Product Description

IF EVIL'S YOUR NAME, THEN THESE ARE YOUR GAMES!

Always wanted to be a genius game creator? This Evil Genius guidegoes far beyond a typical programming class or text to reveal insider tips for breaking the rules and constructing wickedly fun games that you can tweak and customize to suit your needs!

In Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius, programming wunderkind Ian Cinnamon gives you everything you need to create and control 57 gaming projects. You'll find easy-to-follow plansfeaturing Java, the most universal programming language, that run on any PC, Mac, or Linux computer.

• Illustrated instructions and plans for an awesome mix of racing, board, shoot 'em up, strategy, retro, and puzzle games
• Gaming projects that vary in difficulty-starting with simple programs and progressing to sophisticated projects for programmers with advanced skills
• An interactive companion website featuring a free Java compiler, where you can share your projects with Evil Geniuses around the globe
• Removes the frustration-factor-all the parts you need are listed, along with sources

Regardless of your skill level, Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius provides you with all the strategies, code, and insider programming advice you need to build and test your games with ease, such as:

• Radical Racing
• Screen Skier
• Whack an Evil Genius
• Tic-Tac-Toe Boxing
• Snake Pit
• Space Destroyers
• Bomb Diffuser
• Trapper
• Oiram
• Java Man
• Memory
• Ian Says

Customer Reviews (40)

iPhone Apps and Android Apps
I have a lot of ideas for mobile apps so my instructor said I should start by learning programming in Java first.He gave me some books and this is one that has been the best, most fun, for me.You develop games by following the code and learn Java basics.It's a lot of work but fun.My goal is be a dveloper for iPhone/iPad and Android apps. I have a long way to go but this is the first step!!

Summer Project - Done!
It took longer then I thought it would to finish the book - but it was worth it!! There were two sections that were pretty difficult so I asked for help from some older computer expert friends that have been programming for a couple of years and we figured it out together. My plan is to learn Java then work my way to iPhone and Android apps using "C".Now I'm on my way.Anyways this is a really good way to learn the basics of programming. I'm glad my teacher told me about it!!

Best on Shelf.
I own Weiss's C++ for Java Programmers, Liang's Intro to Java Programming, Dietel's How to Program, C++ Primer Plus, Effective Java, plus, plus.
The most dog-eared is my copy of Cinnamon's Programming Video Games.Good book.

Code Goddess Rules!
It's the first week of school :( so I brought in the Java Man and Whack-an-Evil Genius projects I programmed this summer from the Programming Video Genius book. Teacher impressed.Guys in my class humbled by my intelligence!Awesome book!!!

Chosen as Supplemental Text for College Course
I have selected Programming Video Games for the Evil Genius as a supplemental text for my freshman class.I find the project based orientation and clear coding of Cinnamon's text to be valuable for my students with sight to moderately advanced exposure to Java. ... Read more

Product Description
“To the best of my knowledge, D offers an unprecedentedly adroit integration of several powerful programming paradigms: imperative, object-oriented, functional, and meta.”
—From the Foreword by Walter Bright

“This is a book by a skilled author describing an interesting programming language. I’m sure you’ll find the read rewarding.”
—From the Foreword by Scott Meyers

D is a programming language built to help programmers address the challenges of modern software development. It does so by fostering modules interconnected through precise interfaces, a federation of tightly integrated programming paradigms, language-enforced thread isolation, modular type safety, an efficient memory model, and more.

Customer Reviews (14)

One of the best prog lang books I've read
"Just what I need -- another D in programming." -- segfault

Perhaps in the application space you've been using Java/C# and a dynamic language like Python or Ruby.Maybe you're looking at Scala.But you also want a more modern replacement for C and C++ in the system space.You browse the D web site and find it interesting, so you decide to invest in this book.

I did, and found this a very good book, and D a very interesting language.

The author writes with clarity, using many easily understood small examples that show, usually with D's slick unit-test facility, what each feature does.Typographically, the examples are set off from the text in light gray boxes -- a nice touch.He is very good about motivating each feature, giving you a sense that some as-yet-unmentioned facility is needed in order to solve some problem, and hey -- look what we have here...

There are no long examples -- I don't think any of them reached a full page.I honestly didn't feel like I missed them, although arguably it would have helped to see many of the features used together in a more substantial example.

Oh, by the way -- Andrei has a great sense of humor!It really shows in the book, making it more readable.

I particularly enjoyed the last chapter, on concurrency.The author spends seven excellent pages just talking about the need for concurrency, what was done about it by the previous crop of languages, and what's wrong with that approach.Then he rolls out D's concurrency support, which is pretty cool.He starts this off with a remarkably well chosen example requiring concurrency -- very realistic, but quite brief -- and then makes short work of it using D's spawn() function, letting D's slick "owner thread" mechanism take care of the coordination.The result is impressive for its simplicity.

I wish he had gone a little deeper into D's library support for functional programming, but I guess he had to draw the line somewhere.All in all this is an exceptional book; it will be interesting to see what it does for the language.Great job, Andrei!

Not for the uninitiated
Of the two classes of readers who would use this book it works well for one, and generally fails for the other.
The first, experienced D programmers looking for a reference with explanations and insight, appear to find the book quite useful and rate it highly.It is after all, well written and extensive in coverage of the language.So if you already know D, or perhaps are coming at it from the C++ world which uses similar terminology and constructs,then you will probably find this a 5 star classic.

The second however, everyone else (and particularly those coming from VB, or the functional programming paradigm) will find the prose well written, but the going sluggish and often lacking in sufficient explanation or example.As a self-study text it just doesn't work.Perhaps this group of readers would be better served learning C++ or Java or one of the other languages with really great instructional books available before attempting D.

Good Reference, Not As Good For Beginners
I had not heard of the D programming language before I came across the book The D Programming Language by Andrei Alexandrescu.However I have learned a number of programming languages (C, C++, Perl, Python, Java, and Ruby) over the years through guidance of experts through the books that they have written.I also have the author's Modern C++ Design, and I had high expectations for this book as a result.

One of the best introductory books for a language that I have read is Core Java(TM) 2, Volume I--Fundamentals (7th Edition) by Cay Horstmann and Gary Cornell (see my review).There were four things that made that a great book that I was looking for in The D Programming Language, and I discuss each below.

1.Speaks to a diverse audience - Core Java was great at calling out sections with "watch outs" for C/C++ programmers.While The D Programming Language does this, I don't think the organization is as good.The little touch of having a header with a special font to call attention to the subtle differences is very helpful.

2.Good code examples - Core Java had fairly extensive examples, and readers could download the code.This is a great service to readers because the code compiled (for the most part) with no errors.I used the examples as a starting point to explore features and modify them the listings to see different behaviors and scenarios.The examples in The D Programming Language are sparse and not available for download.

3.Comprehensive reference - It is difficult to have a learning book also serve as a great reference too.I think this is the one area where The D Programming Language excels.It hits all of the various features of D, and the meaty chapters have reference summaries at the end that will be of great values to programmers who are learning the language and trying to use it in their programs.

4.Style and structure - I like Alexandrescu's writing style in general, but I didn't care for the structure of the book at the beginning.The first chapter contains a number of code snippets that readers are frankly not ready for.I prefer books that start out with a more qualitative approach and build on the syntax and structure afterward.It wasn't until Chapter 3 that the material more or less stood on its own without deferring explanation to later chapters.I would encourage readers to stick with it through Chapters 1 and 2 because it does get better.

Overall, I think that The D Programming Language serves better as a reference than a learning book/reference combo.Unfortunately there isn't a lot to choose from for this up and coming language.While it gets the job done, it could have been a lot better.

Overall:C+

Excellent Book
This book is excellent and you should buy it right now.

I found it eminently readable, thanks in no small part to the delicate balance the author strikes between precise technical writing and entertainment. I find myself wishing that every programming book could have sections entitled "Shenanigans" or "Concurrentgate" and still manage to contain such dense, high-quality information.

I was completely drawn in by TDPL, and read the entire book in one sitting. Several times during the read I grew concerned that D was missing something vital (Forced reference semantics for objects? But that means I can't do C++ style RAII! This language sucks!) only to have the author directly address my problem and provide the solution in the subsequent chapter (In this case, structs with forced value-semantics saved the day, as did the really neat scope keyword).

The only criticism I can offer is that there were a few errors in the text; it would be worth your time to scan the errata before, after, or during your read, located at [...] Since these didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book or from its value as a D language reference, I still feel comfortable giving it 5 stars.

I'll repeat, buy this book. You'll be glad you did.

