Book Reviews

I began reading Version Control with Git by Jon Loeliger after having used Git on a regular basis for about a year. I found this book to be a very comprehensive resource for learning Git as a beginner. It also serves as a great reference for a more experienced Git user who needs to look up that one command they haven't used in a while. Many Git books that I have read have a tendency to go through and explain what the commands do and how to use them for the majority of the book. They then follow up with a brief chapter on the underlying structure of the Git repository. Loeliger introduces you to a few basic commands and immediately starts talking about how those commands modify Git's internal database. He gives numerous examples and uses excellent pictures to illustrate exactly what is happening. This is a consistent theme throughout the book and it gives you a much better understanding of how Git does what it does and where its power comes from. Version Control with Git also includes several chapters on project management techniques and the various tools that Git has to improve project management on large teams. The only downside that I can really see is that there are definitely some useful features of Git that are not touched upon such as stashing and filter-branch.

All in all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about Git to manage their individual or team projects. Loeliger does an outstanding job of explaining how to use Git, how Git works under the hood, and why it is a powerful Version Control System compared to many others on the market.

Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey is a great book for .NET professionals and hobbyists alike. It rapidly covers a wide range of topics, introducing you to all of the new features around .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. It covers a wide range of material including: Windows Azure, parallel improvements, Silverlight, ASP.NET and supporting technologies, WCF, and many more. The various sections are very easy to follow with numerous code examples and images supporting the concepts being introduced by each chapter. There really is not much to say about this book beyond this. It is a great resource for anyone who wants to make sure they are caught up with the latest Microsoft development technologies.

I cannot overstate that Make: Electronics is the greatest electronics book for budding hobbyists. From touching your tongue to a battery to working with microcontrollers, this book is great fun and very educational. The author does not simply provide examples without instruction, nor do they explain theory in a vacuum. Instead, you read (and build) along with the experiments while at the same time gaining crucial knowledge into Ohm's Law, resistor color codes, and other non-formulaic information such as how capacitors and transistors work. You will find the same tried water pump analogy, but it is not pounded into the reader's brain. The author prefers instead to teach concepts rather than metaphors and this sticks much better. As a teaching tool for electronics, this book is the best.

A few more notes: the pictures and diagrams in this book are fabulous. I have never seen so much attention to detail in an electronics book. From the most basic of tools to the most complex circuit diagram, the illustrations and photos are crisp, informative, unobtrusive and ultimately very helpful. The author keeps and even tone and always makes sure to explain in multiple ways anything that might be confusing. Many times I exclaimed out loud how the book made simple something I'd always had trouble explaining or understanding. All through the reading, my friends got an earful of me singing this book's many praises.

If there is one fault to this book, it is that this hobby is an expensive undertaking. Seldom does the author really explain the cost of beginning this hobby. Parts and tools cost quite a bit of money upfront, and I would wager that it is impossible to even begin most of the experiments without spending over $100 or maybe even $300 if you want to be a completionist. So many of the parts are hard to buy individually, and unless you have a good electronics store (like Fry's, NOT Radioshack), you'll have to pay quite a bit to shop parts from online. Keep this in mind if you're taking up the hobby or giving this book to a friend.

In spite of the one negative, the book is amazing. Even if you don't learn by doing, the book is extremely enlightening and well worth buying. In short, this is the best electronics primer on the market and should be read by all people, young and old, that love learning or making, or both.

"Django 1.0 Web Site Development" by Ayman Hourieh is a great introduction to those, who already have a basic understanding of the Python language, and want to learn how to build Web 2.0 applications quickly using the Django framework.

The book gradually shows you all the specialties of the Django framework by guiding the reader through the process of creating a web application for them to keep track of and share their bookmarks. As new features are taught, the web application grows to the level of modern social networking sites.

The first half of the book introduces the developer to the basics of model, template, and view framework and the basics of databases. The author keeps the code clean and easy to pick up, with line by line examples and explanations. Administration and user controls are covered to the point where the reader can create a fully functioning web application.

The second half of the book introduces the reader to other frameworks and languages that can be tied into Django to improve the look of the web application previously created. The foundations of jQuery, CSS, AJAX, and search functions are given along with sites that will go more in depth to create a user friendly site.

I would recommend this book to those who know the basics of Python and are looking for an introduction to web applications. The author could have talked more about the different types of applications that it could be used for, but it is still worth the read.

There are those who say that you should not judge a book by its cover. I respectfully disagree, at least when it comes to books from this publisher. Zenoss Core: Network and System monitoring is advertised as a step-by-step guide to configuring and using the open-source network monitoring system. The book delivers. While I have had previous experience with Zenoss, I learned a lot more than I expected from the book. Every link, button, and widget is explained in detail, so even new users will be up and running quickly. One issue I encountered with the book was that at the time of reading, a newer version provided an updated graphical layout than what the book used for its screen-shots. However, this is a minor issue; everything is still exactly where it should, and this should not deter anyone from the book. My second issue is that it didn't really give any explanation on SNMP or how it works. While not part of the scope of the book, a little bit of background knowledge is always a good thing. However, in-depth knowledge of SNMP isn't required to setup Zenoss. In the end, if you want a book that will guide from start to finish on setting up Zenoss, this is the book for you.