself using other people's code quite a bit! In those situations I would like to know how the code works. I also enjoy being able to make small changes if the code does not work as expected. Perl is basically everywhere, so it pays to understand it to some degree.

James Lee's book is excellent from start to finish. I found his explanations very clear and his writing style lively. He covered just about everything I hoped to read in a book of roughly 400 pages. The book is ideal for the self-educated since it contains exercises with answers in the back. I personally enjoyed learning more about regular expressions in Ch 7, since PCRE is an important part of several network security tools.

It is easy to take a good programming book for granted. I have started and stopped reading several other books written to teach programming because their style is terrible and the assumptions they make confuse the beginner. BP2E is always conscious of what the reader has already seen. The author makes it clear when a briefly mentioned topic will be more thoroughly explained later in the book. Plenty of technical authors could learn from this example.

Even if you plan to read the author's new book -- Beginning Perl 6 (or BP3E) -- you may want to read BP2E. Perl 5 will be with us for many more years, so it pays to understand the material in BP2E. (It's possible that BP3E could demonstrate Perl 5 and 6 syntax, but I doubt it.)

Beginning Perl is a great introduction and resource. It does assume the reader has some basic prior programming experience, but either way it is very logical and easy to follow. The book is well-organized so that you can easily find what you need. There are tips and shortcuts strategically placed throughout the book to help you along the way.

I bought this book very recently, having no prior experience with Perl. I had seen a couple of scripts that other people had written, but since I have minimal programming experience I could only somewhat figure out what they were intended for.

I read the first chapter of Beginning Perl (11 pages), and read bits and pieces of the second chapter (37 pages). Then I began writing my first Perl scripts, using the book primarily for reference. It makes a great reference tool because the index is very thorough and the examples are easy to understand without necessarily reading the entire book in order. About 3 hours ago I couldn't have told you what a subroutine was or how to create a hash, but now I have completed my first interactive program using subroutines, hashes, various types of loops, error-checking, etc. That would have taken me weeks to learn if I had not discovered this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning Perl.

Beginning Perl really is an excellent resource for anyone looking to learn the language - novice to expert. Even if you have absolutely no programming experience, the book starts out from the beginning by covering not only things you will need to know to learn Perl, but also good general programming practices. If you are an expert programmer, the book is written in a way that makes it easy to scan through and pick up on some things that you may not know or refresh your memory on some things that may not be completely clear. The index in the back is also great for use as a reference. Nothing can compare to the usefulness of a good Internet search engine (see Google) for use as a reference, but the book does quite a good job. It is nice to have something tangible in front of you to walk you through some tutorials and build up your knowledge of the language in a methodical way.

Personally, the book has helped me to become comfortable using Perl to do "everyday tasks" (everyday in the context of an obsessive computer user), perform my necessary job functions (manipulating massive text files), and become a better programmer. I used to know next to nothing about Perl, although I did have a solid background in other languages. With this book, and some help from the Internet, I was able to become a sufficient Perl programmer within a week.

Perl is a great language that every person in the computing field should know. There's literally hundreds of great tutorials and books on the subject that will suffice, but I would stress the value of having a well-written book sitting in front of you while you learn. I would certainly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn Perl.

I have used this book and it has proven to be a highly resourceful Visual Basic and SQL Server book, that I am anxiously waiting for the release of Beginning VB.NET Databases by the same author!!!.

It's very good Books with good Price and (Wrox Press)

OK for beginners who want to know some of the innards of SQL server, but there are two major faults. One is that newbies to networkable machines will find themselves crushed under the weight of networking and communications jargon that the author never explains, and Win98 machines can't handle half of the book. Second, the last third of the book for some 200 pages has nothing to do with VB: the samples are written entirely in XML, DHTML, and a mere snippet of VBScript. There are better VB tools for creating Web apps that can handle big datasets and ActiveX, whereas XML has enfuriatingly slow performance and an unattractive and inflexible interface that looks like something pounded out on a typewriter (remember those?). 5 stars for the first two-thirds, zilch for the remainder.

I had to learn SQL programming with Visual Basic 6 in about a month's time for a project. This book taught me everything I needed to know to deliver the application. Everytime I came across a stumbling block in my code or in SQL Server 2000 I found the answer in this book.

This book will make you feel that you not only know how to make Visual Basic talk to SQL Server, it will make you feel you know more than the basics of SQL Server itself. Previous to reading this book I had no idea what a stored procedure was, or how a query works in SQL Server (I had worked extensively with Microsoft Access, and these skills were not necessarily transferable to SQL Server, though many of the concepts are similar). Now I know my way around SQL Server 2000. This book fulfilled a dual purpose.