Good book
Great book. missing some small details that test code answers. Overall a great informative book on the language. ... Read more

Product Description
There are lots of introductory C books, but this edition of Practical CProgramming is the one that has the no-nonsense, practical approach that has made Nutshell Handbooks(R) so popular.C programming is morethan just getting the syntax right.Style and debugging also play atremendous part in creating programs that run well and are easy to maintain.Practical C Programming teaches you not only the mechanics of programming,but also how to create programs that are easy to read, debug, and maintain. This third edition introduces popular Integrated Development Environments onWindows systems, as well as UNIX programming utilities, and features a largestatistics-generating program to pull together the concepts and features inthe language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (50)

Not good enough to be stand alone book but 2 stars for effort
I could find better stuff just looking around the internet.I could see the author put alot of work into it but is not a good instructor.I'm sure he understands C but as for teaching it that is another story.I was hoping it would be good beginner book but in my opinion it is not. It starts off with the basic stuff all right but the author expects you to jump from point a to point g without explaining b,c,d,e, and f.I mean ok sure the first few chapters get you interested and your thinking it's going to teach you the ground work on programming but it falls really short.Then it just jumps into more complicated stuff and the complicated stuff just isn't very good.There are not many examples and I think that is the heart of programming.If your going to learn you have to build up with easy programs and then get into the difficult stuff.Well I'm off on my search for better books.Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Actually 3 1/2 Stars
Well, first off I'd like to mention I am not a programmer, and actually come from more of an engineering discipline.I'm not totally new to programming concepts having done work with assembly language along with some basic unix shell scripting tasks in the past.

I picked up this book primarily because I was looking to learn more about the internals of unix systems but needed a primer on the C language first.

For me, the book wasn't very engaging.It is technically correct, but throughout the text I felt there was simply something missing that failed to keep me wanting to read it.Apologies in advance if other readers feel I am being vague or too subjective, but in reality it may have a lot more to do with the way I tend to personally learn, and the particular writing style this author has.Again, I remind those reading this review of my stated purpose for picking this book up in the first place: that is, priming myself on the fundamentals of the C language.

The book itself has a neo-textbook feel in that it provides programming exercises throughout the book to practice on the concepts touched upon.There are also helpful diagrams and figures that help explain subjects such as arrays and stacks.
Overall a decent piece of work.

Personally, I feel for the way I tend to learn new information, the book C Programming Language (2nd Edition) by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie is going to be my goto book for continuing to learn this amazing programming language.
For me, this book has a cleaner flow to it but readers totally new to programming in general might want to have a look at Practical C as it may better suit them.

great for self-learners
For anyone who has suffered through trying to read a beginners book on C only to end up getting lost half way through, you will find this book a huge relief. This book stresses things like how code so from a perspective of communicating logically. And how to comment thoroughly so their is no doubt what the code does. This is not the end all book on C, so you will want to move on to more advanced books on C after this one.

File Creation!
This book starts off very strong and the author is very clear and concise. I learned alot... but then something happens... the author decides to wait for covering floats until after he covers File I/O and he rushes through that. I was completely left hanging with not one example of writing data to a file and the author expected me to be able to complete an exercise in which I need to write data to a file. After this...the next chapter back tracks to covering Floats... which should have been covered previously with the other data types.

Perfect for beginners, but recommend a second book!
First of all, this book was absolutely wonderful.It did a very good job teaching me how to write C with very little knowledge of the language.However, there were some things that the author did (and skipped over) that are cleared up in "The C Programming Language", by Dennis Ritchie.I would definitely recommend this book to someone who doesn't have very much knowledge of C, because the writing style is clear and easy to follow.The author, for the most part, does a great job of explaining difficult concepts in an easy to understand manner; such as linked lists and trees.Once again, I would recommend another book as a follow up, such as "Expert C Programming". ... Read more

Product Description
The bible of programming theory and practice is being updated for the first time in more than 20 years. The book is concerned with information structures--the representation of information within a computer, the structural interrelations between data elements and how to work with them efficiently, and applications to simulation, numerical methods and software design.Amazon.com Review
This magnificent tour de force presents a comprehensiveoverview of a wide variety of algorithms and the analysis of them. Nowin its third edition, The Art of Computer Programming, Volume I:Fundamental Algorithms contains substantial revisions by theauthor and includes numerous new exercises.

Although this book wasconceived several decades ago, it is still a timeless classic. One ofthe book's greatest strengths is the wonderful collection of problemsthat accompany each chapter. The author has chosen problems carefullyand indexed them according to difficulty. Solving a substantial numberof these problems will help you gain a solid understanding of theissues surrounding the given topic. Furthermore, the exercises featurea variety of classic problems.

Fundamental Algorithms beginswith mathematical preliminaries. The first section offers a goodgrounding in a variety of useful mathematical tools: proof techniques,combinatorics, and elementary number theory. Knuth then details theMIX processor, a virtual machine architecture that serves as theprogramming target for subsequent discussions. This wonderful sectioncomprehensively covers the principles of simple machine architecture,beginning with a register-level discussion of the instruction set. Alater discussion of a simulator for this machine includes an excellentdescription of the principles underlying the implementation ofsubroutines and co-routines. Implementing such a simulator is anexcellent introduction to computer design.

In the second section,Knuth covers data structures--stacks, queues, lists, arrays, andtrees--and presents implementations (in MIX assembly) along withtechniques for manipulating these structures. Knuth follows many ofthe algorithms with careful time and space analysis. In the section ontree structures, the discussion includes a series of interestingproblems concerning the combinatorics of trees (counting distincttrees of a particular form, for example) and some particularlyinteresting applications. Also featured is a discussion of Huffmannencoding and, in the section on lists, an excellent introduction togarbage collection algorithms and the difficult challenges associatedwith such a task. The book closes with a discussion of dynamicallocation algorithms.

The clear writing in FundamentalAlgorithms is enhanced by Knuth's dry humor and the historicaldiscussions that accompany the technical matter. Overall, this text isone of the great classics of computer programming literature--it's notan easy book to grasp, but one that any true programmer will studywith pleasure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

Hard, but worth the effort
This is one of those books that separates the computer scientist from the 'programming for dummies' crowd.

Yes, assembly is not used much in practice, but understanding algorithms at the assembler level is absolutely necessary. The math is absolutely necessary. Computer science and programming are mathematical disciplines, this can not be overstated. Not understanding the mathematics is as bad as not understanding computation at the assembler level. It's like trying to come up with an encryption algorithm without understanding abstract algebra, it is even like coming up with a regular expression without understanding automata. Sure, you can create an encryption algorithm without the math, but it will be cracked easily, and your regex will likely be inefficient, and you won't be able to write one for anything mildly complex without understanding automata. It is the same thing with understanding algorithms and not understanding the math and what is going on under the hood. Granted, if you are a .NET of Java EE "programmer" that simply ties method calls together, you might not need this, but are you really a programmer? And when something bites you hard, will you blindly try "stuff" to fix it, or will be able to understand what went wrong and how to properly fix it?

Knuth's books give you this understanding that will lift you from API monkey status to programmer. It is timeless in the sense that the concepts in the book never change. It doesn't matter that languages change, the underlying concepts do not. They have just been abstracted to the point where people can read a dumbed down book and think they can program.

Painful
Yes, I know, we devs should all pay homage to the great Knuth.I don't dispute it.But I also don't want to read a textbook.That's what this is.And unless you're writing low level algorithm libraries, you have no business reading this book.'Cause if you can't grasp the basics already, this book will do more to scare the crap out of you than anything else.

For the hardcore only!

Algorithms, Data Structures, Computing Machine, Analysis
This is a classic book on algorithm analysis and also in programming techniques. The first one for which author create a hypothetical computing machine (he call it MIX), his own style to describe algorithms, a machine operation instruction and data representation, an assembly language (he call it MIXAL) for map algorithms and data structures into reality.

In another sense: it's a self-contained book.

Each chapter includes a historical review of concepts and methods.


Important topics
----------------
* Section 1.2. Mathematical basement for algorithm performance analysis. Includes a review of Numbers, Powers, Logarithms, binomial coefficients, and also an example of algorithm analysis using "Kirchhoff's first law" for inputs/outputs (flow to/from each step).

* Section 1.3. Description of the hypothetic computing machine (MIX): memory word, registers, comparison and overflow indicators, input/output device names, machine instruction format, machine instructions.

* Section 1.3.2. Description of the assembly language (MIXAL). Includes an interesting figure on relation between machine instruction codes and assembly language representation.

* Section 1.4.1. Introduce concepts of subroutine and co routine. Co routine is described as a team of sub-programs ideal for multi-pass algorithms (the kind used for processing a stream input).

* Section 1.4.3. Introduce in the field of interpretive routines and simulators. The author tells you how good programmers are at the same time good machine designers (as is the same today with virtual machines and little languages as Java). It includes a simulator program for the hypothetical MIX computing machine. You will learn how a state machine or sequential machine is implemented using a so called Control Routine (complement this reading with section 5.1 of "Computer Organization & Design" by Patterson and Hennessy - see my review for that book).

* Section 2.2.5. Describes the use of doubly linked list data structure by using a discrete simulation example (author use previously reviewed concepts like coroutine and control routine). You learn how the idea of coroutine is a base for discrete simulations. Also, author use what he call a "pseudo parallel procedure": a WAITLIST. This kind of procedure was used during 1960s and 1970s as a multi-task procedure.

