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Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Learning Perl, Third Edition Publisher: O'Reilly Authors: Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix Rating: 3/5  This book calls itself "Learning Perl," apparently because it is geared towards beginners. However, upon reading more and more of this book, it becomes increasingly clear that this book is not at all a learning tool, as it is a good reference for those who already learned the basics of Perl. The first chapter should be skipped over entirely if you're a beginner, because it will do nothing more than confuse you and turn you off to Perl. The subsequent chapters covers all relevant topics, but they skimp on providing descriptive key examples which would help you to better understand the concept. This book makes too many references to C and other languages, implying that you already know previous programming languages. The chapter on regular expressions is shamefully cursory and lacking in examples which can be adequately picked up by the Perl novice. The language of the text is not for the beginner user, as it throws around too many Perl-centric terms and definitions. For an intermediate, this may be sufficient, but it will not do for the beginner. I recommend Perl for Dummies as the ultimate beginner's tool. That book doesn't cover as many topics as this book, but it certainly explains conceps in a much more novice-friendly language than Learning Perl. Learning Perl makes the mistake of not keeping it simple. This is a very important teaching idea, when your expected audience are complete novices who need to have everything explained to them in basic layman's terms. This book is more of a sophisticated primer for already skilled programmers.
Product: Book - Hardcover
Title: Mastering Windows 2000 Server Publisher: Sybex Inc Authors: Brian M. Smith, Doug Toombs, Mark Minasi Rating: 5/5  I am an NT administrator and technical trainer trying to quickly get up to speed with Windows 2000 Server. Mark's book is just the ticket. Let's face it- the guy not only knows the product backwards, forwards, and diagonally, but he knows how to TEACH the relevant concepts. This book is serving the dual purpose of helping me prepare for the Windows 2000 MCSE exams as well as gain the necessary skills to do meaningful consulting with Windows 2000. In summary, the book is purposely structured to be of maximum benefit to people with or without prior knowledge of Windows NT. Current Windows NT experts will doubtless learn some new pointers about NT as they learn brand new stuff about Windows 2000. I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Teach Yourself HTML 4 in 24 Hours Publisher: Sams.net Authors: Dick Oliver, Molly Holzschlag Rating: 5/5 This book is actually an HTML 3.2 book and it lightly touches on the subject of stylesheets, an essential counterpart to HTML 4. I would be happy if this book was renamed to "Teach Yourself HTML 3.2 and Proprietary Tags in 24 Hours".
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Thinking in Java (3rd Edition) Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Authors: Bruce Eckel Rating: 5/5 I was forced to buy this book for a college course I'm taking on Java. The book is long winded in the extreme at more than 1,000 pages (not a good thing). The writing style is chatty to the point of sounding like the entire thing was done by dictation. Lots of unhelpful comparisons are provided along the way to Smalltalk, C++, and even FORTRAN. Lots of long dull example programs aren't even worth skimming. A typical example shows every possible combination of scalar type promotion. Not dull enough? Well how about the one which exercises every single operator on every single scalar type. You get the idea The sad part is that I have personally attended Bruce Eckels one and two-day workshops at Software Development Conference and found him to be a concise and coherent speaker in real life.
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