stoolpigeon - Slashdot User

Submission + - Dart 1.0 Released (chromium.org)

Submitted by stoolpigeon on Thursday November 14, 2013 @05:30AM

Submission + - Book Review: "The Human Division"

Submitted by stoolpigeon on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @01:52AM

stoolpigeon writes: This is the new review reflecting the fact that they have now made both 'extra' stories available on-line.

Title: Scala for the Impatient
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 432
ISBN: 978-0765333513
Rating: 9/10

How would humanity fare in a universe filled with other sentient races and the technology for all of them to interact? If human history is any indication there would be conflict. That conflict would be between many groups that saw themselves as people and the rest as monsters. What that universe and those interactions would look like is a key theme in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. The latest offering, The Human Division continues to dig deeply into a wide range of questions about what makes someone a person and how people treat one another at their best and worst.

It’s been five years since the publication of the last book in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series, Zoe’s Tale. That entry saw Scalzi explore new ground with his first juvenile. The newest Old Man’s War book is another first for Scalzi. The Human Division was released on the web as a serial prior to being published in a complete volume in hardback and as an ebook. This was planned from the start and made for an interesting experience as those who chose to purchase chapters as they came out worked through the book together.

I have to admit I skipped out on reading the chapters as they were released. It seemed like a fun thing to do but I wanted to see what it would all cost in the end. Scalzi repeatedly said that the fully compiled story would cost the same as buying it in parts but I wanted to see how it would play out. So I avoided on-line discussion of the chapters as they were released and when it became available about a week ago I purchased the e-book version. The price was basically the same, though buying the complete book was a couple bucks cheaper and did include some extra content. I’d already read a big part of that extra content as it had been available earlier via Tor.com.

From what I’ve read on Scalzi’s blog, his experiment with serializing the book was a success from a busienss standpoint. And I got the impression that most readers enjoyed the process as they went along, though I did try to avoid most discussion as it was happening to avoid spoilers. Publishing stories in this manner has been around for a long time, but I think the results may encourage others to do the same and we may see more of this in the near future. Scalzi has already agreed to do season 2, or the next book, in the same fashion.

Reading it all at once, I could still appreciate that it was written this way. Each chapter is self contained to a large extent. There are glimpses into the lives of various characters, changes of setting, and some wonderful storytelling. It all fits together and is certainly a novel, not a collection of short stories, but much more episodic. I thought it allowed for a nice amount of flexibility in the flow of the story and I appreciated the end result even if I got it all in one package at the end.

Aside from interest in the method of delivery, I was very excited to read The Human Division for the story itself. I hadn’t enjoyed Scalzi’s last sci-fi outing, Redshirts and was really looking forward to his return to my favorite universe he has created. The Old Man’s War series, fitting into the military sci-fi genre, has of course brought many comparisons between Scalzi and Heinlein. I imagine part of the enjoyment I get from Scalzi’s books are that he does have some commonality with R.A.H. who is one of my favorite authors. But really Scalzi does have his own voice, style and message and this comes more and more to the fore as the series moves on. The Human Division has all of the excitement, action and wit that makes reading Scalzi so fun. I think his ability to put together strong dialogue is unparalleled. And it is still military sci-fi, with our main protagonist being a soldier. Yet the world is so much more complex and rich than a simple kill or be killed scenario that moves from one point of action to the next. And even what would be slow points in a book that used action to carry a lack of plot, are full of rewarding interaction. We get to know and care about characters, lose some all too quickly and feel a sense of real people engaging one another as opposed to cardboard cutouts.

I wouldn’t put the Old Man’s War books into the hard sci-fi category but they aren’t just fantasy dropped into space either. Scalzi obviously gives some thought to settings and technology and so I find it easy to overlook some of the issues that are skipped over for the sake of story. In the end it is entertainment and interesting questions about people and society that draw me to these books, more than a desire to learn more about physics or astronomy.

