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Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus Publisher: Sams Authors: Andre Lamothe Rating: 5/5  Once again, André show us lots of great ideas and tricks for our gaming needs. Most of the fundamentals - if not all - to writing a game is included. Everything related to programming a game (2D) is here. However, as stated in earlier reviews, the 3D part is included only as separate papers in the CD. Volume II will be dealing with Direct3D. Still, if you're looking for a great place to start, that might be useful to the beginner or advanced, or even if you already own a copy of André's Dummies book (like I do), it is worth it! This book is much deeper than the Dummies book. Of course, it may have some flaws here and there, but it is nothing that spoils the reading and learning experience. Also, if you are experienced in C/C++, you shouldn't have much trouble with the source codes. And even better, André is always available at his e-mail address, and has been kind enough to answer my questions/doubts since the Dummies book. Highly recommended!
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Programming with Visual Basic 6.0 Enhanced Edition Publisher: Course Technology Authors: Diane Zak Rating: 1/5  This book definitely seems to assume a lot of prior knowledge. It seems as if the projects at the end of chapters have nothing to do with what was just covered. It's like there are missing codes. I'm a computer teacher, and I am in the process of trying to find the teacher's edition to this just to try to help me better understand it. I am also taking courses toward an e-commerce degree, and this book makes it difficult when it comes to applying the knowledge.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days (4th Edition) (Sams Teach Yourself) Publisher: Sams Authors: Rogers Cadenhead, Laura Lemay Rating: 5/5 One would get very tired lifting all of the beginning Java books currently on the market. The combination of weight and numbers can be overwhelming to someone looking for a book to use in their initial study of the language. As more features are added and considered fundamental, it becomes harder for the author of any book based on a time frame to pick the "essential" topics and cover them in sufficient detail. Therefore, the end result is that all books based on an elapsed time should have the time considered as a guideline rather than as an absolute and that type of book should not be judged too harshly in this area. With that as a precept, the questions to resolve are threefold. Did the authors choose the appropriate topics?Are the starting points in a location appropriate for beginners? Is the coverage sufficient so that the student will have some significant grasp of Java after they complete the book? In this case, all the answers are most definitely affirmative. Cadenhead and Lemay begin with the basics of the fundamental data types, expressions and operators. These concepts are then used to construct simple classes, which are then put together to make other classes via inheritance and interface implementation. Classes are then grouped together to make packages, and the implementation details of import and setting the CLASSPATH environment variable are examined. The first week ends with a lesson covering how to work with threads and exceptions. Week two is devoted to creating GUI interfaces, handling events and drawing objects, with the topic of the final day being the construction and use of applets. Week three is devoted to some additional basic and advanced topics. Day 15 covers input/output, day 16 describes the serialization and inspection of objects, day 17 shows you how to communicate across a network, on day 18 you work with sound, day 19 is an explanation of how to create and use JavaBeans, the coverage of day 20 is how to move data using JDBC and XML and day 21 covers how to write Java servlets and Java Server Pages (JSPs). The coverage of each of these topics is necessarily brief, and the authors do leave a lot of things out. Nevertheless, I am convinced that enough is covered so that the students leave with a basic grasp of how each concept is used to construct programs. Are there things that I would have done differently? Absolutely! I would have moved the coverage of input/output so that it was embedded inside the other lessons. Once classes and exceptions are covered, then sending data in and out of files can be done by adding only a few lines to programs whose primary purpose is to demonstrate other things. I would have made more effort to explain how threads can be used and abused in Java programs, covering them in a separate chapter. In conclusion, this is one of the best beginning Java books on the market. No such book is ever perfect, but this one is much closer to perfect than it is to merely adequate.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: The Practice of Programming Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Authors: Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike Rating: 2/5  This book would have been fine 10 years ago. However, the topics covered here are better covered elsewhere, by other authors (Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer). There's very little in this book that is not covered in the other books, and combined, they covered more areas better. In short: Better value can be found elsewhere.
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