The Teach - aNobii

Books (102)

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- Java 5 (1)
- A Beginner's Tutorial
- By Budi Kurniawan
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Java 5

Strikes a good balance

Really good text for anyone who is new to Java, it could also be useful to someone totally new to programming, but that someone will need to put quite some work into it, and must not expect a "for dummies" presentation style. Budi style is "friendly" but not simplistic, so do not expect to be entert ... (continue)

Really good text for anyone who is new to Java, it could also be useful to someone totally new to programming, but that someone will need to put quite some work into it, and must not expect a "for dummies" presentation style. Budi style is "friendly" but not simplistic, so do not expect to be entertained. This is a serious book, but it will get you from zero to a good level in Java programming. A "lighter" book might only pretend to teach you Java. I liked the "by example" approach that's typical of Budi's books, and the broad range of topics covered (beyond the usual core subjects, JDBC, servlets & JSP, security, networking). The strong point of this book is the way it manages to cover so many topics without being too superficial or dispersive or crushing the beginner programmer with too much material.
I also liked the excellent introduction to interfaces and polymorphism (even if I would have liked to see a simpler discussion earlier in the book) and the treatment of generics and annotations. The chapter on exception handling should have probably been expanded a bit. So if you are ready to start playing with Java and are intimidated by the more ponderous tomes, but still want a book that will bring you somewhere, you can definitely begin here. As a final treat, the whole book is freely available online at jtutedotcom!

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback
- JDK 1.4 tutorial (1)
- By Greg M. Travis
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JDK 1.4 tutorial

It would be outdated but...

At the beginning of 2006, Java 6 is looming on the horizon, so this book could be considered obsolete, were it not for the fact that most veteran java programmers have remained lazily barricated in the previous ( and now enciant ) java versions. In another case of the disciple surpassing the master, ... (continue)

At the beginning of 2006, Java 6 is looming on the horizon, so this book could be considered obsolete, were it not for the fact that most veteran java programmers have remained lazily barricated in the previous ( and now enciant ) java versions. In another case of the disciple surpassing the master, java grows form the simple, crystal clear laguage it was at his birth to a way more intimidating beast than C++, and if you happen to be one the programmers who have been left behind this text is a good and now cheap chance to absorb the features added in the 1.4 realease: NIO, assertions, regexp. NOte that this is not a java tutorial, it has been written for programmers already fluent in java, but needing a tutorial on the 1.4 extensions.
The presentation style is really clear, but I do have some issues with the code examples which in some case are a bit contrived and in a couple of cases are flawed.

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- Core Java (24)
- (TM) 2, Volume I--Fundamentals (7th Edition) (Core Java 2)
- By Horstmann Cay S., Gary Cornell
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Core Java

Rough Diamond

This is one of the absolute best introductions to Java, if you are already familiar with programming or have a good instructor to help you out when you get stuck. For an absolute beginner this textbook could be just a little too rough. On the other hand, after you read and comprehend the material pr ... (continue)

This is one of the absolute best introductions to Java, if you are already familiar with programming or have a good instructor to help you out when you get stuck. For an absolute beginner this textbook could be just a little too rough. On the other hand, after you read and comprehend the material presented in the first and second volume of Core Java you can call yourself a competent Java programmer.
The authors explain the various features of the language in a precise and crystal clear way but without much "holding hands" and with code example that are short, functional and to the point.
Just be warned that to get a through presentation of the fundamentals of Java programming you really need to buy BOTH volumes. It will be a good investment, anyways.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback
- Learning Java Bindings for OpenGL (JOGL) (2)
- By Gene Davis
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Learning Java Bindings for OpenGL (JOGL)

A decent tutorial article, nothing more

The material in this text really does not belong to a book, but should be a free web tutorial article. As a text, it s way smaller than a notebook, most of it pages are just taken by line of code, and most of it is code you have already read, as the examples are very similar to each other and the au ... (continue)

The material in this text really does not belong to a book, but should be a free web tutorial article. As a text, it s way smaller than a notebook, most of it pages are just taken by line of code, and most of it is code you have already read, as the examples are very similar to each other and the authors keeps printing over and over the same routines.There is also a lot of hands-waving and superficiality in the explanations, and the examples presented cover only the very very basics. Also, detailed JOGL installation instructions are not given, and this will probably leave the beginner stranded. Overall, it feels like the author has written a couple example programs of the kind you expect in a web tutorial, and then decided he could try to make some bucks out of that. My advice for you is not to spend any money on this booklet and my advice for the author is to make all of the book available on his website, where it belongs.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback
- SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide (44)
- (Exam 310-055) (Certification Press Study Guides)
- By Bert Bates, Katherine Sierra
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SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide

