Programming Books - Page 19

Fluency with Information Technology: Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities (3rd Edition)

Lawrence Snyder

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

good vision -- bad follow-through 1 out of 5 stars.
9 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I'm just now finishing up a semester teaching a CS0 class from this text. In a nutshell, I am teaching the same course next term, and I will not use this book again. Let me add a few useful things for the reader before I explain why.

First, there are essentially two classes of texts out there for CS0 classes: (1) surveys of computer science qua science and (2) surveys of the information technology field. Snyder's book most definitely falls in the second category, although there are several chapters devoted to JavaScript.

Second, if you're going to use this text, make sure you get the online resources, especially the prepared labs and the 6-page PDF reference for JavaScript. The labs are detailed, deep and very useful, and the reference is well-organized and easy to use.

In fact, I did not have a chance to review this text before I adopted it for my course, and it was the labs (along with a solid-looking table of contents, credentials from the National Research Council, and a single 5-star review here) that convinced me to use it. I do hope this review will discourage others from doing the same.

My problem with this text is, in a word, depth. Or rather the breathtaking lack thereof. It is organized coherently enough, but time and time again throughout this term, I found the treatment of various topics in the book so shallow that I had to spend almost double time filling in enough details to make things coherent to my students.

The result was an absolutely enormous amount of work on my part, finding supplementary readings, putting extra care into lectures, writing extensive tutorial materials for the assignments, and so on. At every step of the way, I felt that I was fighting the text, rather than drawing from it.

Some of the worst habits in the book's writing include:

*_Long_, drawn-out analogies for ideas that are never given any other explanation, so that the "analogies" are completely devoid of context, and hence pointless. Invariably, such things serve only to muddy already-murky waters.

*Gross over-simplification of many concepts, so much so that it is nearly impossible for a student to develop any sense of the real-world ideas that made a technology worth adapting. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is in the chapter on encryption, which in its presentation of RSA pretends that only one public key (3, 55) is ever generated, and but then proceeds to give a "formula" for computing the private key, before devolving into the spectacular silliness of a quotation of Euler's Theorem that by this point might as well be in the original german for all the good it would do a student.

*Absolutely _awful_ problem sets. The few "exercises" that aren't just fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice review consist of short-answer problems that alternated between the trivial and the pointless, or combinations of the two. The "test banks" are no better. With almost no exceptions, they were questions I would consider insulting to a six-grader, let alone a classroom of college students.

The really strange thing about this is that the website for Snyder's own version of the course looks quite well organized and rigorous. In fact, the look of his class from that site was one of the reasons I selected this text. Some of this is the use of those lab assignments I mentioned above, which are quite nice. And Snyder's work with the NRC clearly indicates a fair amount of thought went into the design of this work.

The only explanation I can offer for the disconnect is that he has simply been unsuccessful in putting into writing some of the apparent magic of the course from which this text arose.

But the book does not pull it off, all my self-consciousness about armchair-quarterbacking aside. Good work with NRC report, but the book from that effort is still to be written.

Editorial Review:

Fluency with Information Technology: Skills, Concepts, and Capabilities, Third Edition, equips readers who are already familiar with computers, the Internet, and the World Wide Web with a deeper understanding of the broad capabilities of technology. Through a project-oriented learning approach that uses examples and realistic problem-solving scenarios, Larry Snyder teaches readers to navigate information technology independently and become effective users of today's resources, forming a foundation of skills they can adapt to their personal and career goals as future technologies emerge.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)

Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts

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Total reviews: 138 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

As the application of object technology-particularly the Java programming language-has become commonplace, a new problem has emerged to confront the software development community. Significant numbers of poorly designed programs have been created by less-experienced developers, resulting in applications that are inefficient and hard to maintain and extend. Increasingly, software system professionals are discovering just how difficult it is to work with these inherited, "non-optimal" applications. For several years, expert-level object programmers have employed a growing collection of techniques to improve the structural integrity and performance of such existing software programs. Referred to as "refactoring," these practices have remained in the domain of experts because no attempt has been made to transcribe the lore into a form that all developers could use. . .until now. In Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Software, renowned object technology mentor Martin Fowler breaks new ground, demystifying these master practices and demonstrating how software practitioners can realize the significant benefits of this new process.

