Product Description
This is THE guide to UNIX network programming APIs. Whether you write Web servers, client/server applications, or any other network software, you need to understand networking APIS-especially sockets in greater detail than ever before. You need UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, Third Edition. In this book, the Authors offer unprecedented, start-to-finish guidance on making the most of sockets, the de facto standard for UNIX network programming with APIs - as well as extensive coverage of the X/Open Transport Interface (XTI). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (27)

Best
I'm still reading this book, but this is the best one on the subject that I've found - very informative, explains in
a very concise, complete and clear way the semantics of the sockets' layer under Unix type OSes. Reading it, the
user will acquire the necessary knowledge, needed to understand the relations between protocol (TCP/IP/SCTP/...) implementation/details and the socket layer functionality.

A Fundamental Reference on IP Network Programming
If you are interested in UNIX network programming, this book is THE essential reference.

The writing is clear, comprehensive and interesting for what otherwise have been a very dry topic.

A must have for any developers library.

Mr Stevens is no longer with us, and he will be sorely missed.

Very Good Book
I bought this book for work.It left me with a good understanding of Multicast and Raw Sockets, the two subjects I was mostly interested in.

Comprehensive.
The Best series of books to learn Network programming from. The BEST in the world. Nothing comes close.

This is the one I have been looking for.
If you are reading this review you probably are looking for a comprehensive text on socket programming. Look no further. This is the One. You can stop reading reviews trying to find the perfect one and go hit the Add To Shopping Cart button with confidence. Detailed, comprehensive and clear. A favorite.
... Read more

Product Description
Learn all the basics of C# 3.0 from Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, a book that presents introductory information in an intuitive format. If you have no prior programming experience but want a thorough, easy-to-understand introduction to C# and Object Oriented Programming, this book is an ideal guide. Using the tutorials and hands-on coding examples, you can discover tried and true tricks of the trade, understand design concepts, employ debugging aids, and design and write C# programs that are functional and that embody safe programming practices. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Great for beginners
This book is a great place to start for both C# and Object Oriented Programming (OOP). I've been working steadily through the book using C# 2008 Express Edition (free from Microsoft, shockingly), and other than some errors that you'll have to work through (just apply your brain), you'll do well. I've tried other publishers books on programming and they all left me asleep. This one is outstanding. Just make sure you do the exercises at the end of each chapter and then try stuff on your own.

One other point: If you go to the Wrox Publishing programmer forums ([...]), Dr. Purdam (the author) actually answers questions about his book and C# programming. I find that truly amazing.

Great Book! Gets you programming right away!
Fantastic. I just completed reading this book and going through the exercises. I was already creating programs by the second chapter. Dr. Purdum has a very easy to follow, informative, and charasmatic way of getting the material across to the reader. This book explains how to do things and more importantly why. My company recently switched from only using T-SQL Stored Procedures to now creating C# programs to do the same functions. This book immensely helped, and has put me ahead of my peers. Highly recommended and you won't regret reading through this book! I just wish Dr Purdum wrote more on C# than just this book.

Not bad, but definitely for newbies
This was the textbook for a C# class in my college. I withdrew from the class after two weeks for reasons other than the textbook, mainly the instructor. Anyway, this is a good textbook for learning C#, but while the material is explained thoroughly and well, for me it was tedious, since I have several years of programming experience already and have already finished several other software classes recently. The author explains everything as if you don't have any previous software experience; so if you are already familiar with other languages, this book is probably not for you. I don't have another book to recommend in its place, but you should probably look elsewhere.

If you are new to software, it is probably a good fit for you.

The best IT book I have ever read
To be honest, I am a french IT engineer and english is not my native language so I sincerely apologize if I make mistakes while writing this review.
Despite this fact, I found that this book was amazing.
It explains clearly from scratch how to write serious programs using difficult concepts of object oriented programming.
This book is the perfect balance between theory and practice in order to understand perfectly OOP and C# language.
I have read dozens of IT books in my professional life but I need to admit that this book is a must.
Any beginning programmer who follow seriously each step of this book will be able to understand and use OOP and C#.
This book is from my opinion an excellent book for everybody : Beginners as experienced programmers who want to learn C#.
I need to congratulate Mr.Purdum for this masterpiece and I hope he will write another book which will go on building on the strong foundation of this book.
For example a real business software application described step by step would be a great asset for the whole C# community of programmers.
Anyway this book is really a must.

Great Intro
Great intro to C#3.0 Do need foundation in C# and/or programming. Some aspects are slow but overall, a good learning tool to start with ... Read more

Product Description
This beginning guide reviews HTML and also introduces you to using XHTML for the structure of a web page and cascading style sheets (CSS) for controlling how a document should appear on a web page. You?ll learn how to take advantage of the latest features of browsers while making sure that your pages still work in older, but popular, browsers. By incorporating usability and accessibility, you?ll be able to write professional-looking and well-coded web pages that use the latest technologies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Wonderful
This book is really good for us beginners.I recommend doing all the examples it tells you to do.I did even some of the examples shown, because the more I practice it, the easier it is to remember.A good book.

Should be your SECOND book on the topic
Anyone serious about learning web design should consider this book. It is a superb textbook, offering six chapters of solid (X)HTML education followed by excellent introductions to style sheets, design theory, and scripting. Used in conjunction with the free code download (available from the publisher's web site), it does exactly what it says on the tin.

That said, I would not recommend this book for absolute beginners or dabblers in web design. Simply put, it IS a textbook... the black and white illustrations are simply not sufficient to get a grasp of color, layout, and the like - you must do the end of chapter exercises. Further, the sequential instruction presented in the book hampers its use as a reference; it can answer "what does this tag do?" but not "how do I do that?"

Bottom line: if you have a little HTML experience and have already read a thin "newbie book" on the topic, then you are the ideal student for this excellent self-study course.

An excellent book...
This is an excellent book in order to learn actual web page design. It's really easy to follow by non-english speakers (like me, I'm spanish).

It has a lot of usefull information about HTML, CSS and general web design.

Highly recommended!!!

Programmer
I as a programmer think that this book is a productive book, the guy go over all the materials you need to learn step by step and smoothly.

Excellent - Informative
It's an excellent and informative book! It helped me very much to teach the item to a very "difficult audience"! ... Read more

Product Description

This third edition of the classic textbook in Optimization has been fully revised and updated. It comprehensively covers modern theoretical insights in this crucial computing area, and will be required reading for analysts and operations researchers in a variety of fields. The book connects the purely analytical character of an optimization problem, and the behavior of algorithms used to solve it. Now, the third edition has been completely updated with recent Optimization Methods. The book also has a new co-author, Yinyu Ye of California’s Stanford University, who has written lots of extra material including some on Interior Point Methods.

Customer Reviews (7)

A classic textbook in its second edition
This is a classic textbook with many sparklingly original ideas when it was first published in the early seventies. In the new edition the book is brought up to date with material on interior point methods, among others. The book covers both linear and nonlinear programming, and is written with mathematical rigor, but also with simple intuitive language. An excellent entry point to both linear and nonlinear programming.

Great deal! Quick shipping!!!
I received the book within one week. The book was brand new and I am very happy with the deal!

Good book , but consider a used copy!
Luenberger's optimization book is very good and well worth having.However, it should be noted that the "new" 2004 edition published by Springer-Verlag is nothing more than an exact reprint of the 1984 2nd edition that was formerly published by Addison-Wesley.Accordingly, a good used copy may be more worthwhile than an overpriced "new" one.

This is the fourth such case I have come across wherein a publisher chooses to engage in such misleading marketing practices.The other three are "Engineering Optimization - Methods and Applications" by Reklaitis (1983), "Hydraulic Control Systems" by Merrit (1967), and "Dynamic Systems" also by Luenberger (1979).All three are now being sold as new publications by Wiley (according to Amazon).I suspect there are many other examples as well.

The book is a Xerox
Looking from outside, the book seems very good. However, when you open the cover you are shocked by the press quality. It seems like the book just came from an illegal copy shop. Sometimes you can not read small indices in formulas. For a book having this context, a better press quality should be used. I could make a better copy with a copy machine.The paper quality is around average.

