Computer Science Books

Although the title suggest otherwise, Advanced Rails is really required reading for anyone using Rails - beginners and gurus alike. The information provided is excellent, with essential tips and sound advice. In particular, the chapters on routing, security, internationalization and database issues are well worth the purchase price. Like Obie's The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series), this book should live on your desk in your workspace. What's missing? Well, it would have been nice to see information on Git considering the effort put into covering source control systems. It's also surprising that there is not more on testing techniques and issues. But overall, this book is fantastic, and chocked full of juicy info you won't find in any of the other Rails books currently available.

This book is almost worth it just for the first chapter's dive into Ruby metaprogramming, but the rest of the book doesn't disappoint. Ediger delivers useful advice regarding available methods, alternatives and considerations that all serious web developers should take into account.

This book should be non-optional for all Rails development teams, as it has some of the most sane and sober treatment of relevant topics I've ever read in a single book. From security to databases to deployment, this book gives the reader a solid foundation in nearly all of the major disciplines involved in building web applications.

As Ruby on Rails rocketed into the development community's hearts and minds a few years ago, the number of books on the subject climbed with it. However, a lot of these books were introductory in nature (Agile Web Development with Rails, Beginning Rails, Build Your Own Rails Applications, etc.). What's a budding Rails-head to do once they've gotten the basics down? Books like Advanced Rails -- which was released late last year by O'Reilly - aim to fill this void.

Author Brad Ediger has been kicking around the Rails scene since the pre-1.0 days. Though not a Rails "luminary" necessarily, he certainly qualifies as an advanced user. He is CTO for a Real Estate tech company called Tasman Labs and runs a web design (and Rails consulting) firm called Madriska Media Group. He seems like a sharp cookie and a decent writer.

Advanced Rails covers quite a bit of territory, going for breadth rather than depth most of the time. Each chapter covers a classic, pivotal development concern... well, at least most of them do. The chapters are as follows:

1. Foundational Techniques
2. ActiveSupport and RailTies
3. Rails Plugins
4. Database
5. Security
6. Performance
7. REST, Resources, and Web Services
8. i18n and L10n
9. Incorporating and Extending Rails
10. Large Projects

By "Foundational Techniques", Ediger is referring to Ruby and Rails techniques, principals and patterns like Metaprogramming, Don't Repeat Yourself, and Functional Programming techniques. The chapter also goes into a fair amount detail about the Object/Class/Module relationship. A bunch of this may not be particularly new material for most Rails users who've been at it for at least a few months. However, it's still nice to have all this stuff in one forty page chapter... good to have handy to refer to. Also, there are some nice nuggets in there that could save you some head-scratching. For example, what's the difference between Kernel#lambda and Proc.new? The answer is that, if you *return* a value from the block passed to Proc.new, the calling method is exited as well, abandoning any code that you might have after it.

If the first chapter feels like it's leaning towards a reference work, the second chapter -- which digs into all the goodies offered by ActiveSupport and RailTies -- pretty much falls over right into reference-land, complete with a method-by-method listing of features added to standard library classes. This may seem even more like just putting api docs available online into print, but Eidger defintely adds a bit more explanation. And, I haven't really seen anyone give a rundown of just what the heck RailTies does. That's the library that provides the glue to pull together the more famous Rails libraries to make it all work together as rails: generators, initializers, etc. There is definitely some interesting and not necessarily readily available information here.

Chapter three covers Rails Plugins, and is quick and painless. It explains the common files and directory structure in a plugin and talks about how Rails loads them. It also talks about using Piston instead of svn:externals to manage plugins and show some example plugins.

The following three chapters cover more of the classic eternal problems faced in running high-traffic sites: databases, security, and performance. These really make the most sense in an "advanced" book; they are the "brass tacks" that everyone must get down too if they go beyond the "toy app" stage. Ediger talks about the strengths and weaknesses of the various popular database systems. He also goes into the benefits of using the filesystem to store data, which is largely because web servers can make use of fast system calls to dump files straight into the TCP socket. He also covers some advanced db features like composite keys, stored procedures and clustering.

The security chapter isn't all that long and a lot of the info it covers can be found in beginner Rails books... SQL injection, cross-site scripting etc. However, the book would be remiss to not include this material and it is presented in a concise and complete manner. This would be good to refer back to now and then to make sure you haven't slipped in your security awareness. Ediger also doesn't hesitate to make specific recommendations, like "whitelist rather than blacklist".

He also jumps right into recommendations while writing about performance optimization in the next chapter: "Algorithmic improvements always beat code tweaks", "As a general rule, maintainability beats performance", "Only optimize what matters", "Measure twice, cut once". He then goes on to cover specific tools and techniques for uncovering your bottlenecks, from a quick explanation of basic statistics to using httpperf, benchmark, and Rails Analyzer Tools, improving database calls (using indexes and "include" on finders), and the various caching solutions. There is plenty of good information in this chapter; also a good bit of reference next time you need to track down a logjam.