* Section 2.3.2. Describe binary trees. The highlight of this section is a "Differentiation" algorithm. The author uses an algorithm to traverse a tree in post-order with each node representing a symbol. He then implements the algorithm using a control routine like the one implemented in Sections 1.4.5 and 2.2.5. The control routine includes a "Jump Table" for processing each node.

In resume, the book describes important topics for past and present programmers. I recommend you to read "Computer Organization & Design" by Patterson and Hennessy as an intro. Then read this one. Also you can complement this read with "Fascicle 1." by Donald E. Knuth, which describes an advanced MIX computing machine called MMIX (a 32 bit hypothetical RISC machine similar to DLX machine used on "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach - 2d edition" by Patterson and Hennessy. Also, "The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 3" will very useful (Balanced Trees algorithm for example, as a "self-reshaping" structure).

Just try sorting and searching with out this book.
This book has saved my bacon several times through the decades. Once I needed to actually build a database package from scratch instead of using a commercial package.

I almost did not buy it when all I saw in it was mostly math. But I was desperate and it paid off. Turns out you could not explain it any other way. I use it primarily for balanced trees. I may try some thing more exotic later.

The set also looks impressive in the library.

Mechanical things: foundations
"The Art of Computer Programming" (TAoCP) is about machines and mechanical methods.

TAoCP is "about timeless truths" as the author writes. It's about CPU registers and memory cells. It's about counting the number of machine cycles a program will take. It's about precision. It's not about creating fancy Excel macros or adding pop-up windows to your web page.

Volume one contains two chapters. Chapter One first defines algorithms, gives basic math concepts for computer science starting with Mathematical Induction, continuing with a section on how to analyse algorithm, plus a couple of sections for people familiar with mathematical analysis (i.e. the math behind calculus). It ends with a complete description of MIX, a fictional computer, and of the machine language for programming MIX. (Note: MIX will soon be upgraded to the equally fictional MMIX). I won't repeat the author's rationale for sticking to machine language, and a fictional one at that! Suffice it to say that he has his reasons.

Chapter Two is about lists and trees, the most fundamental of data structures. Stacks, queues, and deques are lists with one or two entry and exit points. Linked lists have as many entry and exit points as there are elements, but careful! you need to worry about linking elements to one another, and ending with correct linking when adding or removing an element. And then there are trees, and the many ways to visit all nodes in a tree exactly once. Leftmost node first? Last? Middle node first?

Who should read this then? Patient people! Knuth published the first volume in 1966 and plans to finish the final edition of the fifth volume in 2015. This is not a For Dummies book, so don't expect to speed read through it. I skimmed the whole thing cover to cover, skipping the exercises and occasionally working hard at achieving perfect understanding of two or three pages (several hours!). I'm now going through it again more slowly, part by part, doing some of the problems. If I want, I can have fun with this book for the rest of my life.

Apart from that, well obviously computer science academics will enjoy TAoCP and find inspiration here for classes and tutorials. This is a monograph, so it is complete and mostly self-contained. It is also accessible to anyone willing to put in the hours to read it, and very little beyond a little programming experience is required.

Most of all, TAoCP is for people who enjoy thinking for its own sake, people who enjoy puzzling out and finding tricky solutions to what might seem like a straightforward problem. Some people enjoy tinkering with cars, others like building model ships. Like these activites, going through the exercises in TAoCP gives us what Fred Brooks calls the sheer joy of creating things.

By the way, it's worth learning MIX. I do the exercises in Perl (egad! I can only handle some of the problems...) but since the solutions are in MIX, it pays to know it well enough to read through Knuth's examples.

Vincent Poirier, Tokyo ... Read more

Product Description

As the SAS© programming language continues to evolve, this guide follows suit with timely coverage of the combination statistical package, database management system, and high-level programming language. Using current examples from business, medicine, education, and psychology, Applied Statistics and the SAS Programming Language is an invaluable resource for applied researchers, giving them the capacity to perform statistical analyses with SAS without wading through pages of technical documentation. Includes the necessary SAS statements to run programs for most of the commonly used statistics, explanations of the computer output, interpretations of results, and examples of how to construct tables and write up results for reports and journal articles. Illustrated with SAS Graph™ output. Provides readers with ample models for developing programming skills. For anyone interested in learning  more about applied statistics and the SAS programming language.

Customer Reviews (39)

Bad shopping experience!
I've used Amazon to shop for years, but it was my first bad experience ever. I ordered three textbooks with 2 days shipment. However, I only got one after a week, and that one was folden in a bag, which was in a terrible condition so that I had to return it. The other two books never attend to my hands because the carrier, Fedex "insisted" to send the books to me personally only, but I have to work and go to school, there's no way I can stay home at the daytime! The only thing I can do was to sign the notes posted on my door. But they still ignored them and sent the packages back to Amazon. After contacting with Amazon and Fedex for many times, they sent the package again. But THE SAME THING HAPPENED AGAIN!! I contacted Fedex and Amazon and ask them to leave the package out of my door, and I left the signed notes there, but they still ignored it! I spent so much time to wait and contacting, but got nothing after a month. Unbelievable. And the school began already so I went to the bookstore and got used books.

applied sta n the SAS
brand new book n i received it like 2-3 days after i ordered it. very fast shipping.

Use this text to learn SAS for Statistical Analysis
Anyone who must use SAS for statistical analysis should use this book in their learning process.Yes, there is "The Little SAS Book" and its variatons, but Cody and Smith have written the best text for quickly learning how to use SAS for statistical analysis.Sometimes, academic authors write for their associates rather than students.These authors have one goal: to help anyone, at any level, learn how to apply SAS for their statistical analyses.Their writing is clear, and anyone with an 8th grade education can use their text.I've used R, Stata, SPSS, and Matlab for statistical analysis.This text is among the best statistical references and learning tools for anyone who must quickly learn SAS.

Great!
I couldn't believe how fast I got the book, and it was in great shape!Very satisfied.

generally useful
this book is good for an overview of the software, but does not reveal some of the detailed ways it can be used ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
This book is aimed at existing C++/Qt programmers and presents ideas andtechniques that are too advanced or specialized (although notnecessarily difficult), for a first book on Qt.

Qt has now grown to over 700 classes and well over a million words ofdocumentation, far too much to cover in a single volume. So instead ofcovering everything very thinly, the book focuses on key areas of Qttechnology and tries to provide more comprehensive coverage than isavailable elsewhere.

The book is completely practical in emphasis, with every techniqueillustrated by working code. The examples show Qt best practices, and have been tested on Linux,Mac OS X, and Windows, using Qt 4.6 and where possible (e.g., using #if QT_VERSION), Qt 4.5. (The examples and a sample chapter can be downloaded from the book's web page. Amazon don't allow URLs so google for "qtrac" to find it.)

The book's main themes are hybrid desktop/Internet applications,threading, rich text handling, Qt's graphics/view architecture, and Qt's model/viewarchitecture (to which four chapters are devoted), although manyother topics are covered. Besides each chapter's main subject,lots of other classes, methods, and techniques are used whereverthey make sense, to show as many Qt features as possible. So eventhe most experienced Qt programmer should discover aspects of Qtthey weren't aware of, discover new techniques, and be inspired withnew ideas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

good book
I have not finished reading yet.
But according to the part I have read,
it is quite good.

The best book on programming with Qt
I've been waiting this book for many months, and now that I've read it, it absolutely fulfill my expectations... It's truly an amazing book for deep learning many aspects that are useful but in someway, sometimes 'hidden' inside Qt.
This book is the path to glory, for those who, like me, love those features that turn a programming language in a delightful day at the park...

this book is a "must have" for a Qt developper
After reading his previous book ("C++ GUI Programming With Qt 4") I order this Mark Summerfield new opus as soon as it has been published and I really enjoy reading it. It learn me some tips and tricks during all chapters. It explain clearly some points which are difficult to master with true life samples. Here comes (Model / View, Phonon, Webkit...)

Mark have answered some questions I ask him by mail on his book. That's really nice from him to be available to his readers ! You're great Mark...

So if you want to discover or go deeper in Qt, go reading this book now !

Stephane ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008-T-SQL Programming Book Review
I have used SQL Server since the 6.5/7.0 days and thought I knew enough to get by. I had various experiences with SQL Server 2000/2005, and then did not immediately use SQL Server 2008 until the Spring of 2010; I took a T-SQL CLASS using SQL Server 2008 at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California. I learned a great deal that I did not previously know from Professor Shui-lien Huang, a very excellent teacher.

You can work with SQL Server, and unless you have the opportunity to have many challenges to stretch your skills, you may seemingly work in a silo and never learn all of it, which is a good reason to buy this book: "Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming". I am glad I had the T-SQL class before reading this book.