A book on mathematics that also an engineer can read
I have profitably used the book to apply constrained minimization procedures in the field of computational contact mechanics. I think it is not a secret that quite often books on mathematics are written frommatematicians for matematicians. Hence it is quite hard for engineers bothto read and to extract valuable information from them. With this respectthis book is a shining star. It presents the topics in a very precise butclear and understandable way. Moreover the notation also is the bestcompromise between coinciseness and clarity. Matematicians, please, look atthis book and follow such style; we engineer desperately need tocommunicate with you. ... Read more

Product Description
Is the universe actually a giant quantum computer? According to Seth Lloyd, the answer is yes.

All interactions between particles in the universe, Lloyd explains, convey not only energy but also information–in other words, particles not only collide, they compute. What is the entire universe computing, ultimately? “Its own dynamical evolution,” he says. “As the computation proceeds, reality unfolds.” Programming the Universe, a wonderfully accessible book, presents an original and compelling vision of reality, revealing our world in an entirely new light. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

a VERY interesting idea...
...and a very interesting book.SL does a fine job of explaining how classical computers (driven by bits) relate to quantum computers (driven by qubits); how quantum computing works (in theory for the most part, successful experimentation in this area being being quite modest at present); and how quantum computing relates to the quantum world.By the end of PtU, I had a decent grasp not only of why the universe should itself be thought of as a kind of vast (and ever expanding) computer but of how a universe-as-computer model of physics adds value to pre-existing models.Really fascinating stuff, and a deceptively 'easy' read.

Bridging cosmology and philosophy
Others have asked, how can a computer create itself?That question is no different than asking how the universe was created.We have no idea what preceded the Big Bang, and whether God created it or it came into being spontaneously is a 50-50 proposition.If the universe is a quantum computer, that still doesn't tell us how it came to be, but it does answer a lot of questions about its (quantum) mechanics and its cosmology--whether God exists or not.

I believe an answer that furthers our understanding of the possible connection between cosmology and philosophy lies in quantum computing as presented in Lloyd's book.And if God does exist, it would help us understand why we are here and what out ultimate fate might be.

In the book, he delves into the amazing power of quantum computers. Digital computers are but an abacus compared to them. But his most impressive point is that the universe would be indistinguishable from, or is, a quantum computer. It's a short step from there to the conclusion that it would answer most of the questions we pose about God such as, how could He know everything everywhere. Every quantum event that ever happened would have been recorded since the Big Bang. And if they were recorded, they can be retrieved at will. If God could not comprehend it all at once the bulk of what He was not using would be His subconscious. But I doubt that if He has the power of a universe size (or bigger?) quantum computer at His disposal, or as part of His (corpus?), that He would need a subconscious.

Understanding such capabilities, for us, would be as humanly impossible as understanding how something could have always been. But technically, it would still be explainable at some level, as in that we can understand what "always been" means, but we just can't fathom its implications.

One of my favorite movie quotes is from "Gladiator".In it Maximus says, "What we do in life, echoes in eternity".This would explain how.

And by the way, if God doesn't exist, we'd still have the same problem of trying to explain how a computer programmed itself as we do with how the universe created itself.There are some things for which we just have to acknowledge our ignorance; but that, on the other hand, doesn't stop us from searching, and learning.

Authorial vanity trumps expertise
I've always admired the notion (first promulgated by Voltaire?) that the true measure of intelligence is the ability to simultaneously comprehend two mutually contradictory ideas. So I tend to take a mellow approach to ideas that I disagree with. However, this book angered me, not because of its ideas, but because of its serious flaws.

The first serious flaw is that the author cannot keep his ego from seeping into the text. He regales us with triumphant tales of how he confounded his students with deep questions and then nobly revealed the true answers. Sheesh, man, why use the dialog approach using weaklings as your interlocutors? Pit yourself against somebody who can do more than behave as your straight man. Argue with yourself, if you have to! But presenting yourself as the all-knowing professor rubbed my fur the wrong way.

The problem of author vanity permeates the entire book. At no point does the author admit to uncertainty, or present two sides of a case, or even admit that anything he writes is controversial. One gets the strong impression that everything is crystal clear to this author. That impression raises my hackles.

The overwhelming self-assurance of the author explodes in his face when he gets it wrong. In the section "Exorcising Maxwell's Demon" in Chapter 4, he writes:

"The full exorcism of the demon was not accomplished until recently. (I played some part in this ceremony myself.)"

Perhaps Mr. Lloyd is older than I imagine. The exorcism of Maxwell's Demon was accomplished by Leon Brilloun, the physicist who patented the atomic bomb, in a paper published in 1951. Mr. Brilloun does not mention any contribution by Mr. Lloyd. It would appear that Mr. Lloyd is unaware of Mr. Brilloun's paper. Worse, his explanation of the exorcism of Maxwell's Demon is a turgid mess that makes no sense at all.Between claiming credit for another man's achievement and botching the explanation of Maxwell's Demon, I reached the limit of my tolerance. I literally threw the book away from me at that point.

Perhaps the material after Chapter 4 redeems the book; I do not know, because I did not read it.

The other serious flaw in the book is its smarmy vagueness. In attempting to avoid the intimidating reliance on mathematical and technical definitions, Mr. Lloyd resorts to poetic phrasings. These would be acceptable if they weren't so damned cute -- and if they made sense. For example, in attempting to make clear the difference between energy and information he writes, "Energy makes physical systems do things. Information tells them what to do." At first glance, that seems a pithy observation. But go back and read it again; what is the author really saying? Does energy give molecules speed, and information give them direction? Does the energy in an A-bomb make the bang and information tells it what to destroy?

I was disconcerted by the author's fuzziness regarding information. He never defined it -- which is not necessarily a fatal flaw, given that a book for the educated public should not burden its readers with undue technical detail. But he used the term in such a myriad of ways that I started to think that he was using it to refer to any magically powerful force. Information, in this book, seems capable of performing wondrous feats.

Physics is finally coming to terms with the concept of information as a physical concept. The change began after World War II and has been edging forward for fifty years; in the last ten years, progress has accelerated. A clearer concept of information and its relationship to the physical universe is emerging. Mr. Lloyd misses one of the most important factors in this process: that information itself is inextricably bound with the concept of time, in something like the way that mass and energy are bound together, only more complex. It is not information that is the fundamental quantity; it is information flow, or bandwidth.

Fabulous
This book is written by one of the leading experts in quantum computing.The argument presented that the entire universe is a quantum computer is very original and very convincing.The implications are enormous.Must read.

one of the most illuminating book for ones who like to think!
This book written by Professor Seth Lloyd is a must-read for anyone who likes to think.

The book contains two parts: Part 1 is more or less a philosophical description of quantum computing. Part 2 then focuses more on the mechanics of quantum computers. The author have done a great work on describing a very profound topic in easy-to-understand way. Moreover, Prof. Lloyd has added many of his own, debatable but very insightful, opinions in his writing for the careful readers to dig. This is really a book for thinkers. If you like to think when reading, you will feel amazed on how much unknown is waiting for your to explore ahead.

Actually, I have done two review articles of this book. The links are here: http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2008/07/programming-universe-part-one.html, and http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2008/09/programming-universe-part-two.html.

These two reviews are also written for the ones who are willing to explore the breathtaking future of our own.

--- yihong ... Read more

Product Description
This comprehensive handbook of mathematical and programming techniques for audio signal processing will be an essential reference for all computer musicians, computer scientists, engineers, and anyone interested in audio. Designed to be used by readers with varying levels of programming expertise, it not only provides the foundations for music and audio development but also tackles issues that sometimes remain mysterious even to experienced software designers. Exercises and copious examples (all cross-platform and based on free or open source software) make the book ideal for classroom use.

Fifteen chapters and eight appendixes cover such topics as programming basics for C and C++ (with music-oriented examples), audio programming basics and more advanced topics, spectral audio programming; programming Csound opcodes, and algorithmic synthesis and music programming. Appendixes cover topics in compiling, audio and MIDI, computing, and math. An accompanying DVD provides an additional 40 chapters, covering musical and audio programs with micro-controllers, alternate MIDI controllers, video controllers, developing Apple Audio Unit plug-ins from Csound opcodes, and audio programming for the iPhone.

