Best JavaScript Programming
By the time you finish this book, you’ll be able to take advantage of the best design practices and experiences of those who have fought the beast of software design and triumphed. Eric Freeman recently ended nearly a decade as a media company executive, having held the position of CTO of Disney Online & Disney.com at The Walt Disney Company. More recently, she's been a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun's Java instructors how to teach the latest technologies to customers, and a lead developer of several Sun certification exams.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"a nice intro to design patterns."
"I love these Head First books."
"I've always preferred and loved the idea of fun and learn being together, and this book does exactly that, it's a book so easy to read that helps you to keep reading, and invites you to actually do the excercises, and they look fun to do."
"Fun book."
"It presents exactly what you need to know in an easy and fun to read format, making it much less of a textbook and more of a "Hey look at all this cool stuff you can do with software!""
"While GOF book covers more patterns, it's not as nearly as much fun to read as Head First Design Patterns. Bottom line: - I definitely recommend this book to any junior developer who wants to get familiar with Design Patterns. - Experienced developers will skip quite a few pages (like I did), yet it's still a good read."
"Great book, I should have read it years ago."
"This book is definitely not the patterns Nirvana, and it may not make you the patterns guru, but it sure is a great book, extremely well written to welcome the beginner to the world of patterns. Once I master this book and practice the patterns, I am sure I will be able to move to the next level and maybe I will be better able to understand the GOF bible which I learn is a must read for any serious techie!"
After reading a short chapter, you go to my website and complete twenty interactive exercises. Many learners hit a wall when they try to understand advanced concepts like variable scope and prototypes. But the fault lies with the authors, coding virtuosos who lack teaching talent. Thanks to the interactive exercises on my website, you'll always understand and remember everything necessary to confidently tackle the next concept. "I've signed up to a few sites like Udemy, Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, Lynda, YouTube videos, even searched on Coursera but nothing seemed to work for me. It's how you wind up satisfied, confident, and proud, instead of confused, discouraged, and defeated. The exercises keep you focused, give you extra practice where you're shaky, and prepare you for each next step. But, as Amazon reviewer James Toban says, when you get to the end of the book, you've built "a tower of JavaScript." But if you're new to programming, more than a thousand five-star reviews are pretty good evidence that my book may be just the one to get you coding JavaScript successfully. "Mark Myers' method of getting what can be...difficult information into a format that makes it exponentially easier to consume, truly understand, and synthesize into real-world application is beyond anything I've encountered before." My professional focus is on using technology to reduce the effort and tedium of learning, primarily through interactivity. I'm developing the "A Smarter Way to Learn" series on programming, a collection of instructional books paired with online interactive exercises. Along with my wife Judy and our two politically-active cats, I live in Taos, NM, where I cook under the ghostly supervision of Marcella Hazan, read extensively, play showboat frisbee once a week, and long for more episodes of "Breaking Bad."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"As part of my learning, I'm also taking another class by Jeff Escalante, it's called "Making Kittens fly with JavaScript", I'm learning so much already because his course actually involves building a project from scratch. I tried learning javascript before from the "Eloquent Javascript" book and it was more intermediate than beginners so hopefully once I'm done with a smarter way to learn javascript and the other class I'm taking, I'll be able to finally understand the content of that book."
"Granted, there's more reading involved than some of the other resources that provide video tutorials, and there isn't any elaborate are direction to the interface, but this is a small sacrifice for a fantastic value. Fun fact: I was able to complete my first InDesign script before finishing the book."
"This book and the accompanying exercises (that you get at no additional expense) make this a one-of-a-kind learning system. Because of the organization, clear communication and most of all the online component of this system, this is the best book I have ever bought."
"Pros: -Gets you writing code quickly. -Includes online practice problems, that if completed, really help you retain the information. -Doesn't assume previous programming experience and has clear explanations where needed. -Author asks for and responds to feedback. Cons: -won't be the only JavaScript book you need, as it doesn't really cover design patterns, or any super in depth stuff. -doesn't go over any of the new ES6 stuff. This was my first programming book and I'm glad it was."
"This book provides you 20 individual exercises per chapter, where the computer will keep prompting you on the answers you get wrong until you get them right. This builds muscle memory for programming, and you find yourself recalling bits of code that you would not immediately remember just from reading the standard JS texts."