Chapter seven covers RESTful Rails, from the very basic theory as outlined by Roy Fielding to exactly how Rails has chosen to use these concepts, and is the longest chapter in the book. The amount of coverage REST gets seems questionable since Rails has been very heavily into the RESTful approach for over a year and embraced the philosophy so thoroughly that it's hard to imagine anyone using Rails today without being exposed to the concepts.

On the other hand, one can still wire up verb-oriented actions in routes.rb and might be able to get away with ignoring all the RESTful goodness. So maybe there are some out there that can benefit from this chapter. Plus, having such thorough, theory-to-practice coverage allows the chapter to stand on its own as a solid reference to the whys and hows of RESTful Rails. It also has one of the better sections on RESTful routing that I have seen (routes being one of the more mysterious and sometimes frustrating pieces of Rails).

Rails has gotten plenty of grief for its lack of official support for Internationalization and Localization, but in Chapter eight, Ediger lays out the options, such as gettext, Gibberish, and Globalize. He is most enthusiastic about this last library and it does appear to be quite powerful, including support for translating strings, translating model fields, localizing numbers and dates, and even recording what needs to be translated by saving them in the database. Creating multi-lingual websites is a hard problem in any web-development framework and most other frameworks have plenty of head start. However, Ruby and Rails certainly isn't without options and it will only get better.

The next to last chapter of Advanced Rails runs through a number of alternatives to the standard components of the Rails framework. On the database end, it covers DataMapper, Ambition, and Og, giving this last one the most attention. For alternatives to ERB templates, Ediger talks about Markaby, Liquid and Haml, all in a very brisk fashion. He also talks about using traditional Rails components -- like ActiveRecord and ActionMailer -- outside of Rails applications. The chapter closes with a discussion of how to contribute to Rails (hint: submit a patch... don't just bitch!).

The last chapter is called "Large Projects" and covers some useful information about working on a Rails project with a team, beginning with version control (though anyone who is writing code that covers more than a single file and *not* using version control is just plain insane). This starts with a quick overview of Subversion, however this feels like it is really a set up for making a case for "decentralized version control". Ediger does a good job of explaining these concepts, using Mercurial for his examples. This seems a bit unfortunate, since many people on the Rails core team have embraced Git and it is looking like Rails will eventually move its repository to Git. However, Mercurial has a reputation of being more user-friendly, so that may have influenced his decision. And it's useful information regardless.

Chapter ten continues on to discuss avoiding migration numbering collisions, issue tracking, keeping Rails and required gems within a project, web servers, load balancers, production architecture and deployment tools like Capistrano. This is all covered in a fairly quick fashion so don't expect a lot of depth.

That last sentiment came up often while reading this book. It often felt like Ediger was trying to get every possible Rails-related topic into the book that he could, but didn't want to come out with some 1000-page behemoth. Plenty of the topics mentioned don't have much more coverage than you could get with a quick "googling". However, there is something to be said for being exposed to a lot of tools, projects and concepts in one go, even if the exposure is sometimes superficial. I definitely found reading this book worthwhile and will keep it around to refer back to now and then. I don't know if I'd go so far as to label it required reading, but then again books on web frameworks rarely are.

With 'Advanced Rails' the O'Reilly family of Rails books is looking to add a Rails book that talks about some of the extra stuff you can do with this great technology. At 300+ pages long this isn't a book with 'Learning' in the title, rather it assumes that you have some fundamental Rails knowledge and are looking to improve your skill set.

Chapter Overview:

01. Metaprogramming
02. ActiveSupport and RailTies
03. Rails Plugins
04. Database Stuff
05. Security
06. Performance
07. REST and Web Services
08. i18n and L10n
09. Incorporating and Extending Rails
10. Large Projects (Source Control and the like)

Rails is a powerful framework but it isn't an easy one to always understand and get working. If you are looking to use Rails in your web app and want to get better at understanding the ins and out of it, this book can really help fill in the blanks.

If you want to become a better Rails developer/admin pick up this book and get better immediately.

**** RECOMMENDED

For a programmer who doesn't work in an office full of rails gurus this book answers a ton of questions I would like to ask, but have no one I could ask.

Half of the book is bits of rails wisdom mixed in with recipe like code snippets.


A very timely book for me. I especially like the further reading sections at the end of each chapter. The book is new enough that all the links are current, and I have learned a few nuggets of knowledge from these as well.

The section on globalize was immediately useful on one of my current projects and returned my investment in the book many times over.

No wonder amazon only has one left today.

Excellent reference.

However, I didn't like the idea of using MIX assembly language. Book would have been more readable if examples were in plain english pseudocode (even better would be 'C'). At least second edition should have taken care of this aspect.

I also suggest books from Cormen & Sedgewick on same subject.