The sections and chapters of the book are arranged progressively and topics can be followed from chapter to chapter and from section to section. At the same time, each section can stand alone as a self-contained unit. Readers will find The Audio Programming Book a trustworthy companion on their journey through making music and programming audio on modern computers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Architectural Programming
A very poor example of out an out ofdate way of architectural planning. The process goes in and out of favor like hemlines and should not be used as textbook as it is full of generalizations and broad unsubstantiated opinions by author. An appalling mix of the relevant with the irrelevant

Get it Together
As far as I know, this is the Omnibus of Programming reference books.As was said before, it is not something you just sit down and read, but it is a great reference and should get your head straightened out on how to handle producing a good programming document.I'd suggest marking pages 24-25, (the Issues and Facts checklists.These come in handy) as well as page 73, Concept Diagrams. If you are still a student, page 73 will go a long way toward getting to the version of "simple and clear" your particular prof expects. Just grit your teeth and pay the price for this one, because you'll need it!

OK Transaction
Transaction was ok, but Amazon waited 8 days to ship my book, and I had already been in class for 5 days by the time it arrived.A little disappointing...

Technical, but full of information
This book provides several ways of gathering and organizing information during the programming phase of design.This is not a book to sit down and read in an afternoon, but worthwhile of having in a reference library. ... Read more

Product Description
Develop and fine-tune your programming skills the easy way - by example! For beginning and intermediate users, SAS Programming by Example guides you, with a series of annotated examples, through basic tasks to more complex ones. Problems and solutions are provided to make the most of the programming tools available in base SAS software. Conversational in tone, this book is useful both as a tutorial for learning programming and as a convenient quick-reference filled with tips and strategies for solving your programming problems. Among the clearly explained examples are models that show you how to build SAS data sets, use SAS functions for data translation, program more efficiently, relate information from multiple sources, and chart and plot data. You will also learn to work with SAS date values, produce descriptive and summary statistics, and write reports.

Supports releases 6.09E and higher of SAS software. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Perfect for New Users and Reference
I have been writing SAS code off and on for quite some time and this is my favorite go-to reference book.If you are new to SAS, I recommend you start with "The Little SAS Book".This book would be my second purchase, and finally, I would also pick up "SAS Functions by Example".Between these three books and learning a strong fundamental knowledge of SQL, you should be able to do about 95% of what you'll ever need to do in SAS (unless you are doing hard-core stats).

Along with these books the most valuable concepts I have learned in SAS are 'by group' processing, and the first. and last. statements.

I also recommend not attempting to memorize programming statements or syntax; keep examples of code that you may find useful in the future and keep good reference books - like this one - don't try to memorize what you can look up.

Finally, my recommendation is to KISS....Keep It Simple Stupid.You can do many things in SAS (actually almost anything), often in many different ways; some are very straightforward, and some are convoluted.I go with straightforward any day as you never know who will inherit your code for review or maintenance (believe me you'll often curse the code you'll soon inherit from someone else!).My experience is that programmers by nature often want to complicate code by using by using obscure techniques(remember, this is their 'art'!), avoid that trap and do everyone a favor.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy using SAS as much as I have!

Replacement for SAS Programming by Example
This book, while very useful when it was written, is now replaced by a more update book containing approximately twice the material as the old book.I recommend that you look at Learning SAS by Example before you buy this book.Here is a link:
Learning SAS by Example: A Programmer's Guide

Good book for data restructuring algorithms
Hi,

There are times when you may get data sets that were entered in formats that are not compatible with the PROC you are using. In terms of teaching one how to use arrays and loops to restructure data sets, this book is a gold mine. If you analyze data from PROC SQL against databases then you probably won't need all of what is in this book. I have used this book for several consulting engagements and even if you program in SPSS, this s a great book to have in your arsenal.

SAS Programming
I enjoyed the book by Cody and Pass. It is very "user-friendly" and even though it may not be as comprehensive as other comparable books on the subject, I did find it excellent. It clarified many concepts which I was not able to from anywhere else. The authors may consider adding PROC REPORT, a very important and powerful tool.

Ok--rather above average
On the whole, the book is very good in that in general it consists of short self-contained programs: the input, the code, and the output, with discussion. Unfortunately, later in the book the authors got tired of the above and in many cases do not provide the output.

Also, the authors indulge in numerous parenethetical asides that are supoosed to be humorous but are just silly and interruptive.

Still, on balance it is a good (though outrageously overpriced) book. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (12)

Must read for developers new to Azure
Programming Windows Azure is fantastic introductory resource for developers taking a first look at working with Microsoft's cloud computing platform.This text will help you put the whole platform into perspective before you dive deep into the SDK.

The text explains how the platform works under the hood (at a high level), which serves to put all design considerations and constraints into context.

The text is entertaining, to the point, and highly relevant.Concepts are presented in perfect order, which results in a great "user experience" to build on what you've read so far.The author had an uncanny knack to anticipate what questions you'd be asking yourself (and when), and cover off the bases.

Highly recommended!

Good information and useful code samples
Programming Windows Azure is a useful book for users who want to know how to program with Microsoft Cloud. The book has enough practical code samples for users to start their own projects with confidence. What I liked the most about this book is its concise and clear explanations on various aspects of Windows Azure such as managing service, RESTful APIs, blobs, queues, and SQL Azure.This book is a good resource for programmers who want to start developing Windows Azure solutions.

Excellent Azure learning book
The book has lots of useful information and examples for Azure beginners.
This is the first Azure book I found useful.
It is easy to read and follow and I highly recommend it.

Pathetic
The author does little more than recap information that is readily available in the SDK documentation, and has added hardly any thought about the practicalities of Azure development.(In fact, I could find NO evidence of such thought, but I've written "hardly any," in case I missed an iota.)For example, if you want to use an Azure Worker Role, you might create one from the template provided by the Azure SDK add-in to Microsoft Visual Studio.You will peruse the automatically-generated code and think to yourself, perhaps, "okay: what are the implications of the different alternatives for sleeping on the thread in the Run() method."You won't find that question or any others answered in Krishnan's book, though.What you will find is text that simply restates what you will read in the generated template.So save yourself $49.99 and just download the SDK and read the templates.Perhaps you want to use SQL Azure in your solution?The author devotes 9 pages to that subject.Here are a couple of things you might want to do if you actually want to use SQL Azure:

(1) Take a definition of an existing database and deploy that into Azure.There is nothing at all on how one might accomplish that ... not so much as a hand-wave in the direction of the Visual Studio Database Edition facilities that would allow you to generate a complete definition of your database for deployment to SQL Azure.

(2) Connect to a SQL Azure database from an Azure Web or Worker role.Krishnan has a code snippet showing how to accomplish that (which one could have found in the Azure SDK documentation easily enough) but not a word about how one might not HARD CODE the connection parameters, but instead get them from configuration, and, in that case, how best to secure the configuration information.

Questions like these would arise for anyone who is actually trying to write anything more than a "Hello, World" application, and who develops software professionally.There are no answers to any of those sorts of questions here.I believe I have read all of the books on Azure published to date, and among those, Tejaswi Redkar's "Windows Azure Platform," is by far the best.

Helpful beginners guide to Azure
I'm just starting on programming services in Windows Azure, and this book really helped me make sense of the various options I have in doing so, as well as how they relate to concepts I already know in the CLR and .NET. I really appreciated the narrative flow of the book: it was laid out the way that I think about building a service, not as a textbook as so many books in this genre are. The sections on Windows Azure storage, in particular, made reading through the documentation on MSDN much more meaningful; the descriptions of the motivations, from a programmer's perspective, of the available options were much appreciated.

On the con side, if you're looking for a book that lays out common architectures for distributed systems and how they might be implemented in Azure, this isn't the book. There are two or three complete examples, only one of which is a common patterns for services. The discussion of queues in particular seemed abbreviated, since they are such a key ingredient of distributed systems.

All told, though, I am very happy I purchased this book; I've already referred back to it several times in prototyping and expect to do so again. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (12)

Must read for developers new to Azure
Programming Windows Azure is fantastic introductory resource for developers taking a first look at working with Microsoft's cloud computing platform.This text will help you put the whole platform into perspective before you dive deep into the SDK.

The text explains how the platform works under the hood (at a high level), which serves to put all design considerations and constraints into context.

The text is entertaining, to the point, and highly relevant.Concepts are presented in perfect order, which results in a great "user experience" to build on what you've read so far.The author had an uncanny knack to anticipate what questions you'd be asking yourself (and when), and cover off the bases.

Highly recommended!