The book for the Sun Certified Java Compiler exam

We all know how it is: the aim of any certification program is making money. Sun makes a lot of it selling the exams, the authors of this book make quite a bit of it selling the book and hopefully you at the end of the chain make a little bit advertizing your skills.
If you are of those weirdos who ... (continue)

We all know how it is: the aim of any certification program is making money. Sun makes a lot of it selling the exams, the authors of this book make quite a bit of it selling the book and hopefully you at the end of the chain make a little bit advertizing your skills.
If you are of those weirdos who ,like me, consider programming a fun and fascinating adventure instead of a business, you will probably have a hard time enduring the induced claustrophobia.
Anyways, the authors of this book made a very decent job in covering all the details, useless tricks and nuances you will need to pass the 1.5 exam. (And no big deal they did, since they developed the exam). You will also find a lot of practice questions and two exams on which you can work to hone your exam passing skills. In the end, this is an excellent tool to help you pass the SCJP, just don't make the mistake of using it to learn Java programming. Head First Java, from the same authors, is one of the best choices to do that.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback

- Zimiamvia (4)
- A Trilogy
- By E.R. Eddison
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Zimiamvia

If this is fantasy I prefer reality...

It's really hard to express how bad this book is. And to think that on his cover I read a praise from "the master" himself (ie Tolkien). I wonder what they put in his pipe that day! This story is a repulsive conglomerate of wanna-be fantasy scenarios, victorian fashions, latin and greek reminiscence ... (continue)

It's really hard to express how bad this book is. And to think that on his cover I read a praise from "the master" himself (ie Tolkien). I wonder what they put in his pipe that day! This story is a repulsive conglomerate of wanna-be fantasy scenarios, victorian fashions, latin and greek reminiscences. The characters are stereotypical (beautiful, strong, etc.) and seem to be all taken from some idiotic "high society" club. You get no impression of a living, warm, pulsating, lively world, but just of a few snobs wasting their time and yours. And how logically irritating can be to have characters citing latin and greek verses of our world? The prose tries desperately to sound ornate and elegant but is just convoluted and cold.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback
- A Mathematician's Apology (32)
- (Canto)
- By Godfrey Harold Hardy
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A Mathematician's Apology

A Non Mathematician's apology

As Hardy himself makes clear in the beginning, he would never have written such a book if his mathematical powers had not failed him in old age. I do feel like this book is more an apology for not being a mathematician anymore than for having been one. As for all true loves, the time for judging and ... (continue)

As Hardy himself makes clear in the beginning, he would never have written such a book if his mathematical powers had not failed him in old age. I do feel like this book is more an apology for not being a mathematician anymore than for having been one. As for all true loves, the time for judging and summings things up comes only when the joyful days of passion are over. I was hoping this book would give me an inspired first person view of what is higher mathematics and what is like to be a real mathematician. I found that it is not a good book for that, it doesn' t even try it. What it accomplishes instead is giving a precise, objective, cruel, marhematically clear picture of the drive, the ambition, the passion for excellence in any activity, be it a sport or a science that makes the life of the ones who dedicate their life to it so more pure and meaningful. It also poses some tough, fundamental questions regarding how much of your life one can dedicate to one single "abstract" passion without having to go trough some really bitter times and regrets in old age. My personal answer is that what really counts, in the end, is how much you loved and, what was sorely missing in Hardy's life, how much you express that love. But for some people, gifted and cursed at the same time, that is still not enough.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback
- C# and the .NET 2.0 Platform, Third Edition (15)
- By Andrew Troelsen
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C# and the .NET 2.0 Platform, Third Edition

Is this the best that C# education can offer?

Coming from a Java background, and with obvious prejudices against Microsoft I have taken much care in the choice of this book. I knew it was from an expert MS author with many titles in his belt and a highly acclaimed technical instructor, so I was expecting an outstanding text. Well, I am very dis ... (continue)