This book contains the typical coverage for a standard T-SQL statement, and then User-Defined Functions (UDFs), Triggers, Stored Procedures, Views, etc., but also some new things. For example, extending SQL Server by using CLR (Common Language Runtime) user defined types, the use of XML, dynamic SQL, and Service Broker for reliable, asynchronous processing, and Spatial Data (i.e. geodata).
On the subject of Spatial Data in Chapter 14, Microsoft has brought forth new data types, operators, and indexes to the database. Microsoft introduces the core spatial concepts and provides key programming constructs to successfully navigate this new feature in SQL Server 2008. There are 70 pages covering Spatial Data. Obviously, this is a heavy topic.

Because of auditing and compliance requirements, the issue of tracking access and changes to data has become much more important. This book shows how previous versions of SQL Server did take care of this to some degree, but in SQL Server 2008, Microsoft has added the following: change tracking, change data capture, Extended Events, and SQL Server Audit. The book shows provides guidance on where each of these new technologies is best used, and then goes on to show how to implement each technology.

This is not a beginner's T-SQL book, but it does cover beginner topics, as mentioned above. In addition, it covers some of the new aspects of SL Server 2008 that are more complex. This is most assuredly a valuable reference book that all T-SQL and .NET developers and database administrators should have nearby. It will give you excellent instruction and answers to your T-SQL questions.

Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming (Pro-Developer)
I would strongly recommend this book. Very detailed description of innovative techniques in all editions of SQL Server 2008. I really enjoyed the ease of the chapters ,and implements in discussion. Once you start reading, very addictive.

Outstanding Book Covering T-SQL Programming w/ SQL Server 2008
Being primarily a database and web developer, I feel more than experienced enough to review 'Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming' by Itzik Ben-Gan and others and I feel more and easily able to give this ***** and highly recommend this text.All the basics are covered in this 800 page book.It's not a teaching book that will give you all the ins and outs of database design and use, but it will show you what the major points of using SQL Server 2008 are, and how to get the most out of them.

Major topics covered are Views, User-Defined Functions, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Transactions & Concurrency, Error Handling, Temporary Tables/Table Variables, Cursors, Dynamic SQL, Date/Time usage, CLR User-Defined Types, Temporal Support, XML & XQuery usage, Spatial Data, Tracking Access and Changes, and finally Service Broker discussion.

The parts of the book that I enjoyed most were the last 6 chapters, as discussion on CLR usage, Spatial Data, and the like are limited in most other SQL Server books.I especially loved the chapter on Spatial data, a very important subject that has much, much greater support than years in the past.

If you are a SQL Server developer or admin, you owe it to yourself to take a hard look at this great book.It is written fantastic and is a great resource that I found useful from the moment I picked it up.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

One of the best books ever
Just like all the other books by Itzik Ben-Gan, this book is one of the best SQL books ever published. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (12)

Hard work, but exactly what I need
I'm working my way through this. Half the time I don't know what Mr. Noble is talking about, but the text does eventually succumb to hard work and study and I would not be learning my way around this field at anywhere near the pace if it were an "easier" book. It's a great book about a new, complex, rapidly growing field in which I am a complete neophyte. I am enjoying the challenge immensely.

Interactivity
Pros: Great overview and really useful especially for beginning. I'm kind of a give me diagrams of what it's supposed to look like and label what everything in the code or what is doing. This doesn't have much but more than enough information to figure it out.

Cons: This kind of gives a broad overview and skips easy to pick up details. Maybe you need a more specialized book if you really want to code something good. Likewise, code examples could be a little stronger/prevalent although the ones they have are great.

Also, I have the digital version. I recommend after all you need a computer to use the information in it anyways. The printed version is a bit thick.

3 different languages mixed
I got this book to learn openframeworks. A very good and complete guide, but a little difficult to read and understand because the author mixes three different languages: arduino, processing and openframeworks. I would have found more interesting a simple openframeworks book, a lot of information about the other two is already published.
I have also found some mistakes in code which have made me become crazy.
I recommend this book because i think it's the only openframeworks book option by now (FEB/2010).
I really liked the way that theory is explained, but codelines in this book aren't as good as i had expected.

Give this book a chance to meet your needs.
When I began reading (studying?) this book, I was a bit disappointed because of its emphasis on Processing and OpenFrameWorks which are two programming languages closely related to the Arduino programming language. I had purchased the book specifically to gain knowledge about the Arduino language and its nuances, and here I was being "force fed" more languages!
After reading the first Chapter or two, I laid it aside for a couple of weeks, hoping to sell it on e-bay or something. I picked it up again, thumbed to some random location in the middle of the book and found that I was "hooked". I downloaded the Processing language Development Environment as suggested in the book, found it was virtually identical to the Arduino language (from which it was derived), and was delighted that the book delved very nicely into the "nuances" that I had been looking for.
I have little interest in OpenFrameWorks language, but this book gives me everything I hoped for related to Arduino and Processing. It is thorough, simple when it needs to be simple, and more in-depth when appropriate. I recommend this book to anyone who has a desire to become proficient in the programming environment used by Arduino. (BTW...if you don't know what an Arduino is, you probably should NOT by this book!)

Clear, concise, very useful. Top notch Arduino info!
Being new to programming I have purchased a dozen texts as of this last purchase "Interactivity". This is the only one of the twelve that got me coding straight away. Within twenty minutes I had something a little more interesting than blinking lights to look at. My home brew robot had an obstacle avoidance routine written and working. I have been adding to that program ever since, not laboring over seemingly hopeless examples of projects that just don't interest me.

If you just bought an Arduino, or have any other reason to understand and use a computer language this should be your first purchased. More than any of that (and that would be enough) this text is readable, enjoyable. I would reread this book just because I enjoyed the author's style of writing.

This book also offers you a bonus, this might scare off some that read other reviews or the book description: you will learn three languages simultaneously. This would seem like an impossible task for most folks intimidated by learning just one language, but the author demonstrates quickly how natural it is to learn all three side by side. What a boon to your knowledge base!

It is very rare a text book of such wide scope and usefulness is authored.


... Read more

Product Description

Unix Shell Programming is a tutorial aimed at helping Unix and Linux users get optimal performance out of their operating out of their operating system.It shows them how to take control of their systems and work efficiently by harnessing the power of the shell to solve common problems.The reader learns everything he or she needs to know to customize the way a Unix system responds.

The vast majority of Unix users utilize the Korn shell or some variant of the Bourne shell, such as bash.Three are covered in the third edition of Unix Shell Programming.It begins with a generalized tutorial of Unix and tools and then moves into detailed coverage of shell programming.

Topics covered include: regular expressions, the kernel and the utilities, command files, parameters, manipulating text filters, understanding and debugging shell scripts, creating and utilizing variables, tools, processes, and customizing the shell.

Customer Reviews (46)

good for recommendation to new programmers
i found this book very helpful in learning unix shell programming it is very illustrative with easy to understand examples.

Extremely good Unix book
Great Unix shell programming book.Focuses on unix commands and shell, not unix administration.

Book arrived quickly and in excellent shape.

Still the best
This is my second copy.I made the mistake of loaning out the previous copy, and it grew legs and disappeared.They got the old edition, and now I have the new one."Unix Shell Programming" is loaded with good information.I only get to write shell scripts once in awhile, and sometimes I really need the book as a reference to refresh my memory.And, there are plenty of examples in the book.Great for newbies, and great reference for us old-timers.

Great unix book
Great unix book. I had little unix experience and the book was just right for me. I've only read the first 4 chapters but have picked up a lot already.

Very well done introduction to shell programming
This book doesn't theoretically require one to know anything about programming. Still, it is quite helpful to have experience with some programming language, since comparisons with other languages (particularly C) are pretty frequent and often used to explain certain concepts.
More than that, experience with the UNIX/Linux environment definitely helps.

The book starts off with a basic review of some useful shell commands (from ls to grep passing thru regular expressions). It then goes on to explain how to link these commands together (pipes, variables, loops etc.) to make useful scripts to handle common and not too complicated system administration tasks.
At the end of the book there also is a quite useful summary of shell commands which works as some sort of reference.

The writing style is clear, and attention is paid to warn the user from falling in common syntax errors such as misuse of quotes, and how and why they can lead to results quite different to those one would expect.
The main drawback i found, is that the examples presented are most of the times way too simple. That can surely help people with little confidence in programming, but may bore people that do already have programming knowledge and wish to be introduced to more complex tasks more rapidly.

All in all, i surely like this book, both for how things are explained and for how they are organized. And it surely is high quality for the price. I wouldn't recommend it to an experienced programmer, which might be better of with a more technical approach, but if you fall anywhere between 'noob' and 'competent programmer' you will probably enjoy reading this book before you move on to something more advanced. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (16)

An Easy Read for a Difficult Subject
This is a great introduction to programming. I've tried to learn programming in the past but I usually get distracted and end up moving onto something else :). This book is great for me! The book has a lot of attention grabbing content while simultaneously managing to explain difficult programming concepts clearly. I also enjoy its informal writing style (with light humor that's unlikely to have you laughing out loud, but is occasionally able to put a smirk on your face). So I gave the book 5 stars because:

1. The author doesn't have a dry writing style (like most programming books).
2. There are tons of workable examples to help you learn.
3. There's attention grabbing content that aids in your understanding of the material.
4. Their choice of using Python 3 as a first programming language (better than Basic in my opinion).