Good information and useful code samples
Programming Windows Azure is a useful book for users who want to know how to program with Microsoft Cloud. The book has enough practical code samples for users to start their own projects with confidence. What I liked the most about this book is its concise and clear explanations on various aspects of Windows Azure such as managing service, RESTful APIs, blobs, queues, and SQL Azure.This book is a good resource for programmers who want to start developing Windows Azure solutions.

Excellent Azure learning book
The book has lots of useful information and examples for Azure beginners.
This is the first Azure book I found useful.
It is easy to read and follow and I highly recommend it.

Pathetic
The author does little more than recap information that is readily available in the SDK documentation, and has added hardly any thought about the practicalities of Azure development.(In fact, I could find NO evidence of such thought, but I've written "hardly any," in case I missed an iota.)For example, if you want to use an Azure Worker Role, you might create one from the template provided by the Azure SDK add-in to Microsoft Visual Studio.You will peruse the automatically-generated code and think to yourself, perhaps, "okay: what are the implications of the different alternatives for sleeping on the thread in the Run() method."You won't find that question or any others answered in Krishnan's book, though.What you will find is text that simply restates what you will read in the generated template.So save yourself $49.99 and just download the SDK and read the templates.Perhaps you want to use SQL Azure in your solution?The author devotes 9 pages to that subject.Here are a couple of things you might want to do if you actually want to use SQL Azure:

(1) Take a definition of an existing database and deploy that into Azure.There is nothing at all on how one might accomplish that ... not so much as a hand-wave in the direction of the Visual Studio Database Edition facilities that would allow you to generate a complete definition of your database for deployment to SQL Azure.

(2) Connect to a SQL Azure database from an Azure Web or Worker role.Krishnan has a code snippet showing how to accomplish that (which one could have found in the Azure SDK documentation easily enough) but not a word about how one might not HARD CODE the connection parameters, but instead get them from configuration, and, in that case, how best to secure the configuration information.

Questions like these would arise for anyone who is actually trying to write anything more than a "Hello, World" application, and who develops software professionally.There are no answers to any of those sorts of questions here.I believe I have read all of the books on Azure published to date, and among those, Tejaswi Redkar's "Windows Azure Platform," is by far the best.

Helpful beginners guide to Azure
I'm just starting on programming services in Windows Azure, and this book really helped me make sense of the various options I have in doing so, as well as how they relate to concepts I already know in the CLR and .NET. I really appreciated the narrative flow of the book: it was laid out the way that I think about building a service, not as a textbook as so many books in this genre are. The sections on Windows Azure storage, in particular, made reading through the documentation on MSDN much more meaningful; the descriptions of the motivations, from a programmer's perspective, of the available options were much appreciated.

On the con side, if you're looking for a book that lays out common architectures for distributed systems and how they might be implemented in Azure, this isn't the book. There are two or three complete examples, only one of which is a common patterns for services. The discussion of queues in particular seemed abbreviated, since they are such a key ingredient of distributed systems.

All told, though, I am very happy I purchased this book; I've already referred back to it several times in prototyping and expect to do so again. ... Read more

Product Description

Learn how to apply NLP to fine-tune life skills, build rapport, enhance communication, and become more persuasive

One of the most exciting psychological techniques in use today, neuro-linguistic programming helps you model yourself on those-or, more accurately, the thought processes of those-who are stellar in their fields. Rooted in behavioral psychology of the 1970s, the concepts of NLP are now common to such diverse areas as business, education, sports, health, music and the performing arts-and have been instrumental in helping people change and improve their professional and personal lives. In this handy, informative guide, you will acquire a basic toolkit of NLP techniques, with advice on the NLP approach to goal-setting, as well as insights on how you think, form mental strategies, manage emotional states, and, finally, understand the world.

• With new content on new code NLP, symbolic modeling, clean language in the workplace and energetic NLP-techniques developed after the first edition
• Includes updated information throughout and two new chapters: Dipping into Modeling and Making Change Easier

Not simply a guide to reprogramming your negative or habitual thoughts, this practical, down-to-earth introduction to NLP is the first step to fulfilling personal and professional ambitions and achieving excellence in every sphere of your life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

NLP Los Angeles LANLP Training uses this book!
This NLP book review covers the topic of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), is based on the concept that all language and behaviors are of a highly structured nature. It uses methods and an attitude to affect the way we think, learn and communicate.

NLP For Dummies! is another IN-valuable resource I recommend for my students, or anyone interested in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).

Book Description

NLP has already helped millions of people overcome fears, increase confidence, enrich relationships, and achieve greater success. Now the NLP Comprehensive Training Team has written a book that reveals how to use this breakthrough technology to achieve whatever you or the client may want.

Short for neuro-linguistic programming, NLP is a revolutionary approach to human communication and development. In NLP For Dummies,guides you through specific strategies for learning the characeristics of top achievers and creating a blueprint for unlimited power. This book provides you with the essential skills you'll need to achieve peak performance in business and life. If you are seriously interested in NLP, you need this book!

Author Bio: John James Santangelo C.Ht. - Los Angeles' Premier NLP certification training company; the traditional PURE NLP 12-day 120-hr program. Learn to; develop your personal power, maintain physical vitality, create financial wealth, and produce outstanding relationships! [...] - NLP Los Angeles Premier NLP Training Company or call (888) NLP-COACH for workshops or speaking opportunities!

annoying writting
The author relies on constant example stories to try to dumb down the subject.Numerous mentions of what will be covered later is certain to distract you until you forget where the irrelevant stories were taking you. My head is still spinning.

NLP for dummies
This is great products and can give you some basic ideas about NLP, therefore can make it happen in your life. Can help you to take actions immediately. If you don't know about NLP is, this is a good book to read because it is in simple format and easy to apply.

Annoying read
I totally agree with -among others- D. Font and would like to thank him for referring to Honest Abe's website which I found very usefull. This book isn't worth your time nor your money.

NLP
For Dummies series is brilliant. I have now got CBT for dummies and NLP for dummies. Both are easy reading, you can pick them up and open at any page. No jargon, anyone can understand the concepts in both books. I have used them to inform my Mental Health student nurses about the different approaches to treatment of depression, anxiety etc.
As I was a first timer on Amazon I was a little apprehensive about ordering 'on-line' and not absolutely sure I was going to get the goods ordered. However, they were quick to deliver, cheaper than the high street, I will not hesitate to order 'on-line' from Amazon in the future. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (13)

Solid
Great book to ease your way into programming using command style OS's. Some of the info in this book will even carry over to Linux so its a great book to have for any geek like myself.

Great companion to the "Learning Python" book!
Get this book along along with "Learning Python" and you'll be set.Lots of handy stuff.My personal favorites are the sections that show you how to program GUIs and databases.I only wish I'd bought them both at the same time.

rather terrible.
I don't think I've come across a bigger deterrent to learning more about python than this book (although "learning python" runs a close second) . It's very heavy on minutiae, and myopic when it comes to larger design issues. I've had mostly great luck with the O'reilly books, but really felt let down by the Python series. Wish I had an alternate recommendation on hand, but I've just started looking elsewhere.

A total nightmare.
I bought this book assuming that it would be a good guide for python programming.

But I was wrong...

Right from the initial chapters, the author shows code that was not explained. And this trend just goes throughout this book.

A total disaster.

I really got discouraged and assumed that I wasn't up to it...

But then, I found an on-line tutorial [...] that gave me all I needed for python programming.
Hallelujah!

Python is an easy language to learn.

But not with this crazy book.

Bottom line, this book is totally useless for people who want to get a jump start. I mark it as a single star because it is totally irrelevant plus it knocks down a lot of trees (2 inches thick).

pretty bad book
I'm new to python, not to programming. My programming skill level is beginner, I understand and use classes.

Anyway, I was very disappointed that this book did not come with a CD or at least a free copy online. They give you a 45(if my memory serves me right) day trial with Safari Books.

As other reviewers mentioned, it doesn't have a good index and it doesn't come with a CD, so it's hard to find info.

Also, the examples are horrible. I'm only on chapter 3 and most of the examples are going over my hand. The author will start out with a simple subject like StringIO and then dump it into a code that contains other info not yet covered. After having people explain to me what it does, both them and I fail to see the point of his example. It has no practical use.

He also keeps jumping from command line input code to IDE code.