This book is bible of computer programming.

It contains most detailed explanation of searching and sorting methods I ever found in a book. Contains all internal sorting and searching and external sorting and searching algorithms.

The only drawback of the book is that all algorithms are written in MIX - some kind of assembler, and because of that they are hard to read.

I just bought the book I needed out of the set. I needed to build a database that did not use any commercial package (this gives full access and no royalties). This book saved my bacon. I almost did not buy it when all I saw in it was math. But I was desperate and it paid off. Turns out you could not explain it any other way. This book goes way beyond binary, and bubble sorts. I use it primarily for balanced trees. I may try some thing more exotic later. I can not tell you about the other volumes but this one will defiantly pay for it's self.

As a previous review said: "This is a book about the science of algorithms. Algorithms are either right or wrong."

Knuth uses the MIX programming language throughout, and if you hope to learn programming by reading this book, you should look elsewhere. Maybe someday we'll have 2^32 registers, but we will still be trying to make our programs work faster on this, as yet, uninvented architecture. The fundamental concepts will remain the same, and people will still be reading Knuth to understand them.

A good reference for serious computer science students. Others should look at O'Reilly. They have some really good books on visual basic.

This is an encyclopedia of what is known about sorting and searching and what computers can do. It is nothing else.

Graduate students in computer science (especially those in theory, algorithms and the occasional compiler fan) will benefit. Hackers and script kiddies will probably not benefit from this book.

First the basics: it's great, it provides wide-ranging and deep analysis, it shows many views and variants of each problem, and its bibliography is helpful, though not exhaustive. The historical notes, including sorts for drum storage, may seem quaint to modern readers. And sorting has been done, right? You just run a shell program or call a function, and tap into the best technology. Does it need to be done again?

Yes, if you're on the edge of technology, it does need to be done again, and again, and again. That's because technology keeps expanding, and violating old assumptions as it does. Memories got big enough that the million-record sort is now a yawn, where it used to be a journal article. But, at the same time, processor clocks got 100-1000x ahead of memory speeds. All of a sudden, those drum-based algorithms are worth another look, because yesteryear's drum:memory ratios are a lot like today's memory:cache ratios of size and speed - and who doesn't want a 100x speedup? Parallel processing is moving from the supercomputing elite into laptops, causing more tremors in the ground rules. GPU and reconfigurable computing also open whole new realms of pitfalls as well as opportunities.

Knuth points out that the analyses have beauty in themselves, for people with eyes to see it. His analyses also demonstrate techniques applicable way beyond the immediate discussion, too. Today, though, I have nasty problems in technologies that no one really knows how to handle very well. I have to go back and check all the assumptions again, since so many of them changed. If that's the kind of problem you have, too, then this is the place to start.

//wiredweird

Before bying this book, i think i loaned it about 40 or 50 times at my local library. Benvies way of passing his knowledge to his readers is exceptional. This book is a 1'st class learning book, for he who wants to know more about nature photography in general, it commes all the way around, there isn't much that isn't discribet in the book. Ofcourse it dosn't goes very deeb on all subjects, but it is a very good overall book for, both the beginner and he who has come further. If i only could own one book, this would probably be the one.
Kim T, Denmark

As an amateur nature photographer intent on getting to the next level, I have purchased quite a few books on nature and wildlife photography. Many of them are not specific enough and provide too much general photography information. This book is different. To start with, the images are outstanding. This guy is an expert at DOING. That's the kind of teacher I want! Most importantly, the book is full of HOW and WHY. This book is chock-full of tips and information on what works, what doesn't, and how to do it. I found this book more helpful than John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide. Although I liked that book, I found myself a little disappointed when I finished it. It didn't have as much "meat" as this book does. I highly recommend it. And the price is a steal!

It has been quite long since John Shaw's books that I come across another gem which I would like to have on my bookshelves.
This one is well written and organized. It is to the point (very different from Galen Rowell's) and it's really helpful for those who have little time and are impatient.
The author shares techniques, viewpoint and practical ideas --- very much like John Shaw's books.

Niall Benvie's THE ART OF NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY is both informative and inspiring. Benvie believes that photography is an art, but nature photographers are artists in a different way because they are more preoccupied with capturing the subject at hand rather than expressing the self. The book includes excellent tips on preventing mistakes before the shutter is released-not an easy feat for a person involved in nurture photography. He offers basic advice about composition, lighting, flash, and the like as well as tips for active subjects (animals, weather, etc. have no respect for photographers as anyone who has attempted to photograph outdoors can attest to). While the book is a godsend for film photographers, he also includes detailed information for digital users which makes the book useful to photographers using both formats. Since people purchasing the book from Amazon will not have the opportunity to see all the sumptuous photographs in this book, believe me when I tell you that the photographs alone are awe inspiring and could lead a reader from the couch to the field in no time.