With proper training a skilled system designer can take a bad design and rework it into well-designed, robust code. In this book, Martin Fowler shows you where opportunities for refactoring typically can be found, and how to go about reworking a bad design into a good one. Each refactoring step is simple-seemingly too simple to be worth doing. Refactoring may involve moving a field from one class to another, or pulling some code out of a method to turn it into its own method, or even pushing some code up or down a hierarchy. While these individual steps may seem elementary, the cumulative effect of such small changes can radically improve the design. Refactoring is a proven way to prevent software decay.

In addition to discussing the various techniques of refactoring, the author provides a detailed catalog of more than seventy proven refactorings with helpful pointers that teach you when to apply them; step-by-step instructions for applying each refactoring; and an example illustrating how the refactoring works. The illustrative examples are written in Java, but the ideas are applicable to any object-oriented programming language.

Mastering Regular Expressions

Jeffrey Friedl

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Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Regular expressions are an extremely powerful tool for manipulating text and data. They are now standard features in a wide range of languages and popular tools, including Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, VB.NET and C# (and any language using the .NET Framework), PHP, and MySQL.

If you don't use regular expressions yet, you will discover in this book a whole new world of mastery over your data. If you already use them, you'll appreciate this book's unprecedented detail and breadth of coverage. If you think you know all you need to know about regular expressions, this book is a stunning eye-opener.

As this book shows, a command of regular expressions is an invaluable skill. Regular expressions allow you to code complex and subtle text processing that you never imagined could be automated. Regular expressions can save you time and aggravation. They can be used to craft elegant solutions to a wide range of problems. Once you've mastered regular expressions, they'll become an invaluable part of your toolkit. You will wonder how you ever got by without them.

Yet despite their wide availability, flexibility, and unparalleled power, regular expressions are frequently underutilized. Yet what is power in the hands of an expert can be fraught with peril for the unwary. Mastering Regular Expressions will help you navigate the minefield to becoming an expert and help you optimize your use of regular expressions.

Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition, now includes a full chapter devoted to PHP and its powerful and expressive suite of regular expression functions, in addition to enhanced PHP coverage in the central "core" chapters. Furthermore, this edition has been updated throughout to reflect advances in other languages, including expanded in-depth coverage of Sun's java.util.regex package, which has emerged as the standard Java regex implementation.Topics include:

• A comparison of features among different versions of many languages and tools
• How the regular expression engine works
• Optimization (major savings available here!)
• Matching just what you want, but not what you don't want
• Sections and chapters on individual languages

Written in the lucid, entertaining tone that makes a complex, dry topic become crystal-clear to programmers, and sprinkled with solutions to complex real-world problems, Mastering Regular Expressions, Third Edition offers a wealth information that you can put to immediate use.

Reviews of this new edition and the second edition:

"There isn't a better (or more useful) book available on regular expressions."
--Zak Greant, Managing Director, eZ Systems

"A real tour-de-force of a book which not only covers the mechanics of regexes in extraordinary detail but also talks about efficiency and the use of regexes in Perl, Java, and .NET...If you use regular expressions as part of your professional work (even if you already have a good book on whatever language you're programming in) I would strongly recommend this book to you."
--Dr. Chris Brown, Linux Format

"The author does an outstanding job leading the reader from regex novice to master. The book is extremely easy to read and chock full of useful and relevant examples...Regular expressions are valuable tools that every developer should have in their toolbox. Mastering Regular Expressions is the definitive guide to the subject, and an outstanding resource that belongs on every programmer's bookshelf. Ten out of Ten Horseshoes."
--Jason Menard, Java Ranch

Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Books for Professionals by Professionals)

Gary Mak

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Spring addresses most aspects of Java/Java EE application development and offers simple solutions to them. By using Spring, you will be lead to use industry best practices to design and implement your applications. The releases of Spring 2.x have added many improvements and new features to the 1.x versions. Spring Recipes: A Problem–Solution Approach focuses on the latest Spring 2.5 features for building enterprise Java applications.

Spring Recipes covers Spring 2.5 from basic to advanced, including Spring IoC container, Spring AOP and AspectJ, Spring data access support, Spring transaction management, Spring Web and Portlet MVC, Spring testing support, Spring support for remoting, EJB, JMS, JMX, E–mail, scheduling, and scripting languages. This book also introduces several common Spring Portfolio projects that will bring significant value to your application development, including Spring Security, Spring Web Flow, and Spring Web Services.