There are chapters on Database design, SQL Server installation, SQL Server security, Querying, Stored Procedures, the SQL language, IIS, and XML. Most of the book is taken up with what developers do everyday: the storage and manipulation of data. Over 300 pages of the book is dedicated to data in general, and how to get the most out of it using VB and SQL Server.

If you need to create a VB6 (there is no discussion of VB.NET since the book predates it) database application using SQL Server, this is the book to start with. Its bulk pays off.

This is an excellent introduction to SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic 6.0 developers. I used this book and Robert Vieira's Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming (Also by Wrox) to study for the Designing and Implementing Databases using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 exam (70-229). The 2 chapters on XML were especially good. Thearon does his best work when he works solo and this book is one of his best. I have his SQL Server 7 book and both books are well-written. I really like the "Hardware Tracking" tutorial that he follows for most of the book. This tutorial will also help with your Visual Basic skills. I have learned several new VB tricks just by following along. I hope that Thearon writes a Beginning SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic.Net Developers.

This book makes a complicated machine like computer very easy to understand

The best thing I love about this book is the writing style of Prof. Freedman and how easily and clearly it can crystallize, the otherwise complex computer terminology, components and concepts. The explanations used here are vivid. I have owned a copy since 1997 and I have never been disappointed with anything that I needed to look up, for instance 'kludge' is described here as - "Also spelled 'kluge' and pronounced 'klooj'. A crude, inelegant system, component or program. It may refer to a makeshift, temporary solution to a problem as well as to any product that is poorly designed or that becomes unwieldy over time."

It will be hard to obtain better explanations than they are written in here.

There are several other similar Encyclopedias around which I have never looked at, because I had no need to look for another Encyclopedia.

Unlike most other computer dictionaries/encyclopaedias in its class, the inclusion of a companion CD-ROM gave this "Computer Desktop Encyclopedia" a comfortable jump-start in the superiority contest.
The book (and its attached CD-ROM) covered, in the most definitive way, all the important terms and acronyms that apply to today's computer and networking technologies. Hardware, software, and allied peripherals were adequately represented.
It is descriptive and well-illustrated, and included all the commonly used file extensions. With over ten-thousand terms and definitions, its scope is rich: in comparison to what exist now.
This computer encyclopedia ranks among the best currently on sale. However, potential buyers may be frustrated (at the moment) by its limited availability.

And too bad it's out of print. While this book will not teach you how to use a PC, it will define every computer related (and often electronics) term you can imagine. I was surprised on some of the really obsecure terms this book contained that I didn't expect it to mention. I got this book used and after reading over some of it, I'd say this is a must have on any nerd's desk as the it compares up there with as good as an internet search for explanations of PC related terms.

I work people whose computer knowledge varies from very little to a serious computer user. This reference manual is one book that all levels can benefit from. This book is the perfect manual to answer the questions in an easy to understand format without all that technical jargon.

The book is over 1100 pages and is loaded with pictures and figures to give a visual representation of the definition which makes is easier to understand some of the concepts covered. There is computer definitions, vendor breakdowns, and certification analysis and application definitions.

Some of the topics covered are networking, computers, MACs and applications. Some of the technologies included are CISCO, CompTIA, ATM, FDDI, Ethernet and token ring. Also included is a cd-rom which has over 5000 more definitions not included in the book. Overall a great addition to my technical library.

The GlassHaus "Constructing Accessible Web Sites" book has been a great find. I began working to build sites and applications for use in Web browsers that had to be used by individuals with disabilities in 1997. Over these years I picked up a lot of hard won knowledge and experience, but have never run across a resource that fully backed what I had gathered. The GlasHaus Accessibility book not only echoes what I have learned, but has provided new insights to improve upon what I already have. The best part of this book is that I can point others to it and I am assured they will be able to build an accessible site or Web applications that can meet high standards.

Many folks think accessibility is a great inconvenience, but it takes a little thinking and planning to do it right from the beginning. Having a great resource at hand makes the process a cake walk. Not only are the processes and guides helpful for creating sites that are accessible for those that are disabled these steps outlined also make the information in the site future ready. Sites that are accessible are much easier to use with a handheld PDA device or from even a cell phone browser. Accessibility for everybody in more situations improves with structuring the information properly, which is all making Web enabled information really requires to get it ready to be consumed. Is your information ready to be consumed by everybody?

