Content tagged with “programming”

“On the plus side, this book had a good explanation of blockchain in the beginning. It also explains the basics of Smart Contracts. But it’s essentially a user manual for a bunch of software tools. A lot of the book is screenshots of UIs. It was hard to ‘zoom out’ and get a longer view of what the…”

“The book is weird. It’s not about ‘code,’ really. It’s about human representation in code. It’s really about how humans relate to code, and about how humans are represented as code. Two chapters in the middle are representative, and neither have anything to do with code – One discussed the…”

“This is a computer programming term. It refers to operations that are performed on sequences of bits, in aggregate. A byte is made up of eight bits, which can be 0 or 1. So a byte might look like this: 00011011 A bitstring (or bitpattern) is any sequence of bits – not necessarily an entire byte. A…”

“ A complicated book about how to architect systems that grow and change over time. Lots of detail, very theoretical, and sometimes hard to digest. ”

“I’ve been coding C# for more than a decade, but I still found so much in here that I missed over the years. Lots of these things were basic language features that I was just working around, in complete ignorance. Other things were changes in the platform over the years. Fact is, we get stuck in…”

“This book started so well, but then it got way more in-depth than I wanted to get, and it ultimately lost me. This is a book about how computers work. Literally how the computer thinks. The author starts off with basic codes, like Morse Code, explaining how more complex concepts can be made from…”

“The book was a bit scattered, though I’m not sure what I expected. I was looking for a book on CSS best practices, and there is some of that in here, but there’s also a re-hash of a lot of non-secret CSS stuff. Like, there’s a whole chapters on transforms and another on transitions, which isn’t…”

“An absolutely magisterial work that explores every last corner of the CSS spec. The advancements that have come along since I learned CSS are amazing – you can almost write executable code in CSS now. This book explores every edge case, no matter absurd, to probe every last corner of the spec. I…”

“These are two terms you mostly hear in programming (when used together), but which apply to a lot of other things as well. You need to consider their roots: Declare: ‘Get me this thing’ Prescribe: ‘Here is how to get this thing’ In programming, ‘prescriptive code’ specifies exactly how to do…”

“A very complete look at all the steps necessary to manage devops in a software shop. Some of it was lost on me, because it’s exactly what it purported to be: a comprehensive review of everything you might do to manage the process of releasing and supporting software. Of interest was some emphasis…”

“Good book for what it is. If you know Drupal, you’ll be bored. But if you have no idea what a CMS is, this is a good overview. There is zero code. This is all ‘Drupal by configuration,’ which is a school of thought which may or may not appeal to you. Gets bogged down in individual module…”

“Not much to say about this except that it’s a seminal book on how to write JavaScript. It’s in its fourth edition, and it discusses not only the technically correct ways to write it, but stylistically correct ways as well. The examples the author provides are kind of mind-blowing. One of then is a…”

“This author is claiming that the ‘essence’ of software isn’t code, it’s concepts . He’s arguing that we should design software more on the conceptual level. Concepts are the user’s mental model of how the software works, and how the big pieces of the software interact. He argues for designing these…”

“I’m rating this five stars because it accomplished everything it set out to do, but books like this really defy rating. This is a procedural book. You’re meant to have this open while you do stuff. There’s not a lot of words – it’s largely screencaps and code listings. Books like this also become…”

“this book prompted me to re-acquaint myself with a word: ‘grok.’ To grok something is to understand it intuitively, down to its bones. The term comes from a Robert Heinlein book, it turns out. ‘Git for Humans’ took me a step closer to grokking Git. Lots of tutorial books are of the ‘insert tab A…”

“I’ve used HTMX for a number of years (I currently use it on the very website this review was posted to). As such, this book is preaching to the choir quite a bit. Like a lot of situations with technology, the book exists on two levels: To evangelize the use of HTML (‘hypermedia’) to build…”

“A good look at all the skills you should know but don’t if you’re a programmer without a CS degree. My degree was in Political Science (I was going to go to law school), and I’m a self-taught developer. This book covered a lot of things I sort of knew but had never really studied (especially data…”

“ Very short, solid book that delivers exactly what it claims. It covers npm well, concisely, and to-the-point. I learned a lot without a ton of overhead. ”

“Exactly what the title says – it’s a very short, concise guide to the Java language. It’s especially helpful for developers of other languages who want to see how things are done in Java. I read it over the course of a day – kept it in my back pocket while I walked around the Mall of America. I’d…”

“I started reading this all the way through, but – like most ‘Cookbook’ titles – it gets increasingly esoteric later on. Still, a very good book which helps you get a grasp on jQuery through considerable examples. Many examples are incredibly basic, which means the books functions well as an…”

“This is a collection of 63 laws and axioms about building software – some serious, some not. Some are wildly obvious and general, others are unknown and specific. Some are genuinely about software development, and other are just about life in general. For example: Murphy’s Law: anything that can go…”

“This is a solid overview of React. Good examples, but like most coding books, they get long. Also, ‘React’ isn’t just one thing – it’s an entire stack of technologies that work together, and this book seems to cover them all. Well-written, clear. (I find technical books hard to assign star ratings…”

“This is a comprehensive and primer review of RDF. I don’t know if ‘linked data’ is a specific term, but in this book, it’s RDF, and not just ‘casual’ RDF. It’s not just embedded metadata – this is a hardcore look at creating what are essentially distributed databases based on RDF data. Not for the…”

“ Very low level. Really opens your eyes as to the things you can do with Node. ”

“ If you’re a developer and you just never ‘got’ Drupal, this is your book. If this book succeeds at one thing, it’s to change your mindset about Drupal – to understand the different paradigms you need to adopt to work with it. Highly recommended in that sense. ”

“This is one of the great books of computer science. As the title would imply, it’s about fixing the internals of computer programs, without changing how the program functions from the ‘outside.’ This is a time-honored task in computer science – programs get all twisted and crufty over time as…”

“ I thought I knew search. I knew nothing about search. ”

“ This wasn’t for me. I missed the word ‘beginner’ in the subtitle. There are chapters explaining the basics of HTTP. And of programming in general. Also, it’s full of cutesy drawings and…stuff. This is good book for the right audience. I just wasn’t it. ”

“ Really wonderful book that covers all the high points. It delves as deep as it needs to, and invites you to explore things that interest you more, which is the hallmark of a good technical book. If you know nothing, this gives you a nice base, and a roadmap for where to go from here. ”

“Deeply opinionated book that is violently opposed to the use of JS as an object-oriented language. It’s well-written, and has clear information and code samples, but the author is pushing an agenda which gets a little tiresome. I felt like I had to decide: do I believe the entire design team behind…”