Coming from a Java background, and with obvious prejudices against Microsoft I have taken much care in the choice of this book. I knew it was from an expert MS author with many titles in his belt and a highly acclaimed technical instructor, so I was expecting an outstanding text. Well, I am very disappointed. While techically accurate and covering a large amount of topics, this book has been a pain to read even for a very interested and curious programmer like me. The writing style is annoying at best, the author makes a mouthful out of every simple and straightforward concept. It really looks like deep inside he feels that explaining a concept in less than 10 lines is a sin. It also reminds me of that typical annoying student who kows lots of things superficially but never seems to get the real point about what they mean deep down. Also, this book is an hybrid between a reference and a tutorial: at the start of every topic you are invested with reams of interface code and reference tables, and only after you wade through all that you finally get to some simple illustrative examples. My personal taste and experience as a techical instructor tells me it should be the other way around. Finally, the breadth of the topics covered (from the very basics of the language & OOP, to Window Forms, to Remoting, to ADO.NET, to ASP, Web Services etc) is way too much to be treated decently ina single book, even in a big one like this one. And the very redundant writing style of the author makes things even worse. I would much prefer that this book covered less topics but in more detail and depth, or that it was split in two volumes, like Core Java.
I am under the impression that since C# is a proprietary language it is being avoided by university professors and hackers, so even if it is a definitely well conceived language it is going to lack a lot of the intellectual support in training and tutoring that comes with other languages like C++ or Java.

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- Eric Meyer on CSS (42)
- Mastering the Language of Web Design
- By Eric A. Meyer
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Eric Meyer on CSS

Look over a master's shoulder

Awesome learn by example book IF you already have a little background in CSS, and even then if your knowledge is elementary you might be lost on some of the finer points. If it had a little more theory and explanations it would be a killer book, but I guess Eric Meyer didn't have patience enough for ... (continue)

Awesome learn by example book IF you already have a little background in CSS, and even then if your knowledge is elementary you might be lost on some of the finer points. If it had a little more theory and explanations it would be a killer book, but I guess Eric Meyer didn't have patience enough for that. He is anyway a Master in CSS styling, no doubts about that, and the right author too look at for learning and inspiration. The book is structured around several projects that you see in the various developing stages from beginning to end in reasonably small steps. The explanations of what's going on are like what you would expect from a guru/designer/artist that is, far from complete and basic. Again is like you had the chance to peek over Eric's shoulder while he works, but he won't be bothered to lose too much of his time after you. But don't get me wrong, this book is a must have for anyone interested in CSS, even if I would not buy it now (it starts being a bit dated) but would wait for his next book that should come out this autumn.

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- Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005 (9)
- By Mario Szpuszta, Matthew Macdonald
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Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005

A Behemoth

This book is choc-full of useful material on ASP.net. A monster
in his category, it contains way more about asp.net than you probably want to know...can be a good reference for the experienced ASP.net developer who is moving to the 2.0 version, or has already read smaller books and played a bit with ... (continue)

This book is choc-full of useful material on ASP.net. A monster
in his category, it contains way more about asp.net than you probably want to know...can be a good reference for the experienced ASP.net developer who is moving to the 2.0 version, or has already read smaller books and played a bit with the technology.
What I find aggravating in this title is the bloated and pompous writing style. This being just another clunky web-technology, who are the authors trying to impress? Also, some of the code examples are incorrect or incomplete, clearly due to the fact that this book has been rushed to publication. More material about design would have made this book better and more balanced. Maybe two volumes would have been less intimidating, but definitely more expensive.
Don't try this at home if you have never programmed ASP, you will be crushed.

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— Dec 27, 2009 | Add your feedback

- AI for Game Developers (12)
- By David M. Bourg, Glenn Seemann
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AI for Game Developers

Intelligent agents should steer clear from this book

Terrible and useless even for a book on AI for budding game developers. The theory and explanations in this book are sometimes decent but more often than not quite lacking. (es: in one of the first chapter the author uses Bresenham algorithm without taking the time to explain it). The use of tile ba ... (continue)

Terrible and useless even for a book on AI for budding game developers. The theory and explanations in this book are sometimes decent but more often than not quite lacking. (es: in one of the first chapter the author uses Bresenham algorithm without taking the time to explain it). The use of tile based examples introduce unnecessary overhead, and the continuos attempts to introduce physics related code and references to the author's other book on game physics are just plain annoying. The range of subjects covered is very broad (chasing and evading, pathfinding, emergent behaviours, rule based reasoning, bayesian networks, neural networks, fuzzy logic, finite state machines, genetic algorithms), definitely too broad to treat each of these subject in decent depth and with clarity. Example code is of low quality and just superficially object-oriented. If you are looking for a decent introduction to game AI I recommend Matt Buckland "Programming Game AI by Example" and "AI Techniques for Game Programming".