So far, this book has been pretty boring, very unpractical and most of all hard to understand. I would definitely not recommend this book to beginners.
... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Only Game in Town...
But a good one!You do have to be a reasonably accomplished ASP.NET developer to even follow along in this book.But you picked it up to write your own WIF app, so that was pretty much a prerequisite. Excellent information from an expert, that really saves you a good deal of time from hunting it all down on the web.The technical content is balanced well with practical suggestions and applications.I appreciate how Vittorio explains what works, what does not work, what he hasn't seen, and what doesn't work very well.That sort of information can save lots of time in programming wild goose chases.Those 2 factors make the purchase of this book worthwhile by saving you lots of time.

Simply the best in the market so far
Currently I am using WIF and AD FS 2.0 to protect WCF services on Azure platform.I collected and read tons of articles/white papres available online, still didn't get a very clear picture.Finally this book became available, I read it from cover to cover.This book is the best WIF book available so far.It covers everything, Web applications (ASP.NET), Web services (WCF services), delegation including ActAs and OnBehalf, and finally Azure platform.The first few chapters cover generic topic and ASP.NET, then a chapter covers WCF, finally Azure platform. A must have.

Excellent resource to get started with WIF


Having followed Vittorio's work (blog, webcasts, code samples)related to claims-based identity over the last two-three years, I ordered this book as soon as it arrived. And this book did not disappoint.I read the book cover-to-cover within a week of its arrival and found it to be very useful in helping me better understand the concepts behind WIF.

Here are some additional details that I hope will be helpful to anyone considering this book:

1) Claims based identity is an important enabling technology that .NET developers and designer need to understand well. And this is not just case, if you are an ASP.NET or WCF developer. Claims-based identity is important even if you are SharePoint, BI or Azure developer.


2) This book is broken up into two parts. The first part explains the basics of claims based identity. Second part is more advanced and gets into the nuts and bolts of WIF.


3) Don't skip over the ASP.NET chapters (2, 3 & 4 ) just because you are not going to use WIF inside ASP.NET.These aforementioned chapters cover a number of important concepts ( such as single-sign-on, claims transformation, federation) that you will need to understand when using WIF outside of ASP.NET (say with WCF).


4) Beinginvolved with the WIF team for a long time, Vittorio is able to provide important context around how some of the features have evolved, design decisions etc.


5) Last but not the least, it is hard to write a book on security. Fortunately, Vittorio has managed to write it in a conversational, unassuming style that makes it easy to read. Wherever needed, he provides a just in time, overview of protocols ( WS-Trust, WS-Federation and so on) without getting mired in the details associated with these, rather arcane,specifications.

Great book and the only one so far
This is a very good book, the author knows extremely well what he explains, provides a great introduction and the example of using the driver's license or passport as a valid identification from a trusted issuer provideron a movie theather or liquor store is an excellent analogy to understand. He goes quickly about how to use it on your own app, how to get claims backs and create custom code to extend the framework. Also he gives a lot of deep theory about the authentication process and all the complexities of security and how WIF makes things easier for you. He mentions how to create a test STS using WIF (new Visual Studio template that comes with the framework), that can be used during development to simulate a real life scenario and how to create your own custom claims.

I read the book, I have a better understanding, 200+ pages of great wisdom. Get it!!

Thanks

Excellent WIF resource
This is a must have for any anyone tasked with writing claims aware applicatons.Do NOT let the size of this book fool you either - it is jammed full of critical details.This is the only publication available that goes into the detail that Vittorio goes into.Whether you're new to claims-based development and just want to know enough to get started writing Relying Party's (that's about the first 50 pages), or need the in-depth knowledge of how protocols work, intricate details of WSFAM and SAM, and such, this book has you covered.I also like how Vittorio draws attention to solutions to some common problems, such as home-realm discovery, pass through claims, impersonation, proof-of-possession, custom STS's, and more.You will also find references to some very useful tools to aid in your development. ... Read more

Product Description

An Introduction to Programming by the Inventor of C++

Customer Reviews (31)

not a good introduction
Chapter 6 is almost impossible to fully grasp, and from there you lose continuity. I could reread it over and over and over, spend about 3-4 hours, and learn little. Or I can go get a more accessible textbook. Self-study book for a beginner? No way.

So far, meh. UPDATE 1.
I'm on page 256 of this 1k+ page book so about 1/4 the way through.I am not a complete newbie, I guess I fit the term advanced beginner having read other beginner books and wrote some intermediate level stuff.So I thought this book would be full of projects and how to actually use the language of c++ in real programming environments.The first few chapters were noob chapters and these did not go into enough spoon feeding for any true absolute beginner to understand.There just isn't any way you can squeeze the basics + syntax of c++ into a few small chapters.If your looking for a beginner book, try the absolute beginner book by micheal dawson.Then after these beginner chapters he goes right into error handling (with try,catch,throw) which in most books is left to the very end because of its high level of complexity, and then into making a calculator application.This is not a easy to understand program it includes parsing tokenizing and more complex topics that would be better split into different chapters later in the book. Then he switches gears yet again before finishing the calculator app (total cliff hanger here) and moves on to chapter 8.Here at the beginning of chapter 8 he starts talking about declaring and defining variables and functions which has been (obliviously) in use this whole time since chapter 3, and extensively in the calculator application (which woulda been a foreign language if you were a beginner) and the error handling chapters.He jumps around like this so much it makes it extremely hard to follow or to know what you should remember from each chapter.It's becoming obvious that this guy is a genius and master of programming, and has since forgotten what it was like to be a newbie in the field of programming.

I will keep updating this review if amazon will let me as I complete this book.


UPDATE:
Im now on page 351 I cannot recommend this book its hard to follow and defiantly not for beginners.I keep trying to get into the book but he never really gets a project going before he trashes it and moves on to something else.I've read multiple c++ books and know how boringthey can be and this one is no different.I'm near the end of chapter 10 now and we have started and never finished so many projects that it seems like thats all he does is start to make something cool and then say woops i guess we haven't covered this difficult topic yet so lets just give up and move on,chapter after chapter same story.

Great book.
Written by the man himself! This book is a great introduction to C++ and is a great help to beginners like me!

good book, bad language
received in good time and condition. bought this book for class. it is very clear in explaining concepts and grammar.

A good companion book to accompany another C++ learning book
This book differs from all of the other beginner programmer books that I've read. First and foremost, this is a book about how to design solutions to problems in the way that a professional programmer might approach them. It just happens that C++ is the language used; many of the ideas expressed in this book will apply equally well to a number of other languages. There are lots of interesting ideas relating to the design of solutions that I never picked up during my computer science course at university. It is for this reason that I think this book makes a great complimentary text.

That said, I very much doubt the average "beginner" with no programming experience could learn C++ from it; it just isn't suited to complete beginners. You really need to have done some elementary programming already or at least be using it in conjunction with a formal course of education and/or alongside a better book for novices.

As readers are probably aware, the author is the architect of C++ so who is better to understand the ins and outs of his language. Unfortunately, being one of the best professional programmers in the world doesn't necessarily make you a master teacher. I've seen this time and time again at university; some lecturers just aren't able to truly start at the beginning. Others just can't find elementary examples. If you don't get a foundation example you can understand, everything that follows will be gibberish. I suspect that is what will happen when you get to Chapter 5 and start building a calculator.

The first five chapters are interesting and easy enough to follow. Chapter 5 will very much determine whether or not the book as a whole will be useful for you. The way the author chooses to develop his solution for the problem of building a calculator might be the industry accepted "standard" but simple it is not. It very quickly becomes complicated and confusing. What the author is trying to do is show the reader how you start with a prototype, discover its faults, then move on to subsequent improved versions. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't really work for this example because it is too big an example for a novice programmer.

As I stated above, this book is extremely useful. There is a wealth of ideas that you probably won't get anywhere else. By itself, however, this is not a learn-to-program book. It is about the problem solving aspect of computer science. It is not for absolute beginners. Buy it in conjunction with another beginner book or come back to this after you gain some basic programming skills.