The topics in this book are introduced by complete and real–world code examples that you can follow step by step. Instead of abstract descriptions on complex concepts, you will find live examples in this book. When you start a new project, you can consider copying the code and configuration files from this book, and then modifying them for your needs. This can save you a great deal of work over creating a project from scratch.

What you’ll learn

• Installing the Spring framework and Spring IDE, using the Spring IoC container and the Spring application context.

• Understanding AOP concepts, using classic and new Spring AOP, integrating Spring with AspectJ, and load–time weaving aspects.
• Using Spring to simplify data access (with JDBC, Hibernate, and JPA) and manage transactions programmatically and declaratively.
• Building web applications and portlets with Spring Web MVC and Portlet MVC, and integrating Spring with Struts, JSF, and DWR.
• Understanding the unit testing and integration testing concepts, and Spring’s unit and integration testing support (on JUnit 3.8, JUnit 4, and TestNG).
• Using Spring’s support for remoting technologies (RMI, Hessian, Burlap, and HTTP Invoker), EJB, JMS, JMX, E-mail, scheduling, and scripting languages.
• Understanding security concepts (authentication, authorization, and access control), and securing web applications using Spring Security.
• Managing complex web application page flows using Spring Web Flow, and integrating Spring Web Flow with JSF.
• Exposing contract–last web services using XFire, and developing contract–first web services using Spring Web Services.



Who is this book for?

This book is for Java developers who would like to gain hands–on experience rapidly on Java/Java EE development using the Spring framework. If you are already a developer using Spring in your projects, you can also use this book as a reference, and you’ll find the code examples very useful.

You don’t need much Java EE experience to read this book. However, it assumes that you know the basics of object–oriented programming with Java (e.g., creating a class/interface, implementing an interface, extending a base class, running a main class, setting up your classpath, and so on). It also assumes you have basic knowledge on web and database concepts and know how to create dynamic web pages and query databases with SQL statements.

The Non-Designer's Web Book, 3rd Edition

Robin Williams, John Tollett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Out of date 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This book is seriously out of date for modern web design and development.

Web book 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I was required to buy this book for a grad course. It is to the point and easy to understand.

An OK book 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is OK for someone who might be trying to teach another the principals of webpage design. I had to buy it for a graduate level textbook and didn't see much use for it. It might be better used in the K-12 area, not college level.

Editorial Review:

If you think web design is beyond your reach, or if you want your existing web site to look more professional, this thoroughly updated classic is the place to turn! In these pages, best-selling authors Robin Williams and John Tollett share the creative ideas, useful techniques, and basic design principles that are essential to great Web design-all in the context of the most current technology, software, and standards. Throughout, the authors' aim is to inspire you and spark your creativity rather than sedate you with pages and pages of code. To that end, you'll find loads of real-world examples, interesting illustrations, and the simple instructions you need to implement the techniques and concepts described in these pages.

Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

Charles Wyke-Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 91 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Cascading Style Sheets enable you to rapidly create web designs that can be shared by hundreds or even thousands of web pages. It accelerates development cycles by centralizing text and layout information for easy editing and updates. This book teaches you everything you need to know to start using CSS in your web development work, from the basics of marking up your content and styling text, through the creation of multi-column page layouts without the use of tables. Learn to create interface components, such as drop-down menus, navigation links, and animated graphical buttons, using only CSS  (no JavaScript required). Discover how to design code that works on the latest standard-compliant browsers, such as IE7 and current versions of Firefox, Safari, and Opera, while working around the quirks of the older ones. With a mastery of CSS, your web design capabilities will move to a new level, and everything you need to know to get started and build your skills is right here in this book. You’ll be stylin’ in no time!

HTML, XHTML, and CSS All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Andy Harris, Chris McCulloh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Want to build a killer Web site? Want to make it easy to keep your site up to date? You'll need to know how CSS, HTML, and XHTML work together. HTML, XHTML, and CSS All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies makes that easy too! These eight minibooks get you started, explain standards, and help you connect all the dots to create sites with pizzazz.