Good book, don't get thrown by obsolete example...
I like this book so far; it covers the basics, it moves at a good pace, and requires me to review and implement what I've learned.

Heads up:
In chapter 3, the code exercise given simply will not work as is - Twitter changed from Basic Auth to OAuth; the code exercise used to work, but doesn't now.I wasted a few hours trying to make it work before I went looking for help. Anyhow, the book's graphics of how the example code might have worked helped with comprehension; I just read Chapter 3 closely, and kept moving.I gotta admit, I really missed being able to 'code-along' with the book for the last half of the chapter - I missed the kick I was getting out making things 'work.'If you are really keen on making Chapter 3 exercises work, check out the following links - they may help:

[...]

Excellent Introduction to Programming Fundamentals
Using an interesting format based on the latest theories on how human learn, I consider Head First Programming to be an excellent introduction to programming fundamentals.

Make no mistake: despite containing a significant amount of information on the Python programming language, this book's main goal is to teach you the basics of computer programming which can be applied across (more or less) all programming languages. In order to teach those principles, the authors give you a good amount of Python in order to give you the tools to put into practice what you've just learned about programming through various exercises spread throughout the book. The exercises themselves are presented meaningfully as, for example, an independent programming contract with a health club to develop a p.o.s. system. This framework really helps to create a sense of accomplishment and also illustrate how what you are learning might be usefully applied in the real world. It is this approach, as opposed to many introductory books to programming which merely teach theory, that makes this book so great.

That being said, the book is not perfect. The solution to several of the exercises necessitates the use of (small bits of) code that hasn't been shown to you before anywhere up to that point, necessitating glancing at the answer for a hint. Also, there's at least one small mistake in the sample code (specifically for the final code exercise) that, while not making the program you're working on wholly inoperable, is frustrating to deal with as your seemingly perfect code keeps throwing up an error message when you attempt to close it. The sample code provided on the book website, however, is free of this error. Ultimately, however, while they were unsolvable except by looking at the answer provided, these small flaws served to force me to think more about what I was doing and I learned more because of them.

From what I've seen and heard of other introductory programming books, Head First Programming stands far above the rest and is definitely where someone with no former programming education should start, regardless of the programming language you'd eventually like to learn.

Great for beginners but needs more exercises
Like some of the reviewers here, I too bought this for my 11 yo son. The book keeps his interest and the fill-in exercises are good for helping him to think about the ideas behind coding. The graphics are well done and explanations about coding concepts using everyday experiences are worthwhile. I also like the way it takes a simple problem and keeps expanding it by using new structures.

While I realize this is not a textbook, I would have liked to see a few more programming exercises within the text, so that I didn't have to wander all over the Internet to find some. That's why I gave it 4 stars. Fortunately, the open courseware web site from MIT has an intro python course with doable exercises. Google "Codingbat" to find an interactive page that helps practice basic code writing.

Overall, this book is very good for the beginner. It succeeds in making computer programming interesting and meaningful to a different audience than standard computer books.

Head First Programing giving headaches
I read the Head First C# and JavaScript books prior to this one.This book takes the approach by presenting problems and suggesting solutions as though you are already a competent computer programmer.The idea that providing a focus is promising but is executed in a way that is mediocre.The text layout is distracting and having to read clues in the character speech balloons is cumbersome.The book layout gives the impression that it is meant to be written in which is unusual.Although the book alibis that its not Head First Python (which should be written at some point), its one of the few computer books that uses Python 3, yet there is only enough syntax to complete each individual task and does not really build upon itself effectively as mentioned.The use of so many techniques and applications as well as spending time out of the book on the internet was counter productive but does provide some recommendations for some good applications (Look Inside and go to page 395).I was happy this book was available at the library and I didn't have to purchase and then attempt to return it. ... Read more

Product Description

Written for experienced C programmers who wantto quickly pick up some of the insights and techniques of expertsand master the fine arts of ANSI C, this volume passes on the wisdomof a highly experienced C compiler writer and his colleagues to helpprogrammers reach new heights, and avoid common software pitfallsalong the way. Using an original approach and a humorous style thatmakes deep knowledge both easy and accessible, it gathers into oneplace, tips, hints, shortcuts, guidelines, ideas, idioms, heuristics,tools, anecdotes, C folklore, and techniques that are often penciledin margins and on backs of papers by those working in the programmingtrenches—working on many different kinds of projects, over many,many years. Each chapter is divided into self-containedsections. Includes extended discussions of major topics such as declarationsand arrays/pointers; offers a great many hints and mnemonics; coverstopics that many C programmers find confusing; and features one ofthe best introductions to C++, and the rationale behind it. Throughout,technical details are interspersed with many true stories of how Cprogramming works in practice, and each chapter ends with an amusingC story or piece of software folklore. For softwareengineers and computer programmers who are writing, developing, testing,debugging software on either IBM PCs or Unix systems.

Customer Reviews (88)

C != C++
I just read the table of contents and can give you a review....
I have almost 30 years experience at programming embedded systems and have been programming C/C++ since their inception. This book has headings that are all cryptic like it's a patronizing little game to program in C. Personally, I'd find this very annoying if I were to use this book as a reference, and most developers will want to use an expensive book as a reference.
That being said, my main issue with this book was when I saw the chapter "You know C, so C++ is easy". This has been the failing of most C++ efforts I've seen that have failed. C++ is NOT an extension of C. The best way to learn how to program C++ cleanly and efficiently is to remember the maxim...."THIS IS NOT C", and to unlearn C, before starting to learn C++ and to treat C++ as a brand new language....because it is.

This might be an OK read for a newcomer to the language if they can ignore that C++ chapter, and if they get it for under $5 in a used bookstore. I'm sure there are better books out there to learn the language from...

Pretty good
This was definitely a good book full of great pointers. however, i'd say skim through the book quickly, and slow down in areas that sound useful. It's really hard to describe how the book is written - it feels like it was a lot of recollections that the author remembered, wrote down, and somewhat organized into a book. I'm not slamming the author, but the this book will definitely not make you an expert c programmer. If anything, you'll definitely have had some great pointers, and common pitfalls pointed out.

I'd say at least you'll probably have learned a few things you may not have known.

Excellent!
This is probably one of the only books on C that I have truly read word for word, cover to cover. Peter van der Linden does an excellent job keeping the material from becoming too boring, while providing clear explanations and insignt into the "dark corners" of the C programming language. Information presented within is concise and accurate. Well worth the $$!

damn good read
even if you no longer program in C, this is still a good read just for the history, stories, and technical content. and if you are a C programmer, this book will definitely make you a more knowing C programmer.

Expert C Language
A better title for this book is "Expert C Language". It is more like a English grammar book that give you fundamental yet in-depth knowledge about C programming language itself, rather than something like writing database in C.

Any programmer can write a Hello World program in C, but not everyone understand "char * const * (*next)()". If you wonder what it is, then dive into the chapter "Unscrambling declaration in C" which benefit me the most. The most confusing thing to begininer about C is probably the pointers, you get *ptr, **ptr, (int *)ptr, void (*ptr)(), int (*ptr)[]. If you have got no clue about these and you want to be an expert, then this is the book for you.

The down side about this book is, it is a bit dated, therefore it didn't include C99 standard that were published after this book. You would see some K&R style programming that seems like violation or bug to younger folks.

I would definitely recommend this book to every C programmer working at low-level software such as embedded software and device driver.
... Read more

Product Description
Do you enjoy playing video games and want to learn how to create your own? "Game Programming for Teens, Third Edition" shows you how to design and develop a complete video game from start to finish, no prior programming knowledge required. You'll begin by learning the basics of BlitzMax, a simple cross-platform game programming language that can be used on Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems. Once you understand how to write the programming code, you'll begin to incorporate all the graphical elements of games including varying colors, loading and displaying images, and creating scrolling backgrounds. Finally, you?ll learn how to add sound and music, use keyboard input codes, and even integrate artificial intelligence. New skills are taught step-by-step, and each chapter builds upon the techniques you learned in the previous, so by the end of the book you'll have built your very own fully functioning video game. And the CD-ROM contains all the source code, art and sound files, and demo versions of BlitzMax and the other programs used in the book. So don?t just play video games, build your own, with "Game Programming for Teens, Third Edition!" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (57)

Pretty bad
I bought one of Maneesh Sethi's older books, the 2nd edition, and what the first review hadsaid is very true with both books. The samples that are included on the CD dont work and ill tell you why. They were ment for his first edition book, which uses an acient compiler!!! the new Blitz compilers work differently adn all he did was take from the first book's samples and copied them to his newer books showing his laziness and a race for more money by recreating the same book overand over using almost the esact same material as the last one. Another thing is he doesnt even truly understand how to use the compiler language properly! in the last book he shows cheep examples that are filled with bugs, and hardly goes over all the basics. I have been programign for 6 years now and these books are embarrassments! I've even email the author many times with questions he was hardly able to answer and even worse (going back to the book) some of the chapters just repeat themselves. Once you get to the final project there are a bunch of code and compands that are added that he never explained in the book. i do not recomend this book and if you do manage to read through the book you end up learning that most of what he teaches is very bad adn that ar4e much better techniques to achieve stronger and more entertaining events in video game programing

Right on target, but could be a little better
I purchased this book for my 13 year old son who wants to learn how to write his own games.This book is definitely right on target for the budding game-writer.The development environment, BlitzMax, is offered with this book on a trial basis.Purchasing the full program was not terribly expensive and it works on both PCs, Mac, and Linux.As a note, the Mac demo did not work well for me until I purchased it and upgraded it to the latest version.I did not have any trouble with the PC demo and did not try the Linux version.The programming language, BlitzBasic is what I would call a very "loose" programming language - it's not very strict syntactically.You can easily mistype a variable name and not notice the problem.This can make for some difficult debugging for a beginner.But given that, my son was able to write his own rudimentary games quite quickly (and he's not even half-way through the book).