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— Nov 7, 2009 | Add your feedback
- C++ Demystified (2)
- By Jeff Kent
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C++ Demystified

This is NOT a C++ book

This text gives a basic introduction to the "C part" of C++.
With this I mean variables, operator, cycles, pointers, functions.
But the most interesting ( and difficult ) part of C++ is its "object-orientedness", that is the usage of classes, objects, references, constructors, destructors, ... (continue)

This text gives a basic introduction to the "C part" of C++.
With this I mean variables, operator, cycles, pointers, functions.
But the most interesting ( and difficult ) part of C++ is its "object-orientedness", that is the usage of classes, objects, references, constructors, destructors, friend functions, and the syntactic tools like templates and operator overloading.
Of this most fascinating (and useful) part all you get in this book is a very basic introduction to the concept of a class, in the last chapter. Absolutely not recommended unless you have never programmed before and want to start getting your feet wet with a cheap book. But remember this book won't teach you C++.
For the real things I recommend "Absolute C++" by walter Savitch (notwithstanding the scary title is a very friendly text..)
or Professional C++ by N. Solter, or for one that s very good and very cheap, "C++, A beginner's guide" by Herbert Schildt.

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- Developing Java Web Services (3)
- Architecting and Developing Secure Web Services Using Java
- By Rima Patel Sriganesh, Ramesh Nagappan, Robert Skoczylas
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Developing Java Web Services

Dry and confusing compilation

Don't be fooled from the good reviews this book has gotten. this book is the WRONG choice for anyone willing to LEARN about web services in Java. It is merely a boring, dry, wordy, repetive, confusing (and confused) compilation of web-services related topics.
The authours might be good programm ... (continue)

Don't be fooled from the good reviews this book has gotten. this book is the WRONG choice for anyone willing to LEARN about web services in Java. It is merely a boring, dry, wordy, repetive, confusing (and confused) compilation of web-services related topics.
The authours might be good programmers maybe, but as they are clearly very poor technical authors.. their writing style is boring, excessively wordy and abstruse.
Not clear and concise enough to be useful as a reference and absolutely terrible as a tutorial.
The preface tells how the idea of writing this book came form one of the authors who, sitting in a pub with the others was the the only one who wasn't drinking. I have some advice for this guy: start drinking.

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— Nov 7, 2009 | Add your feedback
- Head First Servlets and JSP (47)
- Passing the Sun Certified Web Component Developer Exam (SCWCD)
- By Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates, Bryan Basham
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Head First Servlets and JSP

Useful for the SCWCD exam, not to learn web programming

Written in the now familiar light and funny style of the Head First Series, this text is also extremely precise, clear, correct and informative. Be warned though, tit has the wrong title. (that's why I give it 4 star instead of 5). It should be called
Head First SCWCD and not Head First Servlet ... (continue)

Written in the now familiar light and funny style of the Head First Series, this text is also extremely precise, clear, correct and informative. Be warned though, tit has the wrong title. (that's why I give it 4 star instead of 5). It should be called
Head First SCWCD and not Head First Servlets & JSP, since the scope of this text is to prepare you for the SCWCD exam, and it succeeds in that brilliantly. As a first book to learn Servlets & JSP programming though, I think it is a terrible, if funny, book.
In fact it is very good on conceptual matters and especially on the tricky casees and questions that you might encounter in the exam, but it lacks the hands on and by example approach necessary to learn how to actually DO things.
This said, it is still a great book if you intend to refresh or improve your Servlet and JSP knowledge, or to actually take the exam and get certified.
Only , please, enough with this style, let's find another funny one, if I read another Java book with martial arts characters in it I will feel sick ! ;)

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— Nov 7, 2009 | Add your feedback
- The Stone and the Flute (4)
- By Hans Bemmann
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The Stone and the Flute

It has something...

This is certainly not your "classic" fantasy book. Action, adventure wonder and breathtaking scenery are definitely missing, and even the characters are quite "run of the mill". It' s more of a "philosophical" book who tells the story of a sligthly fantastic and very simple world. And here' s the ca ... (continue)

This is certainly not your "classic" fantasy book. Action, adventure wonder and breathtaking scenery are definitely missing, and even the characters are quite "run of the mill". It' s more of a "philosophical" book who tells the story of a sligthly fantastic and very simple world. And here' s the catch: this book actually has a charm of its on, is written in a very fluid way, and can be even somewhat inspiring, but it 's overall too simplistic and superficial. The characters, the world, the ideals, the morals, the drama end up feeling fake and shallow compared to what real existence is. It has a value though, like a little. light, fresh flute musical diversion.

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— Nov 7, 2009 | Add your feedback