... Read more

Product Description
The Art of UNIX Programming poses the belief that understanding the unwritten UNIX engineering tradition and mastering its design patterns will help programmers of all stripes to become better programmers. This book attempts to capture the engineering wisdom and design philosophy of the UNIX, Linux, and Open Source software development community as it has evolved over the past three decades, and as it is applied today by the most experienced programmers. Eric Raymond offers the next generation of "hackers" the unique opportunity to learn the connection between UNIX philosophy and practice through careful case studies of the very best UNIX/Linux programs.Amazon.com Review
Unix ranks among the great engineering accomplishments of the last half of the twentieth century, and its heir--Linux--seems already imposing and still on its way to achieving its full potential. Eric S. Raymond argues in The Art of UNIX Programming that the excellence of Unix derives as much from the fact that it was (and continues to be) a community effort as from the fact that a lot of smart people have worked to design and build it. Raymond, best known as the author of the open-source manifesto The Cathedral and the Bazaar, says in his preface that this is a "why-to" book, rather than a "how-to" book. It aims to show new Unix programmers why they should work under the old "hacker ethic"--embracing the principles of good software design for its own sake and of code-sharing.

That said, a great deal of valuable practical information appears in this book. Very little of it is in the form of code; most of the practical material takes the form of case studies and discussions of aspects of Unix, all aimed at determining why particular design characteristics are good. In many cases, the people who did the work in the first place make guest appearances and explain their thinking--an invaluable resource. This book is for the deep-thinking software developer in Unix (and perhaps Linux in particular). It shows how to fit into the long and noble tradition, and how to make the software work right. --David Wall

Topics covered: Why Unix (the term being defined to include Linux) is the way it is, and the people who made it that way. Commentary from Ken Thompson, Steve Johnson, Brian Kernighan, and David Korn enables readers to understand the thought processes of the creators of Unix. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

mount /dev/sermon
As someone who's programmed on Unix for many years, I've known about esr for some time, and probably should thank him for being part of a chorus that encouraged me to learn things like Lisp.That said, my honest opinion of this book is that it's a waste of paper and approximately the quality of a typical esr blog post.

First of all, this book is not really about Unix programming.A full half of it is dedicated to rehashing the Unix philosophy, history, and community.Yes, these topics should come up, but at some point I want to read about Unix programming, which is why I am reading a book with that phrase in the title.None of this stuff has anything to do with programming, and is just as applicable to end users.

The other half is supposedly programming related, but upon closer inspection, mostly isn't.Major topics include things like tools, config file formats, and a lot of general stuff that applies in non-Unix development too (like VCS and network protocols).Where's the system programming tips, POSIX standards, standard libraries, ioctl, BSD sockets, security considerations, and any number of hundreds of other things anyone who's programmed on a Unix-variant encounters?Yes, the book claims to not want to talk about these things, but guess what, that's what Unix programming is all about.

Languages (you know, the thing you actually program in) are completely glossed over, except to just list a few common ones.Half of the ones mentioned are so portable, that programmers in them can ignore OS peculiarities the vast majority of the time (Java, Python, Emacs Lisp).C, C++, and shell are very tightly coupled to Unix, and much could have been said here, but isn't.Instead of code, we're treated to reams of config file examples and other filler.

The various aspects of The Unix Way could have been stated in a single chapter.Someone interested in becoming a Unix programmer needs to know where to go to find documentation, what development resources he has available, and other practical things.An MS programmer reading this book would be just as clueless on how to start programming on Unix as before.Go pick up Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment if you want to learn this subject.

I'd give it 6 stars if I could
I got a great deal out of this book - I switched to Linux fairly recently, and had reached the "state of maximum confusion."(I hope.)
By that I mean I had learned quit a lot, but hadn't been able to pull it all together. This book went a long way toward doing so. The sections on Design and Implementation could be expanded to a good book, they gave me an understanding of Linux, what to look for in software for Linux, and how to approach programming for Linux.
Design and Implementation both used case studies of specific packages, some of which I now use. I only wish this careful dissection was available for more software.
The other two sections, Context and Community would also make up a good free-standing book. They explains how Unix became what it is (Context) and where it is going now (Community).
Any way, great book, and I would give it 10 stars for two books if that ever happen.

Good Book, Good Principles
Eric S. Raymond is a controversial open source developer and evangelist.

The true is that he has a good points and ideias of how to develop using the unix pratices (eg. the practice of separation and program specialization).

I love unix (any flavor), it is by far the best operating system for a wise developers. The advice of Eric really makes sense for someone used to work with unix, and I put a lot of his advice to good use.

I recommend this book to an intermediate/advance unix programmer/analyst.

I wish I had read this book back in college
The author does a great job explaining the Unix tradition and where it came from. This book is filled with design considerations and high level concepts related to programming techniques. It gives a clear insight into what went in one's mind when designing many of the programs that are so common to Unix.

I think you will enjoy this book if you have had basic exposure to Unix (even as just a regular user), and some basic exposure to programming.

Unix is dead
This at least is the overarching message conveyed both directly and incidentally throughout Raymond's book. Unix in the concrete, non-abstraced sense has died and been replaced in practice by Linux and with the former solidly displaced from the market we can apparently begin to take to the bold liberty of refering to Linux interchangably with Unix's name. From the title the book advertises itself to be about Unix but from the opening chapters documenting the history and progression of Unix there is a clear effort to re-cast the decades long history and family tree of Unix operating systems into a footnote to the modern re-implementation in Linux and even the overall open-source movement at large. All of which the various originating UNIX architects solicited for in-line commentary seem to be conspicuously silent about. This is impressively maintained through the rest of the book without any substantial mention of BSD-derived operating systems or OSX beyond the opening of the text. Sadly, for what praises can be offered for this book, it's notable and distracting that Raymond suffers from a stark habit of inserting a number of personal biases and pet causes into his prose, as this book actually does otherwise serve a novel and admirable use in the valuable documentation of history and culture in passing eras of computing and development.

The close-knit communal spirit of timesharing on minicomputers in Bell Labs is seized on as a faint archetype of modern distributed OSS development while Ritchie, Thompson and the rest are curiously painted as disheveled and counter-cultural "hippies" "flipping a finger at the system", never mind these were the same hippies who would stay along for the ride on the side of Ma Bell and SVRx against the Berkeley Academia as the Unix market cannibalized itself in the late 80's. While nonetheless engrossing in its own right, there's some degree of romanticism and embelishment laced in the presentation of Unix history here, and unsurprisingly it tends to err quite clearly on the side of presenting the the earliest days of Unix as a directed progression toward the wider quasi-social movement of collaborative development and open-source software. This kind of disquieting historical reinterpetation and editorialization continues throughout in places both trivial and not: Raymond, for instance, clearly has a low personal opinion of Richard Stallman's attempted infusion of moral context into the realm of Free software development and regrettably manifests this, rightly or wrongly, in the unsubstantiated assertion that Stallman has been popularly marginalized, thereby imposing his personally-held disdain for FSF priniples on OSS developers at large. He can do this, you see, because he is authoring history.

Other varying idiosyncracies crop up: anywhere Perl is mentioned, Python (Eric's personal favorite scripting language) will appear by it's side. Emacs Lisp is inexplicably offered alongside established systems programming and RAD languages as a choice for a general-purpose programming language. And on the topic of Emacs, a partisan argument for rationalizing Emacs's notorious feature creep is presented in the form of describing it as a general extensible scripting framework in harmony with the Unix philosophy of modularity, rather than a conspicuously bloated but still useful text editor. This of course, is accompanied by apparently obligatory potshots taken at vi and Vim. It's less alarming that he'd reasonably arrive at a spirited opinion of this sort of thing than that minor personal convictions and editor war ammunation essays such as these would find their way into a text purporting to immortalize and document the Unix culture for all to refer to.

The less inflammatory parts of the book can laregly be summarized as case studies of the Unix spirit of design, effectively all of which can be distilled at some level as interpretations of the general KISS philosophy, which for the uninitiated basically translate to explicit warnings against overengineering. I'm suspicious of how much of this is simultaneously revelatory and actionable, but I suppose it's easy for ideas like these to be lost in the modern age of professional software development. Moreover, as this book explicitly aims to convey unquantifiable ideas and culture it's difficult to rate the book in terms of the knowledge imparted; it's a sometimes disjointed accumulation of essays on a wide range of topics spanning Unix history, various shell tools, predictable FOSS cheerleading, licenses and languages. And despite the above criticisms, much of the book actually makes for interesting reading despite the author's clear self-insertion into much of the book; it all actually makes for decent light reading even if the overall value is indeterminate.

