Book Reviews

I began reading Pro Git, by Scott Chacon, after having already used Git in a large team-based project. Due to this, I was afraid I would get bored of the book very easily since I had already learned a decent amount of the material. This was most assuredly not the case. Chacon has done an excellent job in writing a book that serves as an excellent beginners guide and a quick reference at the same time.

The first part of the book is devoted to looking at multiple version control systems along with a history of version control. Chacon also makes it very easy to set Git up in a number of environments so that you can get started right away. The first half of the book is dedicated towards basics of the system, advanced features, such as rebasing, and setting up a remote server for git. The next half of the book contains a wealth of knowledge regarding best practices when using Git, additional tools and configuration options, and finally, nitty-gritty details on how Git works under the hood.

My biggest complaint would have to be the fact that the material on using Git remotely is scattered in a couple different parts of the book. This makes it slightly difficult to find specific information regarding remote work.

Overall, Chacon did an excellent job with Pro Git. After reading this book I was able to easily fill in the holes in my knowledge and felt significantly more comfortable maintaining a Git system for personal and team projects.

I read this book with previous programming experience, mostly in Java, and wanted to learn C, with some expectations of learning how to work with Xcode (tools to develop software on the Mac). The first half of the book, I was extremely bored. It went through the basics of programming; What is an integer? What is a character? What is a function? It even went into things like: What is Wikipedia? as well as What is an Operating System? I felt this entire first half had gone extremely slow, and had low expectations for the rest of the book.

As I slowly moved on, it became faster-paced. I had little experience with pointers before this book, and he seemed to do a fairly decent job explaining them. He also explained how to create data structures in C, and in the last chapter, "Advanced Topics", which were mentioned throughout the book, but he would continue to say "We will get to this in chapter 11, just wait", which was another thing that continued to annoy me through out the book.

As for trying to learn Xcode from it, it did give some examples of how to use Xcode, as well as how to use the Terminal application also found on the Mac. This book could be used for any platform, really, not just the Mac.

From this book, I feel I gained a decent, basic knowledge of C. I have been able to use C for random tiny projects now to continue my learning. I suggest though, if you are trying to learn C, and have learned a language before hand, this book is probably not the best book for you to try. But if you are learning C as your first language, this book would be a great place to start!

First off, as this is the first book we have reviewed from Packt, I would like to say I was very impressed by the company. Based out of the United Kingdom, Packt specializes on publishing solution-based books; their slogan of "Community Experience Distilled" perfectly describes them. Not only are the books a great technical resource, they also give back to the community: every time a book is sold, a royalty is paid to the relevant open source project. See http://www.packtpub.com/ for more books.

What comes around goes around, and as it was in the past with gigantic time share mainframes, virtualization is back and better then ever before. With products like VMware, Virtualbox, and Parallels, available to desktop users for cheap or free. Virtualization is the new technological solution to today's economic and climate crisis. It can save the planet and reduce costs on hardware, cooling, and power.

The book was a breezy 148 pages, but don't let that low page count scare you away. Aimed at experienced command-line users, it goes step by step covering exactly what you need to configure and build in order to have a properly configured setup, with command highlighting and screenshots. But most importantly, it gives you a summary of what you just configured in order to make sure you understand each step. This is a great book for anyone interested in learning or implementing production level Xen, who already has experience with kernel configuration and building software from source. I highly recommend the book and the publisher.

My only qualm with the book was the price. While Computer Science House gets the books for free to review, something about paying $36 for a paperback this small feels wrong. The publisher does offer PDF e-Book versions for $22, which can then be printed out for easier reading/reference. That seems very fair and reasonable considering the other ridiculous DRM restrictions on today's e-books.

When it comes to learning a new technical skill or programming
language, Apress has always provided me with excellent resources that go in-depth and fully explain the language inside and out. "Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP" is no different. It covers everything from planning and design to walking you through constructing a simple blog system using the popular PHP Zend Framework as well as a smattering of Web 2.0 concepts, ideologies and design patterns thrown in between.

When I set out to read this book, I was not looking to learn much in terms of PHP, but was looking for some new web design practices that have come about with the dawn of Web 2.0, and I must say that I was not disappointed. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to further their knowledge of Web 2.0 designs and practices. But beware, the book does assume that you have knowledge of PHP and dives straight into the Zend Framework to illustrate the usefulness of dynamically generated web content.

Unfortunately, "iPhone SDK Development" is just another dev book. It covers what it was designed to well, but if you're looking to do anything really creative with an iPhone, you may have to look a bit further. Considering the proximity to the release of the iPhone, the book is actually pretty decent. It covers all the basics of building a standard app starting with UI design and extending to the unique features of the iPhone, like rotation measurement and GPS interfacing. The trouble is, it's a lot of regurgitation. Rather than providing experienced examples and protips, it repeats Apple's SDK documentation more often than not.

This isn't to say that the book is entirely lacking. If you're trying to get an app out the door, then this book is what you're looking for. It's a solid reference for the SDK without having to navigate through Apple's often convoluted documentation. Chapters are organized in a task oriented manner, much in parallel with the actual development process. This all helps you get your application out the door that
much faster.

Overall, the book gets what it's supposed to done, and doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. It does a good job of explaining the SDK, but doesn't really go above and beyond that. It's a decent book for getting things out the door, but if your plan is to make the next killer app, don't expect a step by step guide.