CompiledMonkey.com

Not too many months ago, I was evaluating a number of Java frameworks for a project I was starting. One of those frameworks was JBoss Seam. Seam brings together J2EE technologies such as Enterprise Java Beans 3.0, Java Server Faces, POJOs, and a wealth of rich web components.

Many of us are familiar with the “In Action” series of books from Manning. They are quite simply some of the most highly respected technology books available. I purchased this book knowing the kind of quality I could expect, and I wasn’t let down. The presentation and quality of the material was as I expected. Some of the key areas of focus were those that are most important in Seam; the Seam life cycle, inversion of control, state management, persistence, and transactions. Obviously many of these topics exist outside of Seam but what the Seam framework does is provide added features for these key items. The book focuses heavily on each and really drills into the improvements made.

I’ve done a lot of scrounging around the web for tutorials, guides, and articles about Seam. This book is far and away the best resource I’ve found. Everything else has been a mere reference. If you are like me, and want a real resource on the topic, you’ll be happy with this purchase.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to be the technical editor for McGraw-Hill’s A Beginner’s Guide: ASP.NET 3.5. After many months of waiting, the final copy hit my doorstep this morning! It’s great to see something you worked on in final printed form. It was almost surreal to see my name and bio inside the front cover.

The author, William B. Sanders, did an excellent job with the title and I can’t wait to read through it again. Of course, I highly recommend it for anyone that needs an introduction to ASP.NET 3.5.

http://www.infibeam.com/Books/info/William-Sanders/ASP-Net-3-5-A-Beginner-s/007159194X.html

I just finished reading a review copy of “Programming .NET 3.5” from O’Reilly. The book, published in August, is an overview of the latest .NET Framework revision. You’ll get an introduction to the topics that have been introduced along the way that include technology from .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, and the latest version; .NET 3.5. Also included are libraries such as ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight.

You can easily pick up this book and enjoy the introductions to technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight. Each of these topics are presented in a way that will be familiar to .NET developers. New developers, without experience in .NET, will be able to take a lot away from this book. It certainly will do more for the developer who already has a .NET background, no matter how brief it is.

That said, if you only pick up the book for the introduction to each technology, you’ll be missing the best that this book has to offer. Unlike most technology books these days, this book explains the topics within the context of best practices and real world scenarios. For example, prior versions of ASP.NET did not promote decoupled architectures. In fact, it made it difficult to achieve them. With the technology available in .NET 3.5, modeling and implementing proper architectures is encouraged and facilitated by the framework. This book will show you how that works in .NET 3.5 and introduce you to the technologies at the same time.

I highly recommend this book. It will be on my desk for easy reference for my .NET projects in the future.

I’ve been reading another book from Packt Publishing, called “LINQ Quickly“. Again, it’s a pretty short book, coming in at 250 pages.  The author does a decent job at explaining the basis of LINQ and the various implementations, such as LINQ to SQL, and so on. What would have been a welcome addition to this book is a more practical approach to the technology. Perhaps by building a real application along the way. There is an appendix for just that, but it’s a disappointing 7 pages. The book’s subtitle mentions it being a practical guide but I didn’t see that.

If you want a brief overview of what’s possible with LINQ and the various implementations, you’ll probably find the same information for free across the web. I was hoping for more of a real-world introduction.

I’ve been working my way through “ASP.NET 3.5 Unleashed” lately. Although I’m not quite finished, since the book comes in just under 2000 pages, I do feel confident in writing a review.

The Unleashed series has a certain following behind it for being a fairly comprehensive guide to the technology the book examines. This entry into the series is no exception. This book goes into every detail of ASP.NET and ready digs into the new features of 3.5, as you may expect given the title.

I’ve enjoyed the way this book presents material. It’s not too detailed for the beginner but doesn’t leave the experienced wanting too much more. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for information on ASP.NET 3.5. This book is something every ASP.NET book should aspire to be.

I just finished an interesting book, “Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion“. Trac, a ticket management system, and Subversion, a source control management system, are open source software that are very popular in the community. I’ve used each extensively and really enjoy what each of the solutions bring to the table over their competition.

The author does an excellent job explaining everything you need for getting an environment set up.  By the end of this book you’ll understand the setup, configuration, and usage of each of these tools, in addition to Apache.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a free solution to project management and source code management. It’s a rather quick read at 120 pages but enjoyable and useful.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been working on finishing the latest book from SitePoint on ASP.NET, “Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB, 2nd Edition“. The authors did a great job on this book. It’s fit for a beginner and does a wonderful job of teaching the basics of getting started in ASP.NET. Many books skimp on the things you need before coding can begin, or they leave it out completely. Here you’ll find plenty of help and suggestions for using the most modern tools available to a new ASP.NET developer.