I did read follow on comments after the series was complete and noticed a few people who felt that there was a cliffhanger ending. While the book does end with some larger scale issues unresolved, I think that to call it a cliffhanger is not really accurate. I found the ending to be an appropriate point of closure, to step away from the characters. As I would tell me kids if they have to pause a movie, it was a “good place to stop.” If we followed everyone to the completion of all that was going on in their lives, the book would be immense. As it is, it is already a solid read. It might feel a bit abrupt to some as it does set up some questions that are left unanswered that normally would be in a more formulaic treatment, but I’m glad Scalzi left them rather than a hasty or awkward finish.

As I mentioned, there are two extra stories in the newly published compilation of all 13 chapters. They are After the Coup and Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today and both can be downloaded for free at Tor.com. After the Coup actually takes place prior to the events in The Human Division and was originally made available earlier. It can be read before or after the book. Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today is shorter but very sweet and let me finish the book with a smile.

I’ve enjoyed every entry in the OMW series and I am very pleased to see it continue strongly. While reading the previous books is not necessary to enjoying this one, I can’t imagine not wanting to read the other four. If someone is unsure, feel free to start with The Human Division and if they enjoy it, jumping back and reading the others will still be very enjoyable. There will be some spoilers but I don’t think they’ll take much away from Scalzi’s real strengths in these stories, which are much more driven by character than plot. I think Scalzi will stand as a sci-fi great for some time to come and it is a lot of fun to get to watch it happen rather than just idolizing the masters of the past.

Submission + - Computers Can't Read (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Monday April 23, 2012 @08:22AM

Submission + - The Information Diet (informationdiet.com)

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Thursday April 05, 2012 @11:48AM

stoolpigeon writes: "It is a well known fact that the United States has an obesity problem. There are numerous causes that ultimately lead to an imbalance in the ratio between the number of calories taken in to the number of calories burned. The size of the American diet industry is another good indicator of how widespread the problem has become. Clay Johnson believes that the issues the U.S. has with food, have become mirrored in how we consume information.

Understanding, and buying into, this metaphor of information obesity is key to “The Information Diet.” Johnson is aware of this and the text never wanders far from the comparisons. He begins with an extensive telling of the physical obesity issue that plagues the United States and then always frames the rest of his work in nutritional/fitness terms. A few chapters are “Welcome to Information Obesity”, “The Symptons of Information Obesity”, “Attentions Fitness” and “How to Consume.” Readers who don’t buy into the parallels are going to have a really hard time with the book. The comparison and prescriptions for behavior never wander far from the picture and so it’s not something one can brush off early on and then ignore for the rest of the book. I think that Johnson is right, so I dug into the book, eager to see what he recommended.

I don’t think that anyone would argue about the physical obesity problem. I think what readers may be skeptical about is this idea of information obesity. The premise that Johnson puts forward is that we have access to more information than ever before, much in the same way that developed nations have more food available than ever before. (I will let the reader continue to draw the parallels — this example should be enough to figure it out.) While we have more information than ever before, not all information is equal. Some information is good for us and some is not. Another problem is that we tend to seek certain kinds of information that can give us a skewed and inaccurate view of the world we live in. People have access to more information yet they become more ignorant.

Johnson is an activist. Much of his life has been about affecting change. He is very upfront about this and the book contains a large amount of biographical information. Of course this is because he must. Johnson is laying out an argument for digging past the fluff, the bias and finding ways to be informed by facts. But he has his own built in bias and internal spin that he must counter even as he encourages the reader to do the same. I think that for the most part he has managed to do this well, not necessarily by being completely objective but by being transparent. Some of his examples felt a little weak to me, but this is because I had such a different approach to the event, topic or people that he chose as examples. I think his underlying observations were correct, and his sharing freely about his background and default positions helped me to reconcile his main point with my reservations about the specific examples.

The first six chapters are part of the introduction section and lay out Johnson’s case for the information obesity problem. The next four chapters are the actual “Information Diet”. Here Johnson moves from describing the problem to full on advocacy. Always striving for objectivity Johnson is always quick to describe what science is out there to give light to his position. The problem is that there just isn’t much of it out there. This means that the diet itself is a mix of what has seemed to work well for Johnson himself and some broad recommendations. This may be frustrating to anyone who is looking for hard and fast direction. It’s not that Johnson doesn’t give concrete suggestions, it’s just that he can’t claim any assurance that they will work for anyone but himself. That said, I think there is a good chance that many of his ideas about how we spend our time taking in information, how we find sources and tools as well as attitudes that may help seem to be good. I think that anyone who moves from being unaware of the issue to being intentional in how they take in information is better off by that change alone.