3 A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript: The new approach that uses technology to cut your effort in half
After reading a short chapter, you go to my website and complete twenty interactive exercises. Many learners hit a wall when they try to understand advanced concepts like variable scope and prototypes. But the fault lies with the authors, coding virtuosos who lack teaching talent. Thanks to the interactive exercises on my website, you'll always understand and remember everything necessary to confidently tackle the next concept. "I've signed up to a few sites like Udemy, Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, Lynda, YouTube videos, even searched on Coursera but nothing seemed to work for me. It's how you wind up satisfied, confident, and proud, instead of confused, discouraged, and defeated. The exercises keep you focused, give you extra practice where you're shaky, and prepare you for each next step. But, as Amazon reviewer James Toban says, when you get to the end of the book, you've built "a tower of JavaScript." But if you're new to programming, more than a thousand five-star reviews are pretty good evidence that my book may be just the one to get you coding JavaScript successfully. "Mark Myers' method of getting what can be...difficult information into a format that makes it exponentially easier to consume, truly understand, and synthesize into real-world application is beyond anything I've encountered before." My professional focus is on using technology to reduce the effort and tedium of learning, primarily through interactivity. I'm developing the "A Smarter Way to Learn" series on programming, a collection of instructional books paired with online interactive exercises. Along with my wife Judy and our two politically-active cats, I live in Taos, NM, where I cook under the ghostly supervision of Marcella Hazan, read extensively, play showboat frisbee once a week, and long for more episodes of "Breaking Bad."
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"As part of my learning, I'm also taking another class by Jeff Escalante, it's called "Making Kittens fly with JavaScript", I'm learning so much already because his course actually involves building a project from scratch. I tried learning javascript before from the "Eloquent Javascript" book and it was more intermediate than beginners so hopefully once I'm done with a smarter way to learn javascript and the other class I'm taking, I'll be able to finally understand the content of that book."
"Granted, there's more reading involved than some of the other resources that provide video tutorials, and there isn't any elaborate are direction to the interface, but this is a small sacrifice for a fantastic value. Fun fact: I was able to complete my first InDesign script before finishing the book."
"This book and the accompanying exercises (that you get at no additional expense) make this a one-of-a-kind learning system. Because of the organization, clear communication and most of all the online component of this system, this is the best book I have ever bought."
"Pros: -Gets you writing code quickly. -Includes online practice problems, that if completed, really help you retain the information. -Doesn't assume previous programming experience and has clear explanations where needed. -Author asks for and responds to feedback. Cons: -won't be the only JavaScript book you need, as it doesn't really cover design patterns, or any super in depth stuff. -doesn't go over any of the new ES6 stuff. This was my first programming book and I'm glad it was."
"This book provides you 20 individual exercises per chapter, where the computer will keep prompting you on the answers you get wrong until you get them right. This builds muscle memory for programming, and you find yourself recalling bits of code that you would not immediately remember just from reading the standard JS texts."
Best Java Programming
By the time you finish this book, you’ll be able to take advantage of the best design practices and experiences of those who have fought the beast of software design and triumphed. Eric Freeman recently ended nearly a decade as a media company executive, having held the position of CTO of Disney Online & Disney.com at The Walt Disney Company. More recently, she's been a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun's Java instructors how to teach the latest technologies to customers, and a lead developer of several Sun certification exams.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"a nice intro to design patterns."
"I love these Head First books."
"I've always preferred and loved the idea of fun and learn being together, and this book does exactly that, it's a book so easy to read that helps you to keep reading, and invites you to actually do the excercises, and they look fun to do."
"Fun book."
"It presents exactly what you need to know in an easy and fun to read format, making it much less of a textbook and more of a "Hey look at all this cool stuff you can do with software!""
"While GOF book covers more patterns, it's not as nearly as much fun to read as Head First Design Patterns. Bottom line: - I definitely recommend this book to any junior developer who wants to get familiar with Design Patterns. - Experienced developers will skip quite a few pages (like I did), yet it's still a good read."
"Great book, I should have read it years ago."
"This book is definitely not the patterns Nirvana, and it may not make you the patterns guru, but it sure is a great book, extremely well written to welcome the beginner to the world of patterns. Once I master this book and practice the patterns, I am sure I will be able to move to the next level and maybe I will be better able to understand the GOF bible which I learn is a must read for any serious techie!"
Best Software Design & Engineering
And as such, I know what it's like to be asked to whip up brilliant algorithms on the spot and then write flawless code on a whiteboard. Learn how to uncover the hints and hidden details in a question, discover how to break down a problem into manageable chunks, develop techniques to unstick yourself when stuck, learn (or re-learn) core computer science concepts, and practice on 189 interview questions and solutions. Extensive coverage of essential topics, such as big O time, data structures, and core algorithms. At Google, she interviewed hundreds of software engineers and evaluated thousands of hiring packets on the hiring committee.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"The DP solutions in this book are not actually tabular DP formulations--I recommend looking at the problems here http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~bcdean/dp_practice/ (Brian Dean's Dynamic Programming Practice Problems)."