My two primary complaints are (1) that the author seems to have moved on to other things and his website does not provide any support for this book as is promised in the book itself and (2) it would have been nice if the book provided some suggested exercises to reinforce concepts.I ended up making up "homework" for my son, which he promptly ignored anyway!

My secondary complaint is that some concepts could be better explained.For example, the concept of a variable can be quite confusing if you've never heard of such a thing before.It definitely helps to have at least one programmer in the house to help explain some of the more difficult concepts.

Overall, the book is perfectly targeted for the budding game-developer.My son thinks the book is very funny and despite my own complaints / concerns about the book, he's making incredible progress on his own with only a little help from his mom.So it can't be all bad!

Software immediately expired
The book itself appears to be decently written, and progresses in an orderly fashion.The problem I had was with the software.I installed BlitzMax from the disk.It stated it had a 30-day trial period.I opened the first program, changed the player's speed and pressed save, but the software wouldn't allow the program to save and stated that the trial period had ended.I guess they meant a 30-second trial period.No hope reopening BlitzMax with the expired trial period.

I then tried to use Blitz Plus, but this has a slightly different coding standard and wouldn't run the programs on the disk.Not that it mattered, as soon as I tried to save anything it also immediately terminated the trial period.

What I did see during the few minutes I managed to actually see BlitzMax is a half-baked development environment that probably isn't worth the price for the full-up version.Of course, given the quality issues I experienced with their trial version, purchasing a permanent license is clearly out of the question.

I would suggest, as others have posted, that teens looking to learn programming download Microsoft Visual Basic Express for free.It isn't a hybrid Basic/C language, but a real language that is actually used in industry.It can perform all the same functions as those discussed in this book, is pretty easy to learn, and has a much more refined development environment that actually works.

Excellent book!!!
Just finish reading the whole book!
It is very easy to follow. Beginners could learn many game programming techniques.
I hope Maneesh Sethi could write more BlitzMax books on advanced topics or game examples.

Awesome for beginners
This book is great for teens and young adults. I knew HTML (I am 10 years old) when I first got the book, so it was easy for me. It was sometimes a little confusing when you read the code, but later it is a breeze. Awesome for beginners, and a good reference for the more advanced people. Good book, 5 stars. ... Read more

Product Description

The Only Official, Best-Practice Guide to Qt 4.3 Programming

Using Trolltech's Qt you can build industrial-strength C++ applications that run natively on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, and embedded Linux without source code changes. Now, two Trolltech insiders have written a start-to-finish guide to getting outstanding results with the latest version of Qt: Qt 4.3.

Customer Reviews (20)

Without a doubt the best place to start with Qt
This book is fantastic, probably the best programming book I have ever read. I didn't even know c/c++ when I started reading (Java developer), but lo! and behold, there is an appendix for Java/c# developers to teach them how to use c++. I have read the book cover to cover and had absolutely no problems understanding any of the concepts in the book. I didn't need to reread anything. I am not sure what some of the other reviewers are talking about; maybe it is because I am familiar with Swing and .Net gui development and the concepts are basically the same. The parts in particular about slots and signals mentioned below I felt was done extremely well. I don't know how other programmers learn, but I learn by seeing some code in action then piecing together what it does line by line. If that isn't how you learn, I would get a different book.

This book is organized like this,

brief intro to a topic
code example of topic
line/group of lines by line explanation of code. Here they explain both the big and little pictures, "signals are used for ... and here is how you connect them in the code... here are some reasons to use signals... etc"
brief outro of a topic

I really can't say how perfect this book is, it is perfect. I went from not knowing c++ to writing professional looking apps in a weekend. I am not saying that will be the case for everyone (obviously look at the other guy's review, sounds like he couldn't figure out how to compile his code...). Keep in mind, as I've mentioned I have been programming for years in Swing and .Net, so I would definitely say I had a head start for understanding the concepts which Qt was built on.

P.S. Qt is pronounced "cute".

Great Jump Start
I've recently had a need to create some cross-platform applications and decided to look at Qt. While the Qt web site provides a great deal of information, I found this text to be a very readable way to quickly come up to speed on creating applications with Qt. Summerfield's prose moves the reader quickly from point to point with a series of short example programs and detailed breakdowns of hows and whys. I also own copies of other Summerfield books, and I've quite enjoyed the rapid learning experience they provide. The Python books (Learning Python / Programming Python / Programming in Python 3) provide more than enough detail for the experienced developer and gently take the novice forward as well. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Advanced Qt Programming book to continue to dive deeper into Qt development.

Great introduction for advanced programmers
If you have never developped GUI applications using object oriented techniques I would reccommend you stay away from this book it jumps into the details too quickly.
Try Foundations of Qt® Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source) instead. Sooner or later, you'll have to have this book, though, to get you to the next level. There seems to be room for yet another book which discusses the organisation of the Qt libraries.
But if you have experience in other frameworks (like .NET) then this can be a very good book. The style is very tight, with plenty of sample code, and you can get many applications going by just following the code and adapting it to your needs. I got my windowing application with menus and toolbars in an evening by just following a chapter in this book.
It is not a reference book, but it is closer to that than the other books I have seen. Still the Qt Reference is good.

I'm surprised that some other reviewer said that Qt is disorganised compared to Java. Maybe it's because I'm thinking of my experiences with Java a long time ago, but I remember thinking that Java Libraries were all over the place. However C++ is a very complicated language, and I guess Java is much easier to get into.

A nice companion to the Qt Assistant
This review is based on the first printing June 2006.Qt has notched up some minor versions since that, but for the purposes of this evaluation that makes little difference. C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 is divided into three numbered sections, Basic,Intermediate and Advanced.In total it is comprised of 21 chapters covering topics from the venerable "hello world", via common GUI elements, graphics, XML, databases to internationalization and multithreaded programming. Many of the elements needed to put together a fully fledged application are given the first and basic coverage.The book has a very nice form factor and can easily be read in bed or brought along if you are traveling.I find the language used very comprehensible and "light" in a positive sense.There is quite an abundance of code snippets to examplify things.You may or may not like that.However, code is after all what it all boils down to so for me that was fine.Also, it is good to get introduced to c++/Qt oriented code.If you end up working with Qt one thing that you will be doing is to browse the sourcecode of Qt hunting for techniques and solutions.Therefore, being able to quickly read and understand C++ the Qt way is a good skill to have, and one that you might as well start to learn reading the book.I have read most parts of the book more than once.However, my best experience was with chapter 18 "Multithreading".I needed to implement a particular part of the application I was working on as a multithreaded piece.I was able to "lift" all necessary ingredients from chapter 18 and directly into a nicely working piece (that has kept me happy for more than two years after).However, you should keep in mind that the book is only an introductory text even if it has the "intermediate" and "advanced" parts.So you might say that the "Advanced" part is really an introduction to some advanced Qt topics from a very basic level.At least one of the authors of the book (Jasmin Blanchette and Mark Summerfield) has played a major role in creating the documentation for Qt, naming of classes etc.In my opinion the Qt naming scheme in conjunction with the documentation using theQt Assistant is quite fantastic.If you can guess a name for what you are trying to do and type in in the assistant you will most likely find that is the name used by Qt. But at first you need a lightweight introduction and the book is a very nice basic introduction to Qt for someone that seriously wants to or has to work with Qt. You need at least a passing knowledge of object programming to benefit from the book.In that case you will read through this book in a few hours and it fits in your travel pack.It will arm you with a certain overview that is indispensable as you hit Qt hard later on.It does have a couple of appendixes too.One concerns installation.That should be a breeze by now anyway.The other is an introduction to C++ for Java and C# programmers. If you are looking for a much more advanced text, one that you can use to architect that serious application related stuff in depth you should buy "An introduction to design patterns in C++ with Qt 4" by Alan and Paul Ezust along with the book by Blanchette and Summerfield.