Perhaps what makes Benvie's book unique is his support for the amateur, which is most likely the customer who will purchase the book. While Benvie believes that professional photographers make significant contributions to nature photography, Benvie also believes that amateur contributions add a great deal as well since amateurs are less interesting in pleasing clients and more interested in presenting a vision of the natural world to others. Certainly Bevie's book will help amateur photographers who hope to do just that-present nature in all it's glory through photography.

Many books on outdoor/nature photography are simply a showcase for the author's photos and a bragging exercise in the gear he/she uses.

Benvie takes a more open approach -- almost giving the store away. Skipping over the most basic elements of photography, he provides practical advice on technique and creative vision. He isn't shy about using digital processes to enhance images -- not adding or subtracting visual elements, but manipulating the image so that it represents what the photographer saw, overcoming the limitations of film and photo paper.

Highly recommended. And his photographs are exceptional. Kudos to his publisher for the high quality printing.

This is a great book about verification systems that use biometrics. It covers all the bases and provides insights that most of us would never think about when selecting a biometric technology. This book includes easy to understand explanations of how the technologies work and it also provides sections on deployment at an enterprise level. I don't think there is any form of verification here that the author didn't cover. Apparently there is bioverification technology in the works that will verify you based on your scent. I think this is less a "verification" technology and more so one of "surveillance". Perhaps a bit sci-fi, but it's good for a book to elucidate where technology is heading. So, the book is good in that respect as well as explaining clearly where things are today. My company is in the process of building a secured computer forensics laboratory area in our building that will control and monitor access, this book provided some very useful insights and raised my level of awareness with respect to intrusiveness or non-intrusiveness and the accuracy and speed of the different technologies. In my humble opinion, iris identification seems to be the best as a secured access control. But that is just my opinion and you'll have to read the book to formulate your own!

I like this book. The author did a great job covering the complete scope of biometric verification systems. This is a one-stop-shopping treatment of the state-of-the-art systems and gives the reader a perspective of not only the technologies, but the susceptibilities and emerging security risks and tradeoffs. Reading this book made me realize that not only will IT security analysts and engineers have interest, but that criminologists will find this extremely insightful and helpful. Written in concise, easy to read format. Highly recommended.

Security managers will welcome John Vacca's comprehensive, practical volume on biometrics, i.e., automated methods for identifying someone or verifying someone's identity, based on the person's physiological or behavioral characteristics. Biometric technologies offer reliable, accurate, and practical methods for the automated verification of identity. The applications include health and social service programs, passport programs, driver licenses, electronic banking, investing, retail sales, and law enforcement. As such, this book is sorely needed.

The use of biometrics to secure valuable information is a necessity. This book provides insight into the implementation of this incredible methodology.

Biometric Technologies and Verification Systems by John Vacca provides a great source of information on the latest physical recognition systems, committees and emerging standards. The book is rich in easy to comprehend discussions of the various recognition technologies and how they work. The book also describes deployment and implementation strategies along with social, privacy, economic and legal considerations. If you want to know about Biometric Technologies, this is the book to read.

At first glance you may easily dismiss this book; featuring a rather dull cover; size that is dwarfed by the more "popular" C books - do not be fooled! This is an excellent text for learning about the C language.

Admittedly, if you're new to programming in general, then this book may seem a little difficult. For instance the first chapter launches straight into a discussion of C idioms: keywords, variables, operators etc. If these are foreign to you I would recommend you also buy an introductory programming text, then return to this book when you understand these concepts.

These assumptions aside, Kalicharan clearly and concisely discusses control structures and arrays, functions, character handling, data types, input/output and more. The concepts of each chapter are thoroughly explained and incorporated into numerous programming examples.

Indeed this is one of the strongest points of the book. In particular I liked the way Kalicharan introduces the three programming constructs; conditional execution, looping and iteration first, BEFORE discussing for example, the printf statement like most other C books do - which can be highly confusing to the novice C programmer. (Kalicharan leaves it until chapter 9). Thus a strong grounding in the fundamentals of programming is emphasised from the very start and is a consistent theme revisted throughout the book.

Unlike other C books, Kalicharan gives a brilliant discussion of pointers. What is dismissed as "too hard" in other texts is covered with ease and again, numerous examples to illustrate. For this chapter alone, one should buy this book.

Following the chapter on pointers is a good introduction to "advanced" data structures, linked lists and binary trees. These are left out of most other C books, bar those dealing with data structures specifically (university texts etc) but it is here that the power of the C language becomes apparent.

Topping off the book is a chapter in file handling. Text and binary files are discussed.

The range of topics, clarity of expression and *working* examples (I compiled every program in the book without error...) makes this book an essential addition to any C programmer's library. I hope another book from this talented author is on the way soon! (How about Java or C++?)

A friend recommended this book after I complained of the difficulty of learning C, having tried more popularly recommended books. I'm glad she did, for this book made C easy and fun to learn. An excellent book, strongly recommended.