"The main reason I bought the book is that it closely reflects the status quo of the technical interviews in large tech companies. For many of the problems, unless you know the solutions beforehand, there is no way you can code up a decent one within an hour. The book mentions an example, a good candidate whom the author knows very well but just cannot pass the coding interviews. I am guessing the assumption is that the coding problems we do nowadays on the interviews somehow achieve minimal number of false positives. One solution reduces the problem to checking for substrings. The author claims the time complexity is O(m+n), which I believe for Java is actually O(mn). Overall this is good book for preparing for coding interviews."
"I've been writing software for a long time, and I'm competent at my job. Because the presence of books like these create a vicious cycle: prep book gets written; interviewees study/memorize answers; interviewers make questions "harder" to compensate; new book gets written! The grinder continues to turn, and whereas ten years ago you could get a good job with some string or linked-list manipulation questions, now you've got people who consider whiteboard coding of topcoder elite questions to be the baseline measurement of programmer competency. You'll even run into lazy interviewers who take questions directly from this book, which is the ultimate in stupidity: if "good" candidates have prepared from the book, and you ask questions directly from the book, what are you really accomplishing, other than a test of memorization skills? I've seen it myself."
Best Object-Oriented Software Design
These texts cover the design of object-oriented software and examine how to investigate requirements, create solutions and then translate designs into code, showing developers how to make practical use of the most significant recent developments. Design Patterns is a modern classic in the literature of object-oriented development, offering timeless and elegant solutions to common problems in software design.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Depending on on how you think of programming, this book could be incredibly insightful, or horribly abstract and impractical."
"I find it very interesting and it goes into details for design patterns and re-use of code."
"I have been using this book as a reference on Design Pattern."
"This book will forever stand as a foundation of software development."
"OK, so this title has become almost a bible for the software industry - it seems to get cited by every other author I read, so I thought it was about time I actually bought a copy."
"Even though I program in ABAP, it helps me to translate the pattern into that code."
"Great book for who want to understand each pattern deeply."
"Excelent book."
Best Computer Systems Analysis & Design
By the time you finish this book, you’ll be able to take advantage of the best design practices and experiences of those who have fought the beast of software design and triumphed. Eric Freeman recently ended nearly a decade as a media company executive, having held the position of CTO of Disney Online & Disney.com at The Walt Disney Company. More recently, she's been a master trainer for Sun Microsystems, teaching Sun's Java instructors how to teach the latest technologies to customers, and a lead developer of several Sun certification exams.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"a nice intro to design patterns."
"I love these Head First books."
"I've always preferred and loved the idea of fun and learn being together, and this book does exactly that, it's a book so easy to read that helps you to keep reading, and invites you to actually do the excercises, and they look fun to do."
"Fun book."
"It presents exactly what you need to know in an easy and fun to read format, making it much less of a textbook and more of a "Hey look at all this cool stuff you can do with software!""
"While GOF book covers more patterns, it's not as nearly as much fun to read as Head First Design Patterns. Bottom line: - I definitely recommend this book to any junior developer who wants to get familiar with Design Patterns. - Experienced developers will skip quite a few pages (like I did), yet it's still a good read."
"Great book, I should have read it years ago."
"This book is definitely not the patterns Nirvana, and it may not make you the patterns guru, but it sure is a great book, extremely well written to welcome the beginner to the world of patterns. Once I master this book and practice the patterns, I am sure I will be able to move to the next level and maybe I will be better able to understand the GOF bible which I learn is a must read for any serious techie!"
Best PHP Programming
With this popular hands-on guide, you'll tackle dynamic web programming with the help of today's core technologies: PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, and HTML5. I would definitely recommend it for beginners " " A must have book for those who begin sailing in the Web development waters " " A very in-depth introduction for webmasters " " It has everything I needed to get up to speed very quickly " " The book did a great job of filling the holes in my knowledge ".
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"However, MySQL and PHP have changed DRASTICALLY and if you learn from this book only you will need to supplement all of the knowledge gained and it will probably only lead to confusion. Most recently salting and hashing has been automated by the overlords of PHP into a singular function: password_hash(STRING, PRESET_ALGORITHM). This was done because salting and hashing were produced incorrectly on so many sites that PHP's caretakers decided that it would be in everyone's best interest to simplify the process. Only briefly there is part of a chapter where he touches on prepared statements, which has become the correct way to instantiate MySQL queries."
"This is a great reference text."
"The easiest to follow and understand, provided the most comprehensive knowledge a developer needs."
"This book gives a solid Introduction of building an end to end Web Site/System with PHP, MySQL in the server side, and JavaScript and JQuery in the Client Side."