This book provides you with the background necessary for building ASP.NET applications. It covers what nearly every introduction book covers, the ASP.NET controls, data access, master pages, and so on. What sets it apart from most other books is how clearly the material is presented to the reader. You won’t find some golden piece of information you’ve never heard before but that’s not the focus of the book. For a beginner, it’s a perfect choice.

Not long ago I received an email from someone at Packt Publishing asking if I would review their latest ASP.NET book. I gladly accepted as this is something I’d like to do more of. I have another book on my bedside table waiting for a review and I’m in the middle of performing a technical edit of a book due for publication in July. I’m thoroughly enjoying this kind of work and hope to continue it. More on that in a future entry I imagine.

The book is called ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls Essentials. This book is clearly marked as not being for beginners to the ASP.NET framework and I would suggest potential readers follow that warning. The book is littered with helpful snippets of C# code showing you how to obtain data-driven output in your ASP.NET pages. These snippets can be confusing if you’re not fairly comfortable with the ASP.NET framework and the event model. There are not that many instances of a full walk-through in the examples provided, so it’s hard to follow unless you know what you’re doing. I personally found no trouble in keeping up with the book. So, beginners, you’ve been warned.

The author has a clear understanding of the subject matter and it shows in this book. The topics presented cover a solid portion of data access and presentation in ASP.NET. I do wish there had been some introduction to ADO.NET at the very beginning of the book. Being as ADO.NET is the fundamental building block to this book, I think it would have been a welcome addition. The book itself is just over 200 pages that are broken down into 8 chapters.

As a first edition, there are a number of formatting and technical mistakes present in this book. I noticed a specific code example towards the beginning of the book where quotations had been replaced by another character, which certainly would not compile and run for the reader. A reader with C# experience would notice this instantly, but it’s a mistake that should have been corrected. The indentation of the code examples in this book are widely varied. As a developer, it’s fundamental to see correct formatting in code, and a book should hold that to a higher standard. I also noticed a few instances of code that was simply formatted in such a way that made it invalid. It would not compile if sitting in Visual Studio. Again, something an experience reader would catch easily and wouldn’t impede their progress through the book.

Overall, I liked the book. It contains valuable information if you need a lesson in data presentation controls for ASP.NET. If you are considering this book, I would pick it up at your local book store and determine if the content is what you’re looking for and whether the list price can be justified to you. Even with the technical mistakes and being a quick read, it will be a worthwhile purchase to many developers looking to understand the data presentation controls available in ASP.NET.

I’ve really enjoyed some of the recent books I’ve read. I’m in major need of some new ones! I think something on the history of the Mozilla Foundation would be great and possibly something about the history of OS X.

I think I liked “Dreaming in Code” so much because it talked about the details of a software project that a lot of books avoid. Sure, it’s boring to most, but I love it.

Anyone have recommendations?

I’ve been making my way through two books; “The Old New Thing: Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows” and “Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software“.

The Old New Thing is a look at the evolution of Microsoft Windows from someone who’s been there since the beginning.  It’s not exactly the best book in the world but does give you an interesting look at design decisions that were made.  A lot of the book seems to be a half angry developer defending Windows from all of the common complaints often directed towards Microsoft.  I’ve semi enjoyed it because some pieces of the book are interesting.  Other pieces of the book are overly detailed in terms of Win32 code and simply not worthwhile for most people to read.

Dreaming in Code is a look at an overly ambitious project from it’s beginning.  It examines the process from day one and gives you an excellent look at the real process of software development.  The example turned out to be a failure in many ways, which leads to an even better learning experience for the reader.  I’ve found myself frustrated at times while reading the book.  You’ll quickly see a common trend throughout the book; the project group can’t seem to make a decision and run with it.  In all seriousness, it takes a solid two years before the group has a real plan for their project.  Now, that isn’t a flaw in the book, but rather a plus.  The book conveys that project so well that you can almost get emotionally stressed out by the lack of progress these people are making.  I would definitely recommend this book to anyone involved in the software product life cycle as you’ll learn a lot of what not to do.

This morning my next two books came in; “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” and “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code“.  Both of which are a little less than light reading, but I’m looking forward to them nonetheless.