Like I said up before, I got to do a little light reading recently, so I thought I'd rap out a little review on each.
Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy I saw this book and was intrigued by the topic, "Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software". I was also diggin' the price, at $20 a value in today's book world. I still own Mike's book on VB6 and ADO, it was one of the few books at the time that got me through learning ADO when all I really knew was DAO (way back in '98?). Because of that book, I thought I'd give this one a try. At work we are in the process of (hopefully) re-engineering our processes so it seemed like a good fit. It's a very good read, not too heavy, not too light. I saw some reviews on Amazon that took issue with the .Net centricity of it. While that's true, I don't think it's oppressive...it has many "agnostic" ideas that would work in just about any environment, Microsoft or Java. I like his sample application, Download Tracker. I crawled through the code and found a couple of very useful ideas/patterns that I'm mimicing in my code. His chapter on Unit Testing was absolutely dead on. Far too many projects I've been involved think nothing about testing, yet it's the one that usually bogs down the whole development cycle. I've made this book recommended reading for my development team. If you're into development, especially in the .Net world, this is a very good book to read. It's not a "code" book, but more of a best practices and idea book. Very well done. I've heard he's got another one coming out, that focuses on requirements gathering and relating back to user interfaces (my current hot button), so I'm anxious to see that one. Link to this book at Amazon
The Five People You Meet in Heaven My mom recommended that I read this book and needing something light and fluffy, after having my head in geek books and developing PHP, I was ready. This is a fun book, at least for a book that's about somebody dying! He doesn't get into religious theory here, this is just one man's fictionalization of what might happen when you die. And it's an interesting concept. Don't want to give away the plot, but the author's theory is that you meet 5 people in heaven that sort of make you understand why you were there, what your life was all about and in the main character, Eddie's life, what was so important about a seemingly worthless life. I also like the idea that heaven is individual and you get to pick what your heaven looks like. Not sure if that holds up Biblically, but it's a neat idea all the same. Eddie does ask if God knows he's there, and one of his 5 people reply, "Of course...". A very quick read and if you read geeky computer books and Clancy/Cussler type of novels, this is a good respite from those genre's. Not a brilliant piece of literature (it's no VB6 Developer's Guide to ADO or Atlantis Found) but it's a nice holiday read. It had high therapeutic value at a time in need. Link to this book at Amazon
Absolute BSD by Michael Lucas I'm only 3/4 of the way done with this book and I have to say, it's probably one of the best computer books I've ever read (and I've read a ton!!!). I'm going back to my old ways and diving a little deeper into Unix, and BSD was really the Unix I did my most work on, both in a traditional character/console environment and on the NeXT/Open Step. Rather than follow the pack and do the Linux thing, I decided to be a little non conventional and dive into FreeBSD. I found this book at the book store and I love it. If every non-Microsoft OS had a book like this, there'd be a lot more people using 'em than there are now. Be warned now: if you want a book that will help you get X-Windows up and running and turn your 'Nix into a modern GUI based desktop OS, keep moving. This is basically a "how to get a server up and running" type of book, pure command line and character based apps, no GUI stuff here. But it focuses so heavily on the fundamentals, that after you learn (or re-learn in my case) these, getting X running, or any other task is trivial. Great section on kernal optimization. Not tweaking, but re-compiling to have the kernal fit your needs, not hack for hacking sake. My interest in BSD is solely to run a server, web/FTP/SMB and this is just the ticket. I'm now ready to tackle Mono for BSD, which allows me to serve .Net ASPX pages from Unix along with a C# complier...told you I wasn't conventional...... Link to this book at Amazon
Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy I saw this book and was intrigued by the topic, "Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software". I was also diggin' the price, at $20 a value in today's book world. I still own Mike's book on VB6 and ADO, it was one of the few books at the time that got me through learning ADO when all I really knew was DAO (way back in '98?). Because of that book, I thought I'd give this one a try. At work we are in the process of (hopefully) re-engineering our processes so it seemed like a good fit. It's a very good read, not too heavy, not too light. I saw some reviews on Amazon that took issue with the .Net centricity of it. While that's true, I don't think it's oppressive...it has many "agnostic" ideas that would work in just about any environment, Microsoft or Java. I like his sample application, Download Tracker. I crawled through the code and found a couple of very useful ideas/patterns that I'm mimicing in my code. His chapter on Unit Testing was absolutely dead on. Far too many projects I've been involved think nothing about testing, yet it's the one that usually bogs down the whole development cycle. I've made this book recommended reading for my development team. If you're into development, especially in the .Net world, this is a very good book to read. It's not a "code" book, but more of a best practices and idea book. Very well done. I've heard he's got another one coming out, that focuses on requirements gathering and relating back to user interfaces (my current hot button), so I'm anxious to see that one. Link to this book at AmazonThe Five People You Meet in Heaven My mom recommended that I read this book and needing something light and fluffy, after having my head in geek books and developing PHP, I was ready. This is a fun book, at least for a book that's about somebody dying! He doesn't get into religious theory here, this is just one man's fictionalization of what might happen when you die. And it's an interesting concept. Don't want to give away the plot, but the author's theory is that you meet 5 people in heaven that sort of make you understand why you were there, what your life was all about and in the main character, Eddie's life, what was so important about a seemingly worthless life. I also like the idea that heaven is individual and you get to pick what your heaven looks like. Not sure if that holds up Biblically, but it's a neat idea all the same. Eddie does ask if God knows he's there, and one of his 5 people reply, "Of course...". A very quick read and if you read geeky computer books and Clancy/Cussler type of novels, this is a good respite from those genre's. Not a brilliant piece of literature (it's no VB6 Developer's Guide to ADO or Atlantis Found) but it's a nice holiday read. It had high therapeutic value at a time in need. Link to this book at AmazonAbsolute BSD by Michael Lucas I'm only 3/4 of the way done with this book and I have to say, it's probably one of the best computer books I've ever read (and I've read a ton!!!). I'm going back to my old ways and diving a little deeper into Unix, and BSD was really the Unix I did my most work on, both in a traditional character/console environment and on the NeXT/Open Step. Rather than follow the pack and do the Linux thing, I decided to be a little non conventional and dive into FreeBSD. I found this book at the book store and I love it. If every non-Microsoft OS had a book like this, there'd be a lot more people using 'em than there are now. Be warned now: if you want a book that will help you get X-Windows up and running and turn your 'Nix into a modern GUI based desktop OS, keep moving. This is basically a "how to get a server up and running" type of book, pure command line and character based apps, no GUI stuff here. But it focuses so heavily on the fundamentals, that after you learn (or re-learn in my case) these, getting X running, or any other task is trivial. Great section on kernal optimization. Not tweaking, but re-compiling to have the kernal fit your needs, not hack for hacking sake. My interest in BSD is solely to run a server, web/FTP/SMB and this is just the ticket. I'm now ready to tackle Mono for BSD, which allows me to serve .Net ASPX pages from Unix along with a C# complier...told you I wasn't conventional...... Link to this book at Amazon