"Good material with a width coverage of topics for everyone who wants to up their coding game."
"I like the authors writing style he made the information flow in a logical manner and covered pretty much all the bases from start to finish."
"Excellent."
Best Java Server Pages Programming
This new edition of Murach's Java Servlets and JSP makes it easier than ever for Java developers to master web programming. When he's not programming or writing books about programming, he can be found surfing or writing music.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I purchased this book to have an understanding about servlets and how they work, and this book does a great job doing so."
"Had a previous version too and both are great Java books."
"What can I say, this is my 4th Murach book."
"I needed a basic crash course on Servlets and JSP technology, and this book has served me with just that."
"Bought it for school and it teaches what you would expect."
"Much good material, good broad coverage, great examples, but not very deep in some areas."
Best ActiveX Programming
ADO: ActiveX Data Objects is both an introduction and a complete reference to ADO (ActiveX Data Objects), Microsoft's universal data access solution. Jason T. Roff has been programming computers since he was eight years old.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I was a C programmer in a former life and was thrown into VBA programming with Excel."
"If you, as I did, make any attempt to learn ADO from the many books on VB out there, you will discover that none of them presents the subject in a way such that you can start writing code immediately in a way respectable to the programming community. Jason Roff's book presents the entire subject making one assumption: The reader does not know anything about ADO."
"This is important to me in that I must interface with those experts and by using this book, I was able to ask intelligent questions and avoid asking the "dumb questions"."
"Before you buy any other ADO book, I recommend you to take a look at this book first."
"I have other ADO books in my collection but Mr. Roff's explanation of ADO's functionality plus his insight and suggestions on how to code with ADO make this book my number one ADO resource."
"I have other ADO books in my collection but Mr. Roff's explanation of ADO's functionality plus his insight and suggestions on how to code with ADO make this book my number one ADO resource."
"It pieces together all the different parts into a unified solid foundation."
"This is a well written book for existing programmers who want to learn ADO."
Best ASP.NET Programming
Windows PowerShell in Action, Third Edition is the definitive guide to PowerShell, now revised to cover PowerShell 6. Windows PowerShell in Action, Third Edition is the definitive guide to PowerShell, now revised to cover PowerShell 6. The best end-to-end coverage of PowerShell available Updated with coverage of PowerShell v6 PowerShell workflows PowerShell classes Writing modules and scripts Desired State Configuration Programming APIs and pipelines. Welcome to PowerShell Working with types Operators and expressions Advanced operators and variables Flow control in scripts PowerShell functions Advanced functions and scripts Using and authoring modules Module manifests and metadata Metaprogramming with scriptblocks and dynamic code PowerShell remoting PowerShell workflows PowerShell Jobs Errors and exceptions Debugging Working with providers, files, and CIM Working with .NET and events Desired State Configuration Classes in PowerShell The PowerShell and runspace APIs Appendix - PowerShell 6.0 for Windows, Linux, and MacOS. Bruce Payette is a founding member of the PowerShell team at Microsoft.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"I've been writing in PowerShell for a couple of years, but I still find myself going to the internet for how to do certain things in the language."
"I have been searching for good reference material for PowerShell because I use it so much withy job."
"I bought this book back in 2007, as I was curious about powershell - which was version 1 at the time and this book was a key book to understanding it. I got a few books on powershell, and the style of this book at first seemed very choppy, but as I learned more about the language it became more understandable the way things were done in this book."
"This book is excellent material for anyone wanting to master PowerShell."
"I don't ever remember reading a computer book from cover to cover, but I got hooked on this book and "can't put it down"... Plus, who ever thought that the history of a program could be as interesting as this one is."
"I consider this book to be the best on Powershell 2.0 with full detailed explanations, examples and easy to follow instructions, guides and a remarkable and uncanny delivery method by the author."
"I have experience writing in Perl, C#, JavaScript and am picking up on Powershell.."
"), then this is the book for you."
Best Cold Fusion Programming
Adobe ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit is the best-selling ColdFusion series of all time—used by more ColdFusion developers to learn the product than any other books. He is the author of the best-selling ColdFusion Web Application Construction Kit series, as well as multiple books on SQL, Regular Expressions, Java, Windows development, and more.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Excellent update for CF 10 - now we need the CF 11/12 version(s)."
"This book was a great addition to my technical reference library."
"Script syntax has matured in the last couple of versions of CF and could easily have been used exclusively, at least for code which doesn't generate HTML directly."
"While I am learning a great deal, this book is pretty thin for the price."
"I've used lots that I've learned from it and have impressed other developers on my team."
"We'll documented all new features , ready to do some examples now on new enhancements."
"Thin, not what I expected."