I had Noel Kalicharan (UWI) for my Year 1 programming. Used many of the books he wrote and can vouch for the calrity and ease of use of his books, overall high quality. Even better when combined with his lectures.

A fantastic book! Its simple, clear and systematic presentation and explaination of concepts along with the abundance of examples make learning to program in C an easy task. And all the scary stuff you may have heard about pointers in C become mere rumours after reading the relevant chapters! An excellent book for learning and teaching.

This book is one of the best books explaining ANSI C. It starts from the newbie level and delivers the knowledge needed for any good C programmer to survive.

The writing style is very nice, the author has done some fine efforts in keeping his threads of thought clear and easy to follow.

For people who already know C, this is also good as a quick reference and is something concise to quickly refer to, in small issues. They could also just use it to quickly refresh their knowledge of C every once in a while.

It doesn't cover any advanced topics, but it does what it promises to do, so there's nothing serious to put this book down.

This book could have helped me greatly when I was just starting to learn C programming, but it didn't... Just because I only bought it too late, at the end of my C programming days!

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid

It seems that everybody likes this book so I won't waste your time writing another long review.
This book is by far the best Cisco book I've read, and I've read a few. It's full of detail and a very very good starting point for QOS.

The team of Cavanaugh & Odom have hit a homerun here. This book has everything; Sex, Politics, Intrigue, Suspense, Greed, Betrayal and Redemption. Well, okay, it has none of that. But, it does have everything that the Experienced Networker could want to know about Quality of Service, and it's role and implementation within today's rapidly converging internetnetworks. The authors have proven to be knowledgeable, insightful and easy to understand. And, while this book may seem "overly long" to many, it strives to give fairly complete coverage of this important matter regarding today's internetworking environment. This is a very important point when your seeking to spend some "quality time" with a Cisco certification exam (not mention some quality cash on an exam).

Cavanaugh & Odom have moved beyond the normal course of just re-editing Cisco TAC web content for bound, portable consumption that is the hallmark of many of Cisco Press' previous publications. While the layout will be familiar to previous C.P. readers, the actual format and content presentation is fresh. Each chapter's order and flow strongly adheres to the tried and true, but Illustrations, Diagrams, Scenarios and Examples are not just simply reprinted fare from Cisco's website. Each chapter's content is easily on par with all other Authors/Publishers that are typically quoted as being "easier to digest and understand". Even the book's index is surprisingly extensive and comprehensive, and misses very few important items. When the working examples actually are repackaged from Cisco's web content, the explanations and follow-throughs are incisive and accurate. Knowledge and understanding can be gained from every page without overkill or excessive repetition.

Any exam candidate seeking an in-depth review and preparation for the Cisco QOS or DQOS exams will find this book a treasure trove chocked full of the expected scenerios, examples and practice questions. All networking professionals should strongly consider stocking this in their personal reference collection for handy lookups to otherwise difficult QOS problems. However, I caution one, if you're seeking a quick and simple introduction to QOS, or looking to "break into" or "get their foot in the door" of internetworking, you should go elsewhere. This is definitely not the kiddy end of the pool. But then again, it certainly won't require the deep sea background of a CCIE either. This manual may start with the foundations of QOS but it very quickly ramps up to a professional-level internetworking reference. This is a book that goes beyond the classroom and heads straight for the real world.

As my industry and workplace move further towards voice and data "Convergence", this book has quickly become my working cookbook for smoothing out tough QOS implementation questions. And, It shall remain an important part of my desktop reference library for a long time to come.

I recently read the book titled "Cisco DQOS Exam Certification Guide" by Wendell Odom, ISBN: 1587200589.
This book takes the user through the topic of Deploying Quality of Service in Cisco networks to a new level of knowledge. QoS has become one of the hottest if not the hottest topic in enterprise and medium size business networks. The ability to control traffic based on its priority and the ability to prioritize the traffic based on any number of criteria has become a required skill in today's marketplace. To Quote from Cisco's Web Site "Quality of Service (QoS) is an essential element to building a flexible, accessible, and efficient network. Its role in multiple technologies underlines the need for most networking professionals to master the features that implement QoS" The advent of Cisco's AVVID network and the proliferation of IP telephone services and applications along with the advancement in Video Conferencing and Group Collaboration software have created an unprecedented need for Quality of Service implementation. This book is filled with examples and thorough explanations of many complicated and essential configurations. The authors display a thorough knowledge of this sometimes difficult and always challenging subject. There are numerous charts and graphs to help aid in understanding the concepts presented. This book takes the reader step by step through configuration of all of the commonly use techniques and gives the user a good understanding of not only how to enter the commands but also what the commands do and how they interact. The topics covered in this book will give a CCIE R/S candidate essentially all of the skills needed for the QoS portions of the CCIE Practical Exam. The book covers all of the currently available traffic prioritization and queuing methods in a high degree of detail. It is, I think, geared towards an audience of knowledgeable professionals who already have some knowledge in the area of QoS. The book provides a reader with the tools necessary to implement virtually any needed QoS features in his/her own network. I would rate it as a MUST HAVE reference for anyone who might be required to implement QoS in a Cisco environment. This is a winner for Cisco Press. It proves once again the commitment to excellence of Cisco Press and delivers a book that is very useful to anyone involved in the implementation of the topic it covers. The authors have taken a difficult subject and broken it down into manageable chunks. At the end of the day the user will have a good understanding of the broad topic of QoS and have the tools necessary to implement it in a Cisco environment.

