Review of Training Guide: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 by Glenn Johnson, publisher Microsoft Press

First I have to say that this book is excellent, but I had to give not so good grade for it. The description of the book didn't correspond to the actual book and there were one major omission on the book and few minor issues.

In the description the book was "Designed to help experienced programmers", in reality this is for novices. In the start of the book was requirements section, officially you need some version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 to use the book. This requirement is half correct. This requirement was not mentioned in the description. Luckily it is not a real requirement, you don't need Visual Studio to learn HTML5, JS, nor CSS3, but the book is actually great tutorial for using Visual Studio.

The major omission in the book was security of your application/page. It should have received a lot more attention than just one example of requiring http[s]://in front of a input. The ABCD multiple choice questions were one of the minor issues. I felt that those were close to ridiculous, first three of those were about which version of Visual Studio to use. These show that the book was a study guide to multiple choice test. Second minor issue is that there is other IDEs for HTML than Visual Studio (I do understand that this is MS book, but still).

But now to praiseworthy issues in the book. It covered a lot of material, examples were great and thorough, the text was pleasant to read, and good programming practices were introduced to reader.

3/5 with praises and recommendation that this is actually a good book for novices.

Review of UML 2.0 Pocket Reference by Dan Pilone, published by O'Reilly

I bought this book a long time ago and now decided to write a review of it. As a Pocket Reference book it fits perfectly in standard sized pocket and travels well with you. Pocket Reference books are nice as portable reading. I've been refreshing my UML knowledge multiple times while waiting my significant other while waiting her in the car. (Time to time print still beats electronic.)

One cannot learn UML from this book, but combined with decent web tutorials this book gives you glimpse of power within UML 2.0. It also serves as a great refresher on all things possible with UML 2.0.

As UML is all about diagrams the book is filled with example figures showing almost all possible ways of using UML to provide information of the design. The small size of the book does force small print on some of the figures.

I'm recommending this book with reservation that this is not book to learn UML.

Solid 4/5

Review of Understanding and Using C Pointers by Richard Reese, published by O'Reilly.

I would call this book "Black Art of Pointer Magic Made Easy". It is a rare pleasure to find a book with title and content matching exactly. I've been disappointed many times with titles promising a lot more than what the book actually delivers. Many C++ books tip toe around pointers and just give you the absolute minimum information needed to work with basic issues around pointers. After reading this book you can really understand the magic of pointers.

I'm familiar with C only as a "subset" of C++ (which is of course erroneous) but understanding the memory management and pointers in C makes me a lot more confident if I ever have to use pure C. The book goes from pointer basics to "faking" objects in C. During this journey the book guides us through memory management in C, function pointers, character strings, structs, security issues, and other stuff too (The Table of Contents is available in O'Reilly site).
The book was also a joy to read as the text was well written, and it had a lots of informative figures and examples.

I learned a lot from this book and I'm sure that I will use it as a reference book later on. I will recommend this to every one using C/C++.

5/5


disclaimer: I received this book free of charge from O'Reilly for review purpose.

Review of Computer Science Programming Basics in Ruby, Exploring Concepts and Curriculum with Ruby by Frieder, Frieder and Grossman, published by O'Reilly

For me most important thing in a non-fiction book is that the title and content match. Rarely I've seen as perfect match as in this book. The book is rather short, but it manages to talk on many important issues in Computer Science and show how things are done with Ruby.
Personally I don't have CS degree, but some CS courses were included in my physics masters degree. Furthermore before reading this only thing which I knew about Ruby was that it exists. I do have experience in programming mainly with C++ and Fortran (Hey, I'm physicist :). So I'm not in the target group of this book, but I found the book useful for me as nice starting point for Ruby if I start to use it for my work.

The book starts with basics of algorithms and then goes to how computers work. After this the book goes through standard toolbox of programming languages with examples in Ruby. These include variables, conditional statements, loops, sorting and object oriented programming.

The book was well written and I can recommend this to anybody in the target group of the book. I'm bit struggling between 4 or 5 out of 5, but 5 it is.


Note: I got this book free from O'Reilly for review purposes.

Sorry for no updates in a while

Pneumonia l dex virosa

Review of Surviving Orbit the DIY Way by Sandy Antunes, published by O'Reilly/Maker Press

I bought the book as it looked interesting and price was right. The book is part of DIY Satellite book series by Sandy Antunes.

I'm a astroparticle physicist working on related field but not involved in satellite missions. I wanted to learn a bit about satellites and bought this book.

The book was well written and informative. There was just the correct amount of humor in the book. The description of needs for testing setup goes for anything which needs to survive without human interaction for period of a time. The book provides a lots of tips for doing this survivability testing for many different challenges. Among the challenges met by satellite are low pressure, extreme temperatures (hot and low), vibrations, and radiation. Many of these challenges are met also in stuff used here in the planet and same test methods can be used. The methods provided in the book are such that almost anybody can build the test rigs and to the tests. Even if you need to test something not covered in the book you can follow the testing guidelines and come up with your own test rig.

I recommend this book for anybody interested in satellites and survivability testing.

I give this book full 5/5

Review of DIY Instruments for Amateur Space by Sandy Antunes, published by O'Reilly/Maker Press

I bought this book as the price was quite low and the tittle looked promising.
(Yes I bought it, I didn't receive the book through the Blogger Review program.)
This book is part of DIY Satellite book series by Sandy Antunes


The book was extremely interesting and well written. I must say that I learned a lot more than what I expected. I'm an astroparticle physicist but not directly involved in space missions (our experiment is located inside of a mine). One member of our team just finished his PhD and moved into a group with a satellite experiment. This closeness of the field prompted me to buy the book.

Besides the satellite instruments the book gives nice overview of scientific measurements and experimental physics for a layperson. Only thing which bothered me in the book was overemphasis of optical detectors. I fully understand that it is the best example to use in this kind of book.

Here I can give the book 4.5/5 but for O'Reillys site I have to think hard whether to give 4 or 5.

I do recommend this book to everyone interested in satellites and experimental physics. This is excellent value for money.