But to end in the same manner as I believe other reviewers have, it is overall something to be taken with a grain of salt. ... Read more

Product Description
It has been more than twenty years since desktop publishing reinvented design, and it's clear that there is a growing need for designers and artists to learn programming skills to fill the widening gap between their ideas and the capability of their purchased software. This book is an introduction to the concepts of computer programming within the context of the visual arts. It offers a comprehensive reference and text for Processing (www.processing.org), an open-source programming language that can be used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and anyone who wants to program images, animation, and interactivity.

The ideas in Processing have been tested in classrooms, workshops, and arts institutions, including UCLA, Carnegie Mellon, New York University, and Harvard University. Tutorial units make up the bulk of the book and introduce the syntax and concepts of software (including variables, functions, and object-oriented programming), cover such topics as photography and drawing in relation to software, and feature many short, prototypical example programs with related images and explanations. More advanced professional projects from such domains as animation, performance, and typography are discussed in interviews with their creators. "Extensions" present concise introductions to further areas of investigation, including computer vision, sound, and electronics. Appendixes, references to other material, and a glossary contain additional technical details. Processing can be used by reading each unit in order, or by following each category from the beginning of the book to the end. The Processing software and all of the code presented can be downloaded and run for future exploration.

Essays by: Alexander R. Galloway, Golan Levin, R. Luke DuBois, Simon Greenwold, Francis Li, Hernando Barragán

Interviews with: Jared Tarbell, Martin Wattenberg, James Paterson, Erik van Blockland, Ed Burton, Josh On, Jürg Lehni, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Mathew Cullen and Grady Hall, Bob Sabiston, Jennifer Steinkamp, Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, Sue Costabile, Chris Csikszentmihályi, Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, Mark Hansen ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Processing Boyfriend's Dream Book
I got this book for my boyfriend for Valentines Day, and he was incredibly excited.Apparently it's THE book for processing, and he's already figured out how to do new stuff from reading it.I know nothing about programming, but I flipped through it and it seemed easy enough to understand.It's a beautiful hardbound book.Highly recommend for aspiring processors.

Good book
Great book what else would you buy. Worth the money definitely will not resell it even if I'm not currently programing stuff.

Great resource
This is a great resource for those wanting to begin to use processing to program visuals on the computer. Very clear and concise with excellent explanations of all the elements and programming logic. This would make an excellent text book for a class, I will use it for a course I am developing now. filled with great examples and something a person can keep as a good reference book for the future, I highly recommend this title.

Recommended for viusal art
Excellent reference with many programming examples.
The most part of this book is taken by solving problems from visual art.
One example for the arturio board.

Best of what I've purchased
I also purchased another Processing Book (Learning Processing - orange cover) and although "Learning Processing" is a fantastic book, this one is much longer and in my opinion slightly better.Both are fantastic. ... Read more

Product Description

OpenGL is a powerful software interface used to produce high-quality, computer-generated images and interactive applications using 2D and 3D objects, bitmaps, and color images.

The OpenGL^®Programming Guide, Seventh Edition, provides definitive and comprehensive information on OpenGL and the OpenGL Utility Library. The previous edition covered OpenGL through Version 2.1. This seventh edition of the best-selling “red book” describes the latest features of OpenGL Versions 3.0 and 3.1. You will find clear explanations of OpenGL functionality and many basic computer graphics techniques, such as building and rendering 3D models; interactively viewing objects from different perspective points; and using shading, lighting, and texturing effects for greater realism. In addition, this book provides in-depth coverage of advanced techniques, including texture mapping, antialiasing, fog and atmospheric effects, NURBS, image processing, and more. The text also explores other key topics such as enhancing performance, OpenGL extensions, and cross-platform techniques.

This seventh edition has been updated to include the newest features of OpenGL Versions 3.0 and 3.1, including

• Using framebuffer objects for off-screen rendering and texture updates
• Examples of the various new buffer object types, including uniform-buffer objects, transform feedback buffers, and vertex array objects
• Using texture arrays to increase performance when using numerous textures
• Efficient rendering using primitive restart and conditional rendering
• Discussion of OpenGL’s deprecation mechanism and how to verify your programs for future versions of OpenGL

This edition continues the discussion of the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) and explains the mechanics of using this language to create complex graphics effects and boost the computational power of OpenGL. The OpenGL Technical Library provides tutorial and reference books for OpenGL. The Library enables programmers to gain a practical understanding of OpenGL and shows them how to unlock its full potential. Originally developed by SGI, the Library continues to evolve under the auspices of the Khronos OpenGL ARB Working Group, an industry consortium responsible for guiding the evolution of OpenGL and related technologies.

Customer Reviews (7)

Good reference, not good flow or understandability
Pros:
1. Learn OpenGL straight from the horse's mouth

2. Authoritative reference

3. A few good tutorials

Cons:
1. Not very user friendly

2. User-unfriendly when explaining fundamental concepts

sorry, my title has been deprecated
I'm honestly not sure that this books will very useful to many people at all.
If you are both new to OpenGL and will have to deal with old OpenGL code, then it might just be worth it, otherwise, forget it.

First, literally 85-90% of the pages in the book relate to functions that have been deprecated.
Second, it doesn't make it all that clear exactly what has or hasn't been deprecated so it's rather a mess to dig through to find the relevant bits.
Finally, it covers rather little beyond the very basics of GLSL, which is basically what OpenGL 3.0+ is all about.

Let me put it this way:

If you will have to deal with old code base but already know OpenGL pre-3.0 well then you already know how to deal with old OpenGL code base and since the new stuff is so buried and so sparse what does this get you?

If you are new to OpenGL and won't have to deal with an old code base why bother with all the deprecated junk? You do not want to be starting off new code doing it the old ways. In this case:

If you need to know the basics of the 3D graphics, don't try to learn it from this book, get a solid, general purpose 3D graphics book for that (or at least something like "Advanced Graphics Programming using OpenGL" which also uses largely deprecated functions but it's written in a better style for this purpose).

For a basic introduction on how to use OpenGL (to get yourself up to speed on the basic outline of the API), get something like "Beginning OpenGL Game Programming 2nd ed" just get you started. It'll quickly show you the basic ropes of OpenGL and what you need to do to get the system initialized, viewports set, shaders initialized, rendering attached to Windows windows and some basic info on vertex buffers and such. Just looking at the basic, free SDK/docs it would tricky to figure out where to begin, this will show you. After that, for more advanced commands dealing with buffers you can just look at the free OpenGL documents/search the web to learn what more you need, it should all make sense once you know the basic outline of OpenGL.

To learn more about the new shader model and changes to GLSL get a book like "OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed", way more useful than the few pages in this book on that topic.

So:
If you already know OpenGL 2.0 just get "OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed" and download the latest free OpenGL 3.3 (or whatever version) docs and you are good to go, don't even bother with this book.

If you know nothing about OpenGL but do know about 3D graphics then just get "Beginning OpenGL Game Programming 2nd ed" to get you introduced to the API and then get"OpenGL Shading Language - 3rd ed" and download the latest free OpenGL 3.3 (or whatever version) docs and you are good to go, don't even bother with this book.

If you know nothing about 3D graphics or OpenGL then get the above two books and add some general references on 3D graphics and don't even bother with this book.

Only if you are both new and will also need to deal with an advanced, but old, code base, bother with this book.

worst programming book I own
Current list of books that I have found work- C Primer Plus(Sams), Xhtml(thomson), Flash CS4 digital Classroom(Gerantabee, yes I had buyers remourse as it was easy), Programming Python(reilly), Javascript the definitive guide(reilly), Programming Perl(reilly), Direct3d Programming-Kick Start(walnum), Php and Mysql(reilly), Programming Ruby(reilly), Shell Scripting(reilly), Programming with c++(schaum's)

Current list of books that do not work- Opengl Programming Guide(addison/wesley)

I have had this book for about 5 months now and can not learn anything from it.
If anyone from this company would care to help teach me some of the basics to be able to use this book correctly then I would change my review as customer service is as important as content sometimes. Or possibly just a working example(thats all I freaking need).