OO problems
I realize its difficult to make examples that appeal to everybody. This book have some very good example ideas, but often lack in execution. Having spent the last few years with Java & C# it annoys me a lot that C++ programmers still continue to place a lot of initialization code into main(). In this book, eg. in chapter 5 the authors creates a custom plotter widget, that would be very useful as an example if it wasn't half made. Remember that Qt is OO and then you don't require the user to modify the class initialization in order to use the class. Every class needs to be able to stand on its own and initializations come in the constructor.

Like a previous reviewer I would also like to see a Qt book that doesn't follow the exact same topic layout as the official manual, variety is always good.

I'd like to end with saying that this is good book, however there is a bit too much information in some of the lengthy examples. If you manage to get through the chapters though, I'm sure you're well set up for a job as a Qt programmer. ... Read more

Product Description
With Advanced iOS 4 Programming, developers have the expert guidance they need to create amazing applications for Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Inside, veteran mobile developer Dr. Maher Ali begins with a foundation introduction to Objective C and Cocoa Touch programming, and then guides readers through building apps with Apple's iPhone SDK 4 – including coverage of the major categories of new APIs and building apps for the new Apple iPad.

This book concentrates on illustrating GUI concepts programmatically, allowing readers to fully appreciate the complete picture of iOS 4 development without relying on Interface Builder. In addition, Interface Builder is covered in several chapters.

Advanced iOS 4 Programming delves into more advanced topics going beyond the basics of iOS 4 development, providing comprehensive coverage that will help you get your apps to the App Store quicker.

Key features include:

• Objective-C programming language and runtime
• Interface Builder
• Building advanced mobile user interfaces
• Collections
• Cocoa Touch
• Core Animation and Quartz 2D
• Model-view-controller (MVC) designs
• Developing for the iPad
• Grand Central Dispatch
• Parsing XML documents using SAX, DOM, and TouchXML
• Working with the Map Kit API
• Remote and Local Push Notification
• Blocks (closures) in Objective-C
• Building advanced location-based applications
• Developing database applications using the SQLite engine
• GameKit framework

Customer Reviews (2)

This is NOT the book for iOS 4
simply put, this book's author just add some small staffs and said it is a new edition featured iOS 4. Don't trust him.
In this book, there is nothing talking about the key features of iOS 4, which made it useless for the development for iOS 4. Go and buy previous edition if you want to lean some basics for iOS development and it would be much cheaper.
I strongly recommended those who want to learn iOS 4 development to look at Apple's official documents, which would provide the best guidelines for new features in iOS 4 such as multitask. I have read 3 new books covering iOS 4, none of them covers sufficient iOS features, and this book is the worst because it doesn't cover iOS 4 feature at all.

Excellent book
I'm just starting writing iPhone apps, and while I have 25 years of experience with C and C++ programming, I'm new to both Objective C and the iOS environment. I was a little leery about buying a book online without reviews, but I got lucky with this one. I've read one other highly rated iOS book that explains in details many "recipes" for things you might want to do in an app, but was weak on explaining why things are done in a certain way and left me confused when I started writing my own apps. I've only read a few chapters of the book, but the author does an excellent job of explaining not just what, but why. As an example, the author suggests not using Interface Builder. His point is that beginners should pay attention to the small details so they can learn what is really going on, while experts often have dynamic UIs that can't use Interface Builder anyway. The first chapters do a great job of explaining important iOS features such as protocols, properties, memory management, errors, exceptions, etc. in a way that I actually understand how they work in detail.

*** Update *** After reading this book a little more, there is one thing that is a little disappointing to me. It is sold as an iOS 4 book, but there is very little information about new features of iOS 4. I'm working on an app that involves mapping, and there is no discussion of background services or map overlays, nor does it seem to talk about how to prepare your app for going into and out of the background. This is quite disappointing to me. The iPad section is also quite small. Other than that, I still find that the author does a good job of explaining the process of developing iPhone apps in a way that I actually feel like I am learning. ... Read more

Product Description

HTML5 is here, and with it, web applications take on a power, ease, scalability, and responsiveness like never before. In this book, developers will learn how to use the latest cutting-edge HTML5 web technology—available in the most recent versions of modern browsers—to build web applications with unparalleled functionality, speed, and responsiveness.

• Explains how you can create real-time HTML5 applications that tap the full potential of modern browsers
• Provides practical, real-world examples of HTML5 features in action
• Shows which HTML5 features are supported in current browsers
• Covers all the new HTML5 APIs to get you up to speed quickly with HTML5

What you’ll learn

• How the HTML5 specification has evolved
• How to develop cutting-edge web applications using new HTML5 features like WebSockets, Geolocation, Web Storage, Canvas, and Audio and Video.
• Which features are available in browsers today

Who is this book for?

Customer Reviews (2)

Good and bad
Good because it teach what the title write, bad because it didnt use proper example. like the chapter creating HTML5 Offline Web Applications, where it use the html5 geolocation, localstroge, and offline api. it didnt give us the server side code that process the data, and the geolocation url that this book use was [..], god, example.net? pretty funny.

Rated "PPP" - Powerful, Practical, and Progressive
Peter Lubbers, Brian Albers, Ric Smith, and Frank Salim put together and excellent resource for powerful yet practical HTML5 code that can be used NOW. The book refutes the myth that HTML5 will not be usable until 2022 by going on and showing you how to use it today! By leveraging API's that have common browser support the effort is not purely academic. Although the code is targeted for a more advanced audience, an adept user will be able to glean plenty of information from the examples. The book answered many questions I had about the emerging HTML5 standards, and gave me some new techniques to implement. I recommend this book for anyone experienced with HTML who wants to start using HTML5 now. ... Read more

Product Description
This solid foundation in the basics of C++ programming will allow readers to create efficient, elegant code ready for any production environment. KEY TOPICS: Introduction to Computers, Programs, and C++; Elementary Programming; Selections; Loops; Function Basics; Advanced Function Features; Single-Dimensional Arrays; Multidimensional Arrays; Objects and Classes; Class Design; Pointers and Dynamic Memory Management; Templates and Vectors; File I/O; Operator Overloading; Inheritance and Polymorphism; Exception Handling; Recursion; Algorithm Efficiency; Sorting; Linked Lists, Stacks, and Queues. The following bonus chapters are on the book’s Web site: Binary Search Trees; STL Containers; STL Algorithms; Graphs and Applications; Weighted Graphs and Applications; AVL Trees and Splay Trees. MARKET: Ideal for beginning programmers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lots of typos
This book does some things very well, and others not very good at all. It relies more on examples to teach you than it does actually teaching you with the text, which is nice if you're in the classroom, but not so much if you're trying to teach yourself. Some concepts are also skimmed over, which gave me the impression that this would be a nice book for someone who already has a general idea of what they're doing, but not an absolute beginner.

Overall, I think it's a pretty good book, but to really understand C++ programming, I think other books would be needed.

My biggest beef with this book is the number of typos. I am using this book in a class and in many of our homework assignments from the book we have found errors in the text. So, like I said, in the classroom this might be fine, but if you are trying to figure out some of the programming exercises on your own, you might not know an error/typo when you see it.

Great Book
This is a great book for learning how to program with C++. It has a lot of good examples and explanations in both code and plain english. This is exactly what I needed for my class and am happy with my purchase.

Introduction to Programming with C++ -- Good but expensive!
Dr Liang style of presentation is great, it allows even novice programmers to follow what's being done. I bought this book after being impressed by Dr. Liang's other book (Introduction to Java Programming 2nd edition). I thought this book(C++) will be as rich in content as the Java book, but i was slightly dissapointed.This book has about 671 pages of material while the Java book had over 1200 pages. My point here is the size of the material did not merit the price, I feel the price should have been lower than that of the Java book.

Some of the examples in this book are the same illustrations used in Java Programming book. If you have Dr. Liang's Java book i think you should look at other C++ book that are cheaper and richer in content than this one.However if you have Liang's Java book you can use the two to learn the similarities between the C++ and the Java programming languages.

This is a great book, though. I give it 4/5.

Introduction to Programming with C++ (2nd Edition) ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (22)

Alright
This book is pretty good as far as AS 3.0 books go. It says it's not meant for people who don't have any programming experience at all, so you should know that. It's a great book for learning some AS3 and making the transition from making games in AS2 to AS3. However, the book does have several large flaws that make it A)Rather hard for inexperienced people to use, and B)A kind of crappy book in general.

The first of the two big flaws is that the book makes it almost impossible to follow along and make the game it describes while reading it. It constantly changes the script it already told you to write to make it 'better' instead of just telling you how to do it properly in the first place. This in of itself isn't too big of a deal, because you could make the case that doing this helps you learn better. What really turns the code organization into a large flaw though, is that once it starts again with the next step in scripting, it usually doesn't tell you where to begin putting the script in again. The only reason I could follow the author and figure out where the code should go was because I already knew AS2.