CiscoPress's "Cisco DQOS Exam Certification Guide" by Odom is a best-of-class book. The book is not for the meek - weighing in at over 850 pages, the book is a sizable investment of time and energy to properly appreciate. While the book was mainly written to be utilized for a few QoS exams, I'd expect to see this book on the bookshelf of many CCIEs or CCIE wannabes (including myself).

The beauty of this book is that it covers QoS in a depth that is not equaled elsewhere. For example, the book's first chapter, simply an overview of QoS, is almost 80 pages (some overview)! The first chapter succinctly describes the differences and nuances of the enemies of QoS - delay, jitter, bandwidth and packet loss. The second and third chapters do a great justice at trying to explain the dizzying array of tools available to adjust QoS - the different classes of tools and the differences between classification and marking. And so forth..., each chapter does a great job at explaining the mysteries of QoS.

Of course, with any book of such complexity, typos must be expected. Two typos that I noticed are:
-on page 333, I believe the correct Bc should be 93.75ms.
-on page 456, FRED can match on layer 4, not layer 3 protocols

If I had a `Top 10' for books that I feel would be necessary for the CCIE, I would place this book on the list. I have not been able to find the same explanations for QoS on Cisco's website or in other networking books.

I give this book 5 pings out of 5:
!!!!!

Let me just start off by saying that I wish I had Wendell Odom's Cisco DQoS Exam Certification Guide a few months ago when I was studying for this exam. I had looked at a number of other Cisco Press and non-Cisco Press books and could not find one that adequately covered the topics in the exam. This one covers all of them and more.

The book starts off by listing all the exam topics that will be covered in both DQoS 9E0-601 and QOS 642-641 exams and then explains how to interpret those often nebulous expectations. Do not get me wrong. It does not give you a blow by blow of what is on the exam but rather informs you of how test makers come up with course objectives and a method to use in studying. I found this very helpful. In fact, I wish someone had taught me that as a freshman in college.

If you are familiar with Cisco Press Exam Certification Guides you will not be disappointed in the familiar format. Each chapter starts with an overview and "Do I Know This Already?" quiz. I always find these helpful in determining my level of knowledge on a particular subject and those areas I need to study.

It then proceeds to the meat of each chapter. They are filled with many useful diagrams and tables that do a wonderful job complimenting and expanding Odom's covering of each chapter. There are plenty of switch and router configurations that also provide help in giving real life examples of how QoS is implemented.

Each chapter then wraps up with an excellent Foundation Summary and Q&A section. Answers to the questions are found in an appendix in the back of the book.

In general I found all of the topics covered as well, if not better, than the DQoS class I took to study and pass the test. In particular I found the first two chapters great in providing a great overview of QoS, its architectures and tools. I have used Odom's example of bank teller lines, with a number of customers, to provide a way of explaining the difficult topic of QoS and it quickly resonates with them.

I also found the last two chapters on QoS Design and LAN QoS very useful. The LAN QoS chapter provides information on the 3550s and latest Modules/Supervisor Engine cards for the Catalyst 6500 and 4500/4000. I have already used this information as a resource on a project. The design chapter has also been useful in helping me "flesh out" customer's goals and providing design recommendations based upon those goals.

In conclusion, I always feel that for a study guide to truly be useful, it must have some use after the exam. Wendell Odom's Cisco DQoS Exam Certification Guide certainly does that well. It will not only be sufficient in providing you the information that you need to study for and pass the test, but it will certainly be useful as a quick reference guide on many of the topics covered. I plan on having it with me from the project planning stages to the optimizing and troubleshooting stages (although if your good and follow his teachings on the former you probably will not have much of the latter). Thanks Wendell for another well written and useful book.

The Good
Its is an awesome preview of the world of Software Engineerin/Information technology. The huge difference between academia (with professors having little experience in "real world" non-academic activities) and the real-world jobs (which has long lost its connection with academia) would be less surprising, less frustrating and a way easier transition if every entry-level candiate read this book in its entirety. I highly recommend this book.

The Bad
The author does not write this book as if she is writing a textbook or journal article. She write it as if she is having a conversation. This is not neccessarily bad (sometimes a relief if you are tired of textbooks.) But the problem with this approach is that you do not get references for citations, ideas are not always rigorously developed. You should not read it to learn how to write professional software engineering documents.

