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Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Graphic Java 2, Volume 2: Swing (3rd Edition) Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Authors: David Geary Rating: 5/5  This book has clear, authoritative descriptions of the inner workings of Swing. Well worth the money, and superior to other Swing books. The interaction diagrams that show how the Swing components work together to delegate functionality are very useful.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Practical Statecharts in C/C++: Quantum Programming for Embedded Systems with CDROM Publisher: CMP Books Authors: Miro Samek Rating: 5/5 Since I am not from the embedded system world, I was a bit apprehensive about approaching this book. While I can see that author Miro Samek has a directed target for his audience, I strongly feel that this book is a "must read" for technical developers in all areas who want to improve their program design abilities or developers who want to understand the philosophy, use, and implementation of statecharts intimately. As the title indicates, this book brings the topic of statecharts from the realm of expensive design tools to the PRACTICAL realm, illustrating its points with full examples and extensive commentary. Essentially Samek postulates that the slow adoption by developers of best practices by statechart design is due to lack of understanding of the fundamental nature of statecharts and how it is perceived as requiring expensive tools to use well. Samek insightfully discusses how statecharts as a best practice embody "behavioral inheritance" as a fundamental design concept that stands as a peer alongside the conventional pillars of object-oriented programming, namely inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. The book is very technical and written in an academic style, with ample references to original sources as well as detailed code reviews and many reader exercises. I would caution anyone from approaching this book as a quick or light read. For me, it took a seriousness and good understanding of C and C++ to follow Samek's examples and achieve the "a-ha", which was always worth it in the end. The two basic parts of the text are (1) an explanation of statecharts and their methodological implications, and (2) a description of how to apply statecharts as a data structure in real applications, namely embedded as control strategies for "active objects." In several places in the text, Samek makes an analogy between statechart (and active object) semantics and quantum mechanics. This parallel was an interesting philosophical argument, but didn't add much for me in terms of accepting his "quantum framework" as a best practice -- I was sold by his methodological arguments he had presented already. Speaking from experience in writing a book about using statecharts to build simulations, I can say Samek is a visionary who extended my perception of statecharts several steps. I know I will be quoting from it and referring to it in my work to come. This book has earned a prominent place on my bookshelf, and I would heartily recommend it to any other developer who wants to create correct, verifiable, scaleable, and solid designs (which should be ALL developers!).
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: A+ Certification for Dummies Publisher: For Dummies Authors: Ron Gilster Rating: 5/5 This book seemed to cover all of the essentials for the exam but just in case, I would use the DOS/Windows portion of the Exam Cram book just to make sure you have all of the bases covered. The reading is quick, down-to-earth and to-the-point. I look forward to reading more books wriiten by Mr. Gilster.
Product: Book - Hardcover
Title: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 2nd Edition (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) Publisher: The MIT Press Authors: Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman Rating: 1/5  I don't know what these few people see in this book. It's boring, it's cryptic and the material is pointless. Perhaps they had good teachers or are deluding themselves into thinking this book must be good since it's from MIT. For 99.9% of people who read it (and I've talked with a lot of people about this book) it was a very unpleasant experience. The lucky few got good teacher, but even those saw clearly that it was the teacher's merit and that the book is terrible. Get this only if you want to waste your time or money.
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