Working through this process of finding the “diet” that works for someone is something they may want to do with others. With this in mind, and I think reflecting Johnson’s bent as an activist, there is an Information Diet web site with a blog, resources and information on things like events. It is tied into some social tools and so one is able to interact with other information dieters.

Unfortunately this site is at once a marketing tool for the book (hoped ‘movement’ I guess) and this reflects the constant tension that exists in the fact that Johnson is at once pushing for social change and seeking to profit at the same time. He is constantly in danger, while writing and in the external resources for the book, of violating the principles he is endorsing. A friend recently told me, “David Benatar, author of "Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence," which argues against procreation, dedicates this book to his parents.” It’s that appearance of contradiction that pops up here as well. I’m told to filter out more noise, seek out better information and twitter and if I like the idea here are the buttons to let the world know on Facebook, Twitter, g+ or email. It’s not that this can’t all be reconciled, it is just jarring. This is something that will drive skeptics nuts and I dinged my rating of the book for it, though I think the good outweighs the bad in this regard. Just because the site exists, I don’t think that invalidates the thought and I don’t have to go there. I feel I’ve benefited from the book alone.

The book is squarely aimed at an American audience. That’s pretty clear from the get-go. Much of Johnson’s life has been involved in American politics, the obesity metaphor works well for an American audience and so it makes sense that this would be the scope of the work. I think that is unfortunate because I believe there is a broader application for his ideas with regard to how information is processed and the explosion in the amount of information available. A person who is not an American could read the book and I am sure find some good things to take away but understanding many of the stories and examples would be difficult without some knowledge and understanding of American culture and recent history.

The third section of the book, “Social Obesity”, Johnson returns to his enumeration of the ills caused by information obesity. The people who lose out due to poor information habits are not just the individuals but the society as a whole. Johnson invites readers to become a part of a “Vast Rational Conspiracy.” I believe he is genuine in this call to action and that is what allows me to forgive some of the efforts around the book that look more self-serving. I believe he is truly trying to fuel a fundamental shift in discourse and knowledge in the United States. This also causes me to be more sympathetic about the geographical focus, though I think it is only fair that readers from other countries be warned. Johnson has created a call to action and he’s starting with his home. I am sure he would love to see it spread and move beyond the borders of his native country. The skeptic would again see this happiness as a function of increased personal gain. I’m a little more optimistic, or maybe just a sucker.

This last section is the shortest. It includes a note to programmers that ought to at least be a bit of an ego boost, as they learn they are the new “scribes” of our age. Or having, as Johnson puts it, “...a better ability to figure out the world than anybody else.” The appendix with further reading has some great pointers to good reading on-line and in books.

I’ve rated “The Information Diet” 8 of 10 because I think Johnson at moments loses the battle to not engage in the kind of objectivity that he advocates and because the book has such a regionally focused audience. That said, it has changed my behavior and I think that it has a positive place. In fact I’ve become an advocate for many of the ideas, even when I don’t recommend the book itself. I recently ran into a barrage of emails from various co-workers advocating that we “turn off technology” because it is too distracting from real life. I found this to be rather annoying because there are always distractions and tech is also important and a force for better lives. The ideas in “The Information Diet” have given me options to offer people that let them gain control of the information sources in their life rather than giving up and just shutting them all off.

Will the “The Information Diet” have a great impact over time? I am really not sure. I think that it is definitely a precursor of things to come. Just by being published it will encourage others to copy it and I think we will see the parallel to physical diet and eating continue. But will Johnson finally achieve his goal of making the world a better place? Only time will tell, but I think it is a noble effort."

Submission + - HTML5 Developer's Cookbook (html5developerscookbook.com)

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Thursday March 22, 2012 @07:38AM

stoolpigeon writes: "HTML5 is the latest version of HTML. In fact it is still under development. But HTML5 brings so many highly desired capabilities that browsers have begun to implement it and many projects already take advantage of it. Often an HTML5 project employees more technology than just HTML and the label has come to include the use of CSS3 and JavaScript as well. There are a number of resources out there to help one use HTML5 and recently I’ve been using the “HTML5 Developer’s Cookbook” by Chuck Hudson and Tom Leadbetter.

I like the cookbook format myself in situations like this. I’m already familiar with HTML but I want to learn about the new features that exist in HTML5. This means I’m not nearly as interested in explanations, especially in the basics, as I am in getting a big diff on the languages with lots of examples and only as much explanation as necessary. Though the trick for authors is to walk the fine line between too much explanation and not enough. If they get too wordy, it really isn’t a cook book any more. Not enough explanation and it can become difficult to understand all the issues that come to bear with an example. This is especially true when dealing with something that is new and still in development.

“HTM5 Developer’s Cookbook” walks this line well. Hudson and Leadbetter have organized the recipes into various categories and further labeled them with a level of difficulty. Recipes are marked as beginner, intermediate and advanced. I found the labels helpful because while I’ve mucked about with HTML and its corresponding tech, I felt more comfortable easing in on the beginner end first. If I were working with someone who was a true beginner to working with any kind of development, I would probably not start them off with a cook-book. I think that is especially the case here because so much of HTML is not covered. This is not an exhaustive resource on HTML but rather a set of explanations and examples on what is new or different in this latest version of HTML.

The book itself begins with a quick review of how we got to where we are, a bit of HTML history. The chapters follow this pattern, starting with some history where needed and an explanation of the new technology driving the examples that are to follow. Then there are the recipes themselves, followed up by any helpful information and a summary. There’s more prose than I’ve seen in many other cook-books but in this case I didn’t see it as a negative. The authors assume that readers are familiar with the old approach and they need to explain how the new approach is different. In some cases tags have changed meaning, this needs to be spelled out.

Hudson and Leadbetter deal with handling how various browsers support (or don’t) the various aspects of HTML5 that they highlight. This is especially important as everything is still in flux. Though if past history is any indicator, even if the spec were completely nailed down, there would still be differences between browsers. This does bring up an important question though. This book has a definite shelf life. As HTML5 continues to develop there are many parts that may become inaccurate. This is true of most tech books, but doubly so in this case. If someone is looking for a timeless tome on the topic, this wouldn’t be it. In my case, it’s a timely resource to get up to speed quickly, from a single source that I trust. I can search the web and find a mixed bag or turn to this one spot to get quickly up to speed.

I had an electronic version of the book made available from the publisher for this review. I’ve found that format to be very helpful in this case. It keeps me from feeling at all guilty about buying a book with such a narrow window of usefulness. I also really enjoy being able to jump straight to recipes. There is a list of just the recipes at the end of the book that are linked directly to each that make this especially easy. I’m rapidly moving away from dead tree books, and I didn’t feel any reason here to miss that format. (On a side note, I got the page count above from Amazon. I wonder what metric we’ll be using to judge book size in the future? Word count?)

All of the chapter titles and recipes are available on line. From new structural elements to integrating with devices, there are plenty of practical and useful examples. I couldn’t find a clear statement in the text of the book on readers being given the freedom to use the recipes directly in code. This surprised me so I checked with the publisher and they told me that all code is free to use. Maybe that is not necessary here because everything shown is just an example of following the specification, but given the current climate with regards to intellectual property I wanted to be sure.

I’ve rated the book 9 out of 10 due to the fact that I think the authors do a great job of not wasting my time but instead quickly deliver what I need. If you want to get a feel for what is up with HTML5 yourself, I recommend this as a great option. If you are interested in a more comprehensive review of HTML in general or how to create web pages, I would find something more suited to providing an introduction to web programming."

Submission + - What is the best way to build a virtual team?

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Wednesday April 13, 2011 @10:33PM

Submission + - SPAM: Python Essential Reference 4th ed.

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Monday December 21, 2009 @12:51PM

stoolpigeon writes: "It has been ten years since David Beazley wrote the first edition of Python Essential Reference. The book has proven itself as a valuable resource to Python developers and has been kept current over those ten years, with the fourth edition coming at an interesting time for Python. Python 3 was a major release that broke backwards compatibility. Python 3 has been around for a year now. That said, the current download page at the official Python site states, "If you don't know which version to use, start with Python 2.6.4; more existing third party software is compatible with Python 2 than Python 3 right now." Beazley in keeping with the pragmatic roots of a reference that sticks to what is 'essential' has removed the coverage on features from 2 that were removed from 3. At the same time, the primary focus for new features that came with 3 is limited to those that have been back-ported to 2. This approach, born out of a desire to keep the reference relevant, provides a blended approach that is above all else practical.

The end result of that choice is a reference document consisting of those parts of Python that are shared between versions 2 and 3. This is a significant portion of the language and I think this approach is really what will give this reference more traction than many of the other guides that focus purely on 3. I think that those are valuable and over time the balance will shift but as of right now, for a little while to come, this book takes the most realistic approach. That feels very fuzzy, but I have no idea how long it will be until Python 3 truly is the dominant version and Python 2 is truly put to bed.

If I had to guess how Beazley's Python Essential Reference has held in there over the years, the key would be that there is a lot of what a developer needs and very little of what she doesn't need. There is a twenty-four page tutorial introduction, but this is not a guide on how to program or how to use Python for beginners. An experienced programmer could probably use this reference to shift to Python as a new language, but someone completely new to writing code would probably not want to start here. A quick look at the table of contents shows that an explanation of the language itself is covered in under 200 pages. Extending and embedding Python also get their own section, but close to 400 pages is given to the Python library.

An inevitable question is what one will gain with this reference over the online documentation. A good example to see how things vary is to look at chapter nineteen, Operating System Services and the online documentation for Generic Operating System Services. The online documentation is very thorough, and covers each piece of the library starting with os and io, building from there. While every facet is documented much of it is rather brief. For example section 16.2.3. Raw File I/O is a very straightforward listing of the very low level functionality available via io.FileIO. In contrast, looking at the 3.1.1 Docs for Raw IO shows that parameters for FileIO changed with that version. Looking to the documentation for 2.7a1 Raw File I/O shows that these changes are being back-ported to Python 2.

In Python Essential Reference none of this hunting down changes and checking to see if they are coming to 2 are necessary. Beazley shows them in his documentation. This is the strength of his choice on how to handle these types of situations. On top of that, Beazley provides more than the online documents by including four paragraphs of additional information on Raw I/O and when its use is appropriate. This added content is probably available googling around for it, but then I have to take the time to check dates on posts to see if things are still current and in general just hope that things are accurate. I have never read a technical book that was completely error free, and there are probably at the very least some typos in Python Essential Reference, though I haven't caught any of them on my read through or use of the book yet. But the important thing is that I don't expect the book to be perfect, rather I value it for being a known quantity. I am aware of just when the material was compiled, who put it together and I have it all in one place.errno symbols is not exhaustive and oddly enough is not ordered alphabetically. Beazley provides two lists for errno symbols. They are provided in alphabetical order, have a description and are grouped as POSIX error codes and Windows error codes. A quick glance at these tables in a skimming of the book might lead one to believe that this is just a simple quick grab from already available sources, but that isn't the case. There is real value added even here.

The index is solid. It would seem that one should be able to take this for granted with a technical reference but I've seen some sad exceptions. Between the thorough index and the detailed table of contents I've never had to spend more than a few seconds looking for what I need. This is the result of those tools as well as the fact that this is not an exhaustive reference. After initially reading through the book for this review, I've taken some time just to use it day to day, as I doubt many will be reading it from front to back. I don't use Python professionally. I'm purely a hobbyist when it comes to programming, but I've found that if I want to get the most out of the time I do have to play with personal projects, I want this book close. I'm not cranking out code that fast to begin with and so I need all the help I can get. I've found that Beazley seems to have hit that sweet spot where he gives enough information to get me where I need to be without bogging down in too many details or the things that I just don't need to know. I imagine this proper balance of information is due to Beazley's extensive experience with Python and that of Noah Gift the technical editor for the book.

I've mentioned repeatedly that I approve of how the shift between Python 2 and 3 has been handled. Beazley hasn't completely integrated everything and left some of the unique new features of 3 out in the cold. There is an appendix that deals specifically with Python 3. It is short but does have some value. New features, common pitfalls for those making the move from 2 to 3 and how to run both at the same time in a single environment are covered. This is helpful and keeps my desk a little neater, though I think if I were going to be spending extensive time working with Python 3 then I would probably want to have another reference on hand.

If you are a week-end hacker like me, or someone that is writing Python on the clock, I think that this compact reference is very useful. I don't have any trouble running across huge technical books that do come in handy for any project that requires something heavy. I also see a lot of little books that seem to be quickly produced summaries of what is already out there, spending most of their short content on fluff. Every so often though, someone hits that sweet spot of concise usefulness. Beazley did this with Python Essential Reference and this new edition continues that history in strong fashion."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Android 2.0 Released

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @10:38AM

Submission + - SPAM: Android Application Development

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Tuesday September 29, 2009 @04:41PM

stoolpigeon writes: "Google's mobile OS Android has received plenty of press. As with a lot of Google products, there was much anticipation before any devices were even available. Now a number of phones are available, with many more coming out world-wide in the near future. Part of the lure of Android is the openness of the platform and the freely available tools for development. The SDK and accompanying Eclipse plug-in give the would be creator of the next great Android application everything they need to make their idea reality. The bar to entry in the official Google Android Marketplace is very low and it doesn't seem to be much of a stretch to predict that the number of developers working on Android is only going to grow. As with any hot technology the number of books will grow as well and O'Reilly's Android Application Development has jumped into the fray, promising to help budding Android developers what they need to get started.

The book begins with a brief introduction to Android followed by detailed instructions on procuring and installing the Android SDK. Space is given to Windows, Linux and Mac. The install is relatively simple on all three platforms, extra information is provided for Ubuntu users but no others distributions. Extra care is taken to help Windows users with items they may not use regularly, such as environmental variables. This is all pretty basic and gives the book very much of a 'for beginners' feel. Before I had the book I had already installed the SDK and Eclipse plug-in on Windows, Ubuntu and Fedora without any issues beyond getting a current version of Eclipse for the Ubuntu machine. The version I already had from the Ubuntu repositories was not able to run the plug-in. It's a short chapter and if someone really struggles with it, they probably should shift their focus from learning to code to learning how to use their platform of choice. This does set the tone though, that this is a book for those who are very new to development.

Chapter two steps the reader through the ever present "Hello World" and gives an overview of the structure of Android applications. Chapter three introduces the example application that will be used for the rest of the book. There is a lot of repetition here on just what directories and files make up the guts of an Android program. I was quickly worried ( the first four chapters are only fifty-six pages in ) that maybe four authors had been too many. The repetition made it feel as if separate work had been combined without enough editing to remove what was redundant. Fortunately this got better, though there was still a strange proclivity to list files while referring to earlier chapters that explained their purpose. This would be helpful to anyone jumping right into the middle of the book, but the index also serves the same purpose and saves space for more valuable content, as opposed to explaining the purpose of AndroidManifest.xml repeatedly.

Once I moved into the fifth chapter, Debugging Android Applications and the following chapters, things got better. The pace picked up and the repetition dropped off for the most part. The book did not become incredibly difficult, trying to be everything to everyone, but did maintain an introductory style. At the same time the example application makes use of many Android features that are likely to be used by developers. How to set up and use tools was covered step by step. This is very nice but did cause some issues for the authors due to the rapid pace of development on Android. A visit to the book's errata page will show that many readers struggled with changes to the SKD tool set that came out very shortly after the book. The authors say that future editions will fix these issues, but this creates a dilemma for that reader needing introductory level materials. They are more dependent upon the book than a more advanced user and so these issues can be very trying. Based on the responses to the errata posts it became trying for the authors as well. This isn't a knock on the book itself but rather a limitation of the delivery method.

Once the reader is digging down into the example application the team approach to writing the book does become an asset. The authors bring a number of skills to the table that closely resemble the players that would be necessary to a team developing a real-world application. The reader is now being pulled into an example that benefits from the knowledge of each and does a good job of exploring the range of options an Android developer has available. This includes core functionality, UI options and how to best take advantage of the platform while at the same time taking performance and user expectations into account. I felt like I was getting something beyond the excellent documentation provided by Google. This is where I felt the book stood strongest.

Working with a single, large example application was a move that probably helped move things along on writing the book and I think it's an interesting approach. The problem is of course, that means that this example must be right. Right for the task and technically correct. Small issues in the code are inevitable but now their impact is book wide. The changes to the platform just made it just that much more difficult to sort out. On the whole I still found this to be a better approach primarily due to the fact that it gives the features highlighted a better sense of context. Stand-alone examples are often good at highlighting technical features but completely ignore the issues necessary to using the feature in a larger piece of code.

I'm a fan of O'Reilly books. Interestingly enough this doesn't mean that I'll gloss over issues with what they produce. The result is actually the inverse, in that I go into all their titles with a high level of expectation with regards to quality on every level. This may mean that though I strive to be neutral when I look at a book, I'm probably a little tougher on O'Reilly titles. This made my rough start with Android Application Development a bit jarring. The repetition and what felt like sloppy editing are not what I expect. I was quickly given a sense that this book may have been rushed to publication a little sooner than it should have been. As I moved deeper into the book, things improved and while I think there were still editorial issues, things did seem to smooth out to some degree.

There is an interesting tension that exists purely do to the nature of print books. I don't like to bring up print versus electronic in reviews as I don't think it is on topic, but here it is unavoidable. The book is aimed at people that need a little more hand holding and help getting going. It does a good job of providing step by step instructions, the problem is that some of those steps have changed. I don't think anything in the code itself needs to be different, but the tools have changed enough that getting the code to run in a development environment against the new SDK is different. That means that portion of the book is no longer of as much value without going to other sources to find the new steps.

That said, warts and all I found this to be a helpful way to get my feet wet with Android. I really look forward to future versions as I think just a little more time and work will move this from my 'good' list to my 'great' list. Making things a little tighter and cleaning up the few typos and errors would certainly make this an 8 instead of an 7, which is really substantial in my mind. I'm no super developer and I need stuff like this, that can take things a little more slowly and make it all clear. I think this guide is great for those of us in that category as long as the reader is o.k. with hopping to external sources for the information they'll need to get the newer tool set working.

Title: Android Application Development
Author: Rick Rogers, John Lombardo, Zigurd Mednieks, Blake Meike
Publisher: O'Reilly Media Inc.
Pages: 332
ISBN: 978-0-596-52147-9
Rating: 7/10
Tagline: Programming with the Google SDK.
Reviewer: JR Peck"

Submission + - SPAM: Learning Ext JS

Submitted by

stoolpigeon

on Friday September 25, 2009 @03:25PM

stoolpigeon writes: "Rich Internet Applications (RIA) have often been associated with some type of sandbox or virtual machine environment to make desktop features available via the web. Many applications though, have left behind the restrictions and demands of those technologies, implementing RIAs as pure web interfaces. One key technology in this area is JavaScript. It's been well documented that working with JavaScript can be problematic across various browsers. In response a number of JavaScript libraries have been created to alleviate the issues in dealing with different browsers, allowing developers to focus on application logic rather than platform concerns. One such library, focused on providing tools for building RIAs is Ext JS. For the aspiring developer looking to use Ext JS, Packt provides a guide to the library in the form of Learning Ext JS

The book is written for people with experience in doing web development. The authors state that a working knowledge of HTML and CSS are important, but experience with JavaScript is not essential. I think that a reader that has not used JavaScript may want to supplement this guide with something that covers the basics of JS. Experienced developers that haven't worked specifically with web programming should have no trouble keeping up. Anyone completely new to the idea of programming, scripting, markup, etc. really will need to take some time to get familiar with those concepts before they dive into this book. The authors do not spend time teaching programming, they are focused purely on realistic applications of Ext JS.

The authors begin by stating that, "Ext is not just another JavaScript library..." and it is understandable that they would feel this way. I am unsure why one wouldn't think so other than a personal preference for the product. That said Ext JS can be used alongside other JS libraries and does provide a lot of features 'out of the box' that make it an attractive choice. The emphasis on RIA widgets and building strong applications is nice as Ext JS is not working to be all things to all developers.

The book is heavy on code and examples but not so much so that it falls into the cook-book style of writing. Learning Ext JS is more of an extended tutorial with ample explanation to help the reader not only understand