This handy, one-stop guide catches you up on XHTML basics and CSS fundamentals. You'll learn how to work with Positionable CSS to create floating elements, margins, and multi-column layouts, and you'll get up to speed on client-side programming with JavaScript. You'll also get the low-down on server side programming with PHP, creating a database with MySQL, and using Ajax on both client and server sides. You'll find out how to:

• Use templates and validators
• Manage information with lists and tables
• Turn lists of links into button bars
• Add style color and borders
• Create variables for data
• Add motion with basic DOM animation
• Work with arrays
• Add Flash functionality with AFLAX
• Build and manage a multipage site
• Choose and run your own server

You don't need expensive or complicated software or a super-powerful computer to build a Web site that does all sorts of amazing things. All you need is a text editor and the clear, step-by-step guidance you'll find in HTML, XHTML, and CSS All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

Spring in Action

Craig Walls, Ryan Breidenbach

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 57 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Spring in Action 2E is an expanded, completely updated second edition of the best selling Spring in Action. Written by Craig Walls, one of Manning's best writers, this book covers the exciting new features of Spring 2.0, which was released in October 2006.

Spring is a lightweight container framework that represents an exciting way to build enterprise components with simple Java objects. By employing dependency injection and AOP, Spring encourages loosely coupled code and enables plain-old Java objects with capabilities that were previously reserved for EJBs. This book is a hands-on, example-driven exploration of the Spring Framework. Combining short code snippets and an ongoing example developed throughout the book, it shows readers how to build simple and efficient J2EE applications, how to solve persistence problems, handle asynchronous messaging, create and consume remote services, build web applications, and integrate with most popular web frameworks. Readers will learn how to use Spring to write simpler, easier to maintain code so they can focus on what really matters-- critical business needs.

Spring in Action, 2E is for Java developers who are looking for ways to build enterprise-grade applications based on simple Java objects, without resorting to more complex and invasive EJBs. Even hard-core EJB users will find this book valuable as Spring in Action, 2E will describe ways to use EJB components alongside Spring. Software architects will also find Spring in Action, 2E useful as they assess and apply lightweight techniques prescribed by Spring. and learn how Spring can be applied at the various layers of enterprise applications.

Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

Dan Cederholm

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 107 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Bulletproof web design 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

What can i say ? this book is amazing , this book rocks . I feel iam reading interesting story , This is expected from writer like Dan Cederholm who worked for Google,MTV,Blogger,ODEO,ESPN . The book illustrate the bulletproof approach of every design tip by showing you the usual bad way and illustrate why it's unbulletproof so you must avoid it, then illustrate the bulletproof way step by step with figures and show the various solution of the specific problem and stick to the best practice , the illustration is easy to follow with real world projects and case studies , at the end of the book the writer build on the knowledge of every chapter in the book a bulletproof project using every technique learned from the previous chapters and that interested me alot , after all this book is suitable for beginners and professionals and should be in every web developer library due to the the great material in it .

Editorial Review:

No matter how visually appealing or content-packed a Web site may be, if it's not adaptable to a variety of situations and reaching the widest possible audience, it isn't really succeeding. In Bulletproof Web Desing, author and Web designer extraordinaire, Dan Cederholm outlines standards-based strategies for building designs that provide flexibility, readability, and user control--key components of every sucessful site. Each chapter starts out with an example of an unbulletproof site one that employs a traditional HTML-based approach which Dan then deconstructs, pointing out its limitations. He then gives the site a make-over using XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so you can see how to replace bloated code with lean markup and CSS for fast-loading sites that are accessible to all users. Finally, he covers several popular fluid and elastic-width layout techniques and pieces together all of the page components discussed in prior chapters into a single-page template.

Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme

Robert K. Wysocki

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Unlock your potential and achieve breakthrough performance in project management

If you're looking for a more robust approach to project management--one that recognizes the project environment and adapts accordingly--then this is the perfect resource. It not only guides you through the traditional methods, but also covers the adaptive and extreme approaches as well. You'll gain an in-depth understanding of each one and know exactly when and how to use them.

You'll also be introduced to the Adaptive Project Framework, which arms you with a new project management methodology. And with the help of two new case studies, you'll be able to put these ideas into practice and experience some of the contemporary nuances of projects.

This definitive guide to project management shows you how to:

• Take advantage of new variations on traditional project management methods, including risk assessment and control
• Decide the best method for managing specific types of projects by analyzing all of the pros and cons
• Apply the Adaptive Project Framework to the world of fast-paced, high-change, and complex projects
• Create a war room to successfully manage multiple team projects
• Determine how project portfolio management approaches can help companies achieve a greater return on investment
• Utilize all nine Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standards advocated by the Project Management Institute (PMI)