This book is named "learning" and it will help you do nothing if you do not already know opengl. Example would be the very first code snipit, the first line is-
#include (uhh I got a book that teaches so it could tell me what I need)
so I have added windows.h(obviously), glut.h, gl/gl.h, and a couple other opengl includes + stdlib/stdio and I can not get the first "chunk of Opengl Code" in the book to work, makes a book that is suppose to teach me pretty useless.
Here is the entire first program in the book, I will let you decide:

#include /*here is my problem, it literally says whateveryouneed*/
main() {
InitializeAWindowPlease();/*should know how to use win32 before attempting 3d(comment is not in book)*/
glClearColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
glColor3f(1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
glOrtho(0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 1.0, -1.0, 1.0);
glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
glVertex3f(0.25, 0.25, 0.0);
glVertex3f(0.75, 0.25, 0.0);
glVertex3f(0.75, 0.75, 0.0);
glVertex3f(0.25, 0.75, 0.0);
glEnd();
glFlush();
UpdateTheWindowAndCheckForEvents();
}

Heres my program explaining how I feel:
#include
int main(void){
char howifeel[17]="fitkhliespbuowogk";
for (x=0; x<18; x+=2) printf("%c", howifeel[x]);
}

Buy the edition appropriate to your hardware
I have a digital version of this edition on my Kindle DX; I returned the corresponding box set unopened, and bought instead the sixth edition covering OpenGL 2.1. (I prefer hard copy for ease of browsing, except when my hard copy isn't with me.)

OpenGL is going through an uncomfortable transition, and the other reviews slam this book for an issue with OpenGL, not this book. My newest hardware, bought within the week, "only" supports OpenGL 2.1, which is fine by me. Sure, these OpenGL manuals are expensive, and many of us have obsolete editions on our bookshelves, but that's no reason to buy an edition that is "too new" for one's hardware. Value your time, and buy exactly the edition that matches your current hardware.

Page after page of deprecated APIs
I have been relying on the red books for years. I am fairly disappointed with this particular edition because most of the book, as others have pointed out, covers deprecated APIs. Personally I don't mind that, since we are likely to encounter legacy code, may also need to port it, and an understanding of the history can be useful. The trouble is not with the deprecated APIs, it's with the authors often not explaining what it has been superseded by. The chapter on selection and feedback is a perfect example of this. A chapter will go on for several dozen pages, but begin with a small note at the beginning of the chapter with words to the effect of "everything you are about to read is deprecated". ... Read more

Product Description
Entertaining, non-technical introduction covers basic concepts of linear programming and its relationship to operations research; geometric interpretation and problem solving, solution techniques, network problems, much more. Appendix offers precise statements of definitions, theorems, and techniques, additional computational procedures. Only high-school algebra needed. Bibliography.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Linear Programming for the Non-Mathematician
When researching how to use LPs, I came across many, many books that told me how LPs worked and gave me enough information that I could implement my own LP solver, had I the time and inclination.This is the first book I found that concentrated on how to think about problems so that they could be solved by an LP.Ultimately, my solution was far more complex than anything presented in the book, but the book gave me the initial patterns I needed to get started.

If you're finding LPs a hard concept to wrap your head around, this would be the book I'd recommend.

An Illustrated Guide to Linear Programming
The book is very good for introducction to the applications of Linear Programming. It will be useful for first time students of Operations Research.The explaination is very simple and innovative. The later part of the book introduces matrix algebra which is the gist of Linear Programming at the advanced stage.

An effective introduction to Linear Programming
For someone with an interest in learning LP but not the best mathematical foundation for learning it, this book worked for me. I think the author is an experienced teacher of people with math skills such as mine and knew how present the material and explain it in familiar terms.
The book does not have all the material I need but did get me going in a confident manner so I could handle the other books I bought before I bought this one.

Great intro to Linear Programming
This book is a great non-technical introduction to a very technical subject: linear programming. If you are interested in linear programming but you don't want to all of the mathematical details, then buy this book. Hey, you can't beat the price.

By the way, how can anyone expect a book like this to tell someone how to apply linear programming. Doing that requires a lot more technical training and there are other more detailed and more expensive books that explain how to apply linear programming. This book is a great introduction a complicated subject. You will enjoy this book if your expectations are reasonable.

Good, but a reprint from 1970
This book presents a good conceptual overview of linear programming, geared for the non-mathmatical person. However, it is a reprint of a 1970 title, so there isn't much on the use of computers to solve this type of problem. ... Read more

Product Description
The next major advance in the Web?Web 3.0?will be built on semantic Web technologies, which will allow data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. Written by a team of highly experienced Web developers, this book explains examines how this powerful new technology can unify and fully leverage the ever-growing data, information, and services that are available on the Internet. Helpful examples demonstrate how to use the semantic Web to solve practical, real-world problems while you take a look at the set of design principles, collaborative working groups, and technologies that form the semantic Web. The companion Web site features full code, as well as a reference section, a FAQ section, a discussion forum, and a semantic blog. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

OK, but you need some foundations
The other reviews are basically correct, this is a good, broad overview and will get you up and running quickly.Beware, however, that the examples are poorly edited: for example, the namespaces used the text, the illustrations, and the source code are frequently different. This isn't too big a deal if you have some background w/RDF concepts in general and know how to debug these inconsistencies, but if you're truly a noob, you may run into some trouble.

Clear conceptual explanations, helpful examples
Semantic Web Programming is the best book on the market.I flipped through two or three other textbooks before being recommended this book by a colleague.I am so glad I found this book.

The differentiating feature of Semantic Web Programming is the frequency of visual images that help to explain the core programming concepts.The examples are also very helpful.

This book gets my highest recommendation.I am sure you will find it useful.

Best Semantic Web Book to Date
As a programmer, it's sometimes frustrating to consistently books written in research/ academic vernacular when you are trying to enhance your knowledge base from a functional standpoint. Semantic Web Programming was recommended to me by someone who swore it was the "real deal", as it were. I have to admit, I was dubious, since many of the other books "written for programmers" were either far too basic, or far too based in theory rather than practicality. I am extremely pleased to report that Semantic Web Programming is precisely what it claims to - an excellent tool for learning semantic web with the programmer in mind. I can't recommend this book enough, quite frankly, and found it to be an excellent purchase.

Brought me from clueless to confident in a month
I was tasked earlier in the year with investigating ontologies and semantic web technologies, with the expectation of producing a working application (demo) by the year's end (for a mobile R&D group).I spent a few months reading white papers as well as a book "Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist".Neither was of much use to an absolute novice.Luckily, my manager dropped this book off on my desk in July, which was an absolute godsend.Over the next month or so, I worked my way through all of the well-written chapters and example code.It took a while, but I am now confident with my work tasks ahead.I could not say that at the beginning of July.If you devote the time, I'm positive that you'll get a firm grasp of the subject matter.

Broad coverage and lots of code examples
This book will help you acquire knowledge or skills in: the Semantic Web approach to Information Modeling, the use of rules to augment such models when needed, where to find data sets already formatted for Semantic Web usage or ontologies that you could adapt for your application if you don't want to create one from scratch, how to interrogate the Semantic Web using special browsers or browser plugins, search engines, or a query language such as SPARQL, how to use an open-source tool such as Protege from Stanford University to create Semantic Web Information Models, an open-source reasoning engine like Pellet for making inferences flowing from your data sets, and an open-source development framework like Jena from Hewlett Packard for creating Semantic Web applications.

This is not the only book written for software developers but it is the best available so far, especially if you are a Java Developer.Toby Segaran et al's "Programming the Semantic Web" uses Python as the main programming language and has more limited coverage of Semantic Web topics.Both books, however, are quite readable even if you are not a programmer.If you're really looking to learn just the concepts, however, you might want to consider "A Semantic Web Primer 2nd Edition" by Grigoris Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen, or "Introduction to the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services" by Liyang Yu, instead.

I like this book very much not only because it is very well-written and thought out, but also for its up-to-date and broad coverage. It covers Version 2 of the Web Ontology Language used for Information Modeling, so new features such as property chains, keys, and custom data types are discussed. It has a good tutorial on SPARQL, and the chapter on Patterns and Best Practices include architectural recommendations and useful tips for managing URIs and annotations.It provides references to important concept papers, and to popular open-source and commercial tools.

I do hope that future editions of this book will include: more concrete discussions of the challenges involved in modeling and using Semantic Web data due to the paradigm's adherence to the Open World rather than the Closed World Assumption, and recommendations on potential approaches to model versioning and addressing security concerns such as role-based viewing of Semantic Web data.Overall, however, an excellent book! ... Read more