The Ugly.
Thats all folks. There is not going to be another edition. The book did not sell well enough to justify one. Software Engineers generally do not read "self-help" books when there are problems. Rather they buy software books like those from Jesse Libery or Dietel and Dietel. Just look at the disparity between self-help software books to programming books. This trend does not encourage publishers to make more self-help books this Ruhl's book. This is sad because technical skills alone will not enable you survive in software engineering/development and many leave this up to chance for newbies to catch on.

I enjoy mentoring people who are interested in moving into the high tech world but don't know where to start. I used to spend hours explaining how the IT world is divided up, what different technology choices there are and how they relate to jobs and training alternatives. Now I suggest people exploring information technology careers read Janet Ruhl's book; she's much better than I at explaining how everything works. I like this book so much, I've bought it as a gift for three prospective computer professionals.

But the Computer Job Survival Guide is equally good for those of us who are already computing professionals but want to continue to move on and up. Janet reviews some common-sense job skills, such as salary negotiation, but also hits on new hot topics, like stock options, working for start-ups, and when, how and whether or not to move from technical work into management.

The main thing that is different about this book is it talks about things about computer jobs that you normally don't see in print that often.

One main idea is your long term computer job longevity can greatly be impacted on what you do in your first computer job. If you are 1 of 100 people programming and you only get to see a small part of a project, your skills don't increase that much. If you are 1 of 100 people but split in 10 projects and you work on a project from start to finish, you will learn a lot of new skills in a short period of time that are useful to other companies.

You need to constantly increase your skills that are in demand outside of your company because you may be in trouble if you are fired or laid off.

Another idea in the same vein is start off as a maintenance programmer instead of as a developer. You may learn more of the system and also add many new skills compared to a developer that only sees a small part of a project.

The main thrust of this book plus her other books is you need to take control of your career. I worked 15 years at 1 company without much of a career plan and I had a hard time finding a job when I got laid off. If I had these books 5 years or 10 years or even 15 years into my career, I would have known what to do to stay in a technical career. The 5 years that I have been contract programming along with Janet's books, I now realize how I want to continue the rest of my career. Janet's books explains why and how I will achieve these goals.

This book should be on every computer professionals bookshelf.

Though geared for the american labour market, most of the content is applicable to professionals in any country.

The topics dealt with involve every possible facet of a career in IT: breaking into the field, the importance of a first job (IT apprencticeship), looking for work (how to write resumes, handle interviews), the merits of contracting, going into IT management, job hopping, etc.

Great reference book for anyone in the field, or considering working in IT.

Like all Janet's books, it is easy to read and covers all relevant and important issues without insulting one's intelligence. Highly recommend along with all other books by the author.

A clearly written book, which employs a simple language. Another beauty of the book is that all loose ends are tied up. As sentences unfold one will realize why a particular phrase was used earlier and so on. That makes a big difference for an engineering text book.

It is the best book that I know for fundamentals. Hence, it will be useful for years to come.

Must have for all embedded systems people.

Helped me in my undergrad (older version). Helped me when I gave subject GRE recently. Covered Pipelining superscalar, out-of-order execution processors, caching and secondary storage, combinational and sequential ckt review etc real well. No computer architecture book covered them all so clearly, and in one book.

This was the assigned text for my junior year computer engineering course on computer organization. I loved it. The explanations are clear, progress logically, and are clearly presented. I find myself picking it up from time to time, both to read the more advanced chapters out of personal interest and to look up details needed in more advanced coursework.

After reading this book do not believe you'll know everyting about computing , but you'll know more than others do.

I had a chance to recommend this to a colleague just last week. It is easily twice the price of the "competing" books on the market, but you get what you pay for. With this book plus (perhaps) a hands-on course in the microprocessor laboratory--interfacing various logic families to output devices, e.g., or whipping up a robot of limited capabilities--the student gains the ultimate understanding of what makes computer systems "tick," from the loftiest levels of software, through the details of instruction set implementation (microprogrammed control, prefetching, cycle-stealing DMA transfers) and even the detailed digital logic circuits that underlie the CPU.

I dare say the student who aces this course is all but prepared to build a simplistic CPU on his own--"simplistic" because, though the concepts can be understood quite completely, it's an intricate challenge. Notably, the book has kept pace with the times: while the PDP-11 instruction set is didactically wonderful--clear and easy and even sporting reasonable opcode mnemonics--you don't see lots of PDP or LSI (or, for that matter, VAX) minis floating around nowadays. So, HV&Z moved on to the 68000, the Power PC, perhaps even the Pentium in the latest (of five or six) editions. (Good move, gentlemen: you've actually done your homework rather than just changing "happy" to "glad" and reprinting with a new version number!)