I don't usually come it the "lyrical type", but to find such a worthwhile book on such a worthwhile topic is a breath of fresh air!

Above all else, it offers practical advice on how to actually do the right thing. Unlike certain titles with animals on their covers, there's more here than just reams and reams of tables containing cut-and-pastes from the man pages on the subject.

It's also of a nice size. (I know that would be no recommendation, if the book didn't actually teach you anything, but it does - and you don't feel intimidated, like you can when you pick up some dirty great Red tome from a Certain OtherPublisher.) You feel as if the subject is managable. Knowable. It may be just me, but if a book is smaller than my own head, I generally feel that there's an outside chance I may be able to fit the contents inside my own skull!

I'll have to keep an eye open for these blue things... they're quite good.

Of the books and resources that I've read on accessible web sites, this is by far the best - especially from a UK perspective.

The main UK legislation that specifically mentions web sites and accessibility comes into force in October 2004 which, at the time of writing this, is still over two years away. This means that there isn't a great deal of information and certainly no legal cases that we can draw on from our country, so we have to look elsewhere to see what is happening.

This book benefits in that, although it does cover Section 508 and other already in place legislation, it also gives a great all round understanding of the topic, and is very easy to read. Having chapters written by different authors means that you get a far greater depth of experience and information, which can only benefit the reader.

If you're going to buy one book on accessible web sites, this should be at the top of your shopping list.

Two new words have joined the vocabulary of web designers in recent years - usability and accessibility. You will often come across them used in tandem.

Usability really became an issue when Jacob Nielsen infamously denounced Flash as 99% bad. Accessibility became a priority for web developers working on government projects after Section 508 was brought into law in the United States.

Accessibility became an issue in Australia during Maguire vs SOCOG in 1999, when a blind man filed a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) that neither Olympic Games tickets purchasing information nor the souvenir programme were available in Braille. Most importantly he alleged that the SOCOG website was not accessible, and to make it so would have been well within budget. SOCOG was found to have discriminated against the complainant and damages were awarded against the organization.

Accessibility is now a civil rights issue. It is also not that difficult to implement on a website, once you learn how it can be done. This excellent book, Constructing Accessible Web Sites, teaches you all that and more. It is the first on its subject, and will not be the last, but it is damned a good beginning.

All eight co-authors have been pioneers in the field of accessibility, and Glasshaus deserves praise for having assembled such a team. They cover more than website accessibility - their expertise extends to the accessibility of web design tools themselves. An apt reminder that the web is as much about reading as writing, for writers as much as readers, a real medium of two-way communication.

All websites can now be made accessible to varying degrees, even Flash websites since Flash MX, as Macromedia Senior Product Manager for Accessibility Bob Regan demonstrates in Chapter 10. So there are no excuses for failing to add increased accessibility, and usability for that matter, to that new project you are just about to commence.

Ensure you have a copy of Constructing Accessible Web Sites at hand when you begin. And also take a look at another equally essential reference on the subject due out any day now, Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites. Accessibility is the newest and most necessary website building skill. There are no excuses now.

The GlassHaus "Constructing Accessible Web Sites" book has been a great find. I began working to build sites and applications for use in Web browsers that had to be used by individuals with disabilities in 1997. Over these years I picked up a lot of hard won knowledge and experience, but have never run across a resource that fully backed what I had gathered. The GlasHaus Accessibility book not only echoes what I have learned, but has provided new insights to improve upon what I already have. The best part of this book is that I can point others to it and I am assured they will be able to build an accessible site or Web applications that can meet high standards.

Many folks think accessibility is a great inconvenience, but it takes a little thinking and planning to do it right from the beginning. Having a great resource at hand makes the process a cake walk. Not only are the processes and guides helpful for creating sites that are accessible for those that are disabled these steps outlined also make the information in the site future ready. Sites that are accessible are much easier to use with a handheld PDA device or from even a cell phone browser. Accessibility for everybody in more situations improves with structuring the information properly, which is all making Web enabled information really requires to get it ready to be consumed. Is your information ready to be consumed by everybody?

I will be brief.
I only have 4.5 years experience as a programmer, of those only 1.5 were spent on C++ and I have no experience whatsoever in game programming;
the new stuff I learned from this book could be printed on a letter page or less.

This is just generic, and rather primitive, data structures and algorithms book, that applies them to making a small game instead of usual example search/whatever programs. Sometimes it feels like a data structure was used merely as an example that fit in that place in grand example-place matching, and not as the most useful or efficient one...