The other major flaw is that the games he uses to teach you AS3 suck at the start. No one wants to learn how to make a matching game for 4 year olds. The games get better as you go on, becoming more action oriented after the first few, but considering the first few games are most likely too complex for quite a few people to be able to follow to the end, quite a few people might never get to make some decent games with this book.

While these flaws don't have to be a deal breaker, don't expect this book to teach you everything you need to know without some frustrations and several kiddie games no one should be all that proud of making.

Very Good, but not for an inexperienced programmer
This is a very good book to learn Flash game programming. It covers a number of different game types - card games, word games, arcade games, platform games. However, it is not for the beginner programmer. You need a solid understanding of object-oriented programming to really appreciate this book. You don't need to know Actionscript to use this book, you just need a good background in a modern object-oriented programming language such as java or c#.

It also helps to have some experience with the Flash development environment but it is not absolutely essential.
I learned quite a bit from this book and keep it on my desk as a reference. I am very happy with this purchase.

Unfortunately Has Limited Value
I'm currently taking a Flash game development course at our community college and I thought this book would be a great supplement. I didn't really know what to look for in an Actionscript app development book (I have other reference-style books for both Flash and Actionscript). The reviews seemed great, so I bought AS3 Game University.

I worked through the first three chapters and really did learn quite a few useful things. I hit chapter four and continued to dutifully type out all the code and carefully read the narrative as I went. At the end of the second game in that chapter, I realized that we're not learning *how* to make games anymore. There is exactly *one* game tutorial in the whole book that goes through the game making process--creating elements, testing, making things work, testing, adjusting and changing things, more testing...

Literally the rest of the book is a section-by-section examination of Rosenzweig's *completed* games. This really has little value toward learning to *make* games. Games (I've learned) are made in small steps that build upon and advance earlier steps until the completed game is realized.

Unfortunately, Rosenzweig's readers are left out of the loop. Rosenzweig no doubt went through the create, test, add, test, tweak, test process while making the games in the book, but he doesn't really teach any of that through the vast majority of the book. Nobody bypasses the development cycle and simply codes an entire game beginning to end.

Sure, there are some things to be learned by examining these games, but you're not going to learn the game-making *process* by poring over finished code. Without knowing the process, you can't take the next step into the realm of truly creating games of your own.

I'm not sure for whom this book is appropriate. Beginners can learn some things from the first one-third of the book, but they will quickly be abandoned. More advanced users may be able to use the rest for an odd reference, I suppose. Either way, this isn't sold as a reference book, it's sold as a how-to-make-Actionscript-games book. For an excellent book that teaches Actionscript as well as the game building process, look into Foundation Game Design with Flash (Foundations).

I really wanted to like AS3 Game University, but it let me down.

Overwhelming and far to fast-paced.
Sadly, this book was a disappointment.I am new to ActionScript, and was assured in the first chapter of the book that it would not be a problem, but it was.I do have experience with Object Oriented programming, and in those respects, it was easy to understand, and that is not the problem.

The problem with the book is the pace of delivery.I was QUICKLY overwhelmed (couldn't make it all the way through chapter two) with the book, and gave up before I could get very far.Inconsistencies with explanations, lack of explanations, overall poor delivery.Case in point can be found when describing how to hard-code curved lines.There was no explanation of what parameters the function took (all that was mentioned was "It took me a while to get this right").Yet right after throwing that at me, I learned (thoroughly) how to hard-code squares and squares with rounded corners (thoroughly, and well done).Another example would be with event handlers.I thought I had it down upon the initial explanation, but quickly found myself far overwhelmed with so many event:* occurrences that went un-explained, and I'd never seen before.It seemed that as soon as I finally learned how to x, I'd get y and z shoved in my face and I'd have to spend another hour trying to grasp how to use y and z.

I read in a comment posted by Gary on this book that he prefers to go through piece by piece and explain everything, unfortunately I don't see it.What I did see was ten or so lines of code, but only a third of these ever got explained.He would cover the main points, but I don't ever recall reading how or why he would use the rest.It grew tiring trying to spend an hour flipping back in the pages to try and see if he ever did explain the parts he breezed through, only to never find a solid explanation.

Overall, if you have a solid grasp of ActionScript, this shouldn't be a hard book to get into, but if you are looking to start developing with ActionScript, this book is not for you, many parts will leave you sitting there questioning how he came upon what he did, and you'll find yourself playing the matching game of trying to see if you stand a chance at having your source code even similar in layout to the FLA files provided, without looking at it first.

The Book
This book taught me not only how to build games using ActionScript 3.0 but how to build games (deal with collisions, animations....) The very best thing about it is that you learn ActionScript making games.
I had some prior experience coding in C an C++.
Really recommended it. ... Read more

Product Description
IMPORTANT: The new & expanded edition of this book is now available on Amazon. Please click on the author's name or search for: "The Big Book of NLP, Expanded: 350+ Techniques, Patterns & Strategies of Neuro Linguistic Programming".

At last, a concise encyclopedia of NLP patterns!

The Big Book Of NLP contains more than 200 patterns & strategies written in an easy, step-by-step format. The methods include a full array of the fundamentals that every practitioner needs, such as the Swish pattern and The Phobia Cure, as well as advanced and unique patterns, such as The Nested Loops method and Learning Strategies. Many of these techniques were never published before and cannot be found elsewhere.

Perhaps more important, and unlike most other NLP books and programs, the patterns are written with great care and testing to ensure that they are clear and can be followed immediately. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Great Start
Found this book to be a great start to NLP and was able to use the information in the book straight away to make a change in my life.Excellent also as a resource that you are able to go back to when you need it.Great Value!

Extensive Techniques, Poorly Organized
Great material, many useful techniques, worthy reading ... many many typos which creates a feeling that this is not a professional reference. The lack of an index and the lack of basic NLP glossary and guide greatly lowers the quality, effectiveness and potential of this book. It prevents one from reaching for it. I tend to look at other NLP books with a an index. With a few changes this book could be a bonafide great asset to a professional physicians library, however as is I would look for it used at best. A new book at this price should employ the advantages of an editor and proof reader.

Impossible to navigate
This book has some useful information in it, but I wished I'd never bought it because finding what you want is a nightmare. I just spend 10 minutes looking for some info and eventually gave up. As a life coach and NLP master practitioner I often need information quickly and this book (unless you get really lucky) cannot deliver that.

If you are going to read it from cover to cover, fine. If you want it as a reference work, forget it.

Sorely needs an index
As other reviewers have noted, this book is poorly produced and amateurish in its presentation. On that basis alone, it deserves a one-star review. But because it contains quite a bit of good (if cursory) information, I'm giving it three stars.

One result of the book's amateurish presentation is repeated frustration for the reader. For example, the author refers the reader to a passage on "state interruption" but doesn't give a page number reference, and the book has no index. Eventually, after poring over the pages-long table of contents, the reader may locate the passage, but only if s/he is alert enough to notice that in the table of contents it's referred to as material on "state break."

The author reports that a second edition is in the works. Let's hope it includes an index. Readers should not have to work this hard.

Good reference
This is a good reference if you already know NLP, don't expect to learn NLP from it.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (7)

A good teorical review of the Linux System calls and the GLIB functions.
You need some background to get a real approach from this book...
Good to get some tips on how the system works an why, really good explanations for all the points exposed, isn't a "Linux Specific" book, mostly based on POSIX and when not is well distinguished, also include some peculiar calls from other OS.

The book truly is for all developers
I have been programming C/C++ professionally since 1986 and was surprised at how much I've learned in the first few chapters.

One of the programs that I've been working on is an I/O intensive conversion from a legacy platform to Linux.The original code took about 8 minutes per gigabyte of data to process.I had worked and squeezed every trick I could think of and got the application down to 10 seconds per gigabyte.From what I learned in just the first few chapters, I was able to knock an additional 3% off the application performance.(It has been mentioned that I should state that I had been unaware of fread_unlocked and fwrite_unlocked before the book ... see comments for more detailed discussion).

When I finish the book, I fully intend on passing it over to one of our junior members so that they can benefit from it.

Not worth money
If you expect the quality of the author's other books from this book, you'll be disappointed. It just lists system calls and their descriptions that you can find from man pages without any serious examples. It doesn't provide any insight or thorough coverage you can find from other books such as Steven's book (Advance Programmng in Unix environment).

From the book title, I expected the author's insight over interface between user space program and kernel but it just looks like that it copied man pages in some order. If you want to learn sysetm programming in Linux environment,look for other books, seriously.

Easy to read-Your first step into system programming
Up-side
Its a very easily readable book.
Unlike other heavy weight books on system programming in this book code is very simple. All the codes are on one place no extra header files.
So if you are new to system-kernel programming, like my self, this is the book for you.
I did have problem reading kernel development books("Linux device driver" Linux kernel Programming). But after reading this book so many things are in perspective now. I cold do advance study in kernel development.

Down Side.
Some light/sweet projects could have made this book the best.
Some socket programming examples would be nice.

a disappointment
nothing really useful in this book, too shallow to do anything with it, i like his other books though, but this one certainly is not good, if at all. ... Read more