I used this book as a junior, but (a) I went to Cooper Union, which operates at an extremely high intellectual level [let's put it this way: I took a number of graduate-level computer science electives--compilers, OS, etc.--taught by Bell Labs MTSs as a junior and senior; and some "doctoral" courses that I took at Case were--honest Injun--watered-down versions of similar courses I had taken at Cooper], and (b) I graduated more than twenty years ago, and requirements always creep downward: a few credits fewer, a few tangential courses eliminated, perhaps one fewer humanities elective necessary to matriculate, etc. By 2006 standards, I would reluctantly have to reclassify HV&Z as a postgraduate text.

(A little puzzle for the reader: we had to build--from NAND gates--a microcomputer featuring two three-bit registers, and my squad was the only one that implemented an "exchange registers" function that required only one cycle and used no auxiliary storage registers. How did we do it? Tick ... tick ... tick ... time's up! The circuitry compared corresponding bits from both registers. If they matched, it did nothing; if they differed, it flipped both! So, there was no literal "exchange" operation: rather, each was simultaneously reset to the value of the other.)

This is an accurate, first-order of detail on how computers work. The CD is a nice bonus. I would recommend this text for high schoolers and above.

Finally, a fun to read treatise for the those of us on the outside looking in on the digital electronic mysteries. Clive mischievouly pulls back the curtain of the Wizard of Calculating OZ and shows us what is going on inside our computer. And, best of all, for us electronic gadgeteer wanabees, there is a path provided for building our very own calculator!

I am a hobbyist and have found this book invaluable. I have a Computer Science background and so have no problems with the concepts. Even if you do have problems with the concepts, the Labs are a walk-through
and one can then kind of 'get it'.

Very satisfied and having fun!

I'm a university Professor in France and one of my courses is on 8-bit microcontroller programming.

In the past I used to use the 68HC05 as an example but for students who are not familiar with reading datasheets the investment in time was just huge. Although good and free simulators exist, these were hard for the students to find and install.

This book changed my student's life and considerably eased my life. The proposed microprocessor has all the features of a real one without the useless complexity drawbacks and heavy documentation. Students better like it than 68HC05 and there are plenty of examples that they can play with. A collection of slides for educators even avoids to have to compose your ones.

I highly recommend this as standard material for teaching microprocessor programming.

David Naccache

I've been fighting for 3 years to learn assembly programing , this book makes it look like baking a cake . Once you start reading this book and programing ,you'll have a hard time thinking of anything else !! Max is a very nice person who takes time out of his busy day to answer questions from normal people.(and he'll usally throw in a little humor too.) A+++++

Brian , future computer programer

This is an excellent book. It helps the beginners of "Dynamical Systems" to understand this branch of Mathematical Physics using Maple. It is very useful for undergraduate students as well as for teachers.

Thought I'd give a more in depth review than the others here.

Most advanced math textbooks contain one or two chapters that turn me off. I must say that every chapter in this book had useful information or very good applications.

The opening chapter is a brief introduction to Maple V (some Maple 8 commands are posted on the books website). Note that Maple 9 is now out and no doubt Maple X will soon follow.

Chapters 1-7 cover planar systems in some detail, vectorfield in DEplot is a real winner here. Chapters 8 and 9 cover 3D and nonautonomous systems - the poincare command in Maple is a real time saver.

Chapters 10-12 cover a lot of research results on limit cycles - the most lucid I have seen in any textbook.

The remaining half of the book concentrates on both real and complex discrete systems. There are the usual cobweb diagrams, bifurcation diagrams and Mandelbrot set. Where this book comes into its own, however, is in Chapters 16-20.

Lasers and nonlinear optics are investigated using complex iterative maps. Fractals and even multifractals are discussed in some detail. The book ends with a chapter dedicated to chaos control.

Overall, the book is concise with pertinent examples and applications. It is not dogged down with math notation, theorems and proofs.

Strogatz, Perko and Allgood are good books to practice more Maple programing techniques.

This book is a very nice introduction to the theory of dynamical
systems. It covers all aspects and even more than usually thaught
in a class on dynamical systems. Especially, I like to see
many examples for various applications. These examples and the
Maple programs make it well suitable for students to learn
on dynamical systems by themself.

A great book. Great web pages and short, easy to copy and edit
Maple programs. Lots of material not covered in other books on this topic. Maple is my favorite package. The others are not
as user friendly. I felt I must write again since amazon have been showing excerpts from book. What a geat idea. Chapters in this book that interested me were fractals, multifractals and
optics. Authors web-site is given on back cover of book. Enjoy!

This is only book I find with program files that work right away. Graphics in Maple is excelent for chaotic system and algebra very powerful. I like to rotate figures in 3D and use animation. I learn more about optics, it nice to see complex numbers used in applications. Lots of other applications also.

Book is best for students who want to get programs working quickly. There is a website with working programs. You should also look at Maple Application website for many many examples.

I recomend book to everyone.