One could probably turn it into "Data Structures for Database Server Programmers", "Data Structures For Embedded Device Programmers", or "Data Structures For Solving World Hunger" with copy/paste and minor grammatic corrections ;)

Ron Penton, Data Structures for Game Programmers (Premier, 2003)

I don't normally get all googly-moogly over programming books. In fact, I just took a quick look back at my reading log since 1999, and a select few have gotten four stars, but nothing above that. But I picked up Penton's nine-hundred-page tome on Thursday and I finished it on Sunday. Nine hundred pages in four days. I've only been keeping track of page counts over the past year, but the books I've read that have come closest, page-wise, have been Robin Hobb's lovely novels, three of which I read earlier this year hovered around eight hundred pages. I read the shortest of them in eight days. And I love Robin Hobb.

Data Structures for Game Programmers is a wonderful book in no small part because Ron Penton was still an undergrad while writing it. Which is, of course, also the book's main problem, because someone like me who last saw ivy-covered halls well over a decade ago is likely to be sick with envy that some little greenhorn has already found his way into the world of professional computer-book publishing (and by "professional" here I don't mean "published by recognizable press," I mean "the kid's already published three books in three years, and they're ALL monstrous tomes, when does he have time to program?"). But let's face it, you expect something different when you read a book by a young writer, be it the hot new novelist or the new kid on the programming block. And Penton delivers it; Data Structures for Game Programmers is, if you're a programmer, the most readable computer book you've ever come across. Penton seems to have a healthy disrespect for textbooks, which he alludes to a few times in the course of the book, and it shows in his writing; he wants to write something that will teach you more than a textbook by being more accessible. And in this goal, he succeeds. Brilliantly. I learned more about C templates from reading this book than I have in any other three books devoted to nothing but templates, and here they're just referred to a few times in passing. How is this possible? Because Penton explains things in language far easier to understand than that of most programming books; simply put, he hasn't yet been so overwhelmed by jargon that he can't see when he's written something the layperson might not be able to understand, which is a common ailment among programming authors.

Also, there's been some minor grumbling from some critics about the book's insistence on reinventing the wheel. Of course it does. That's how you learn to program-- you bang away at it, doing something that's already been done, until you figure out why it's done that way. There may be five or six people on the planet who can read it in a textbook and immediately figure out why it's the case (and, one assumes, they are the same people as those critics), but the rest of us are much happier seeing it this way.

If any computer book publishers happen to be reading this, you, especially, should be reading Data Structures for Game Programmers. See what it's like. Try to get the rest of your authors to emulate it. You'll have much happier customers that way.

This is one of the handful of books I've read since getting a library card again (a total, in fact, of four since 2003) that, after returning it to the library, went back on my Amazon wish list, because I want a copy for myself.

This book actually teaches Data Structures!! Data Structures are the essence of programming. Ron manages to present all the basic Data Structures and the most famous algorithms in a clean and gentle way.

Many many thanks to Ron Penton for his help! Ron Penton really knows how to write a book! His way of writing shows that he knows the subject perfectly and presents it in a way that anyone understands what he is talking about. No matter how hard the topic is! By the way, Ron Penton has a great sense of humour!

If I could I would give one more star for the GREAT job he did with the CD. Although I intended initially to learn Data Structures, I also learned SDL. Perfect combination for someone who wants to start writing games!

A pre-requisite for any book on Data Stuctures is that the person should be comfortable with the syntax and semantics of programming in a high level language such as C++ or Java. Hence this book assumes that you are comfortable with C++ and OOP. There is no such thing as Data Structures for Absolute Beginners. So discard the review with 2 stars. Overall this is an excellent and interesting book on Data Structures.

Bottom line is this, you can find the information presented in DS4GP in any other good book on data structures but what sets this book apart is the presentation, organization, practical content and the writing style of the author.

It's definetly not for beginners or for a person looking for a very detailed book on data structures that covers AVL trees and red-black trees. But for the other 99% its a must buy.

i wanted a book to brush up on some data structures since i've been out of programming for a few months. plus, most of my learning of these has been self taught and from the internet where there is limited (good) writings on more complex subjects such as programming. so i wanted to have a fresh perspective. not only does the book contain very useful details in many areas and to the point information (gets to the first data structure by page 14!) but the author somehow makes this stuff fun to read.
the author doesn't go hugely in to depth in some areas but that's pretty much what i wanted since i am already familiar with how to use most of the stuff. very good book and i'd highly recommend it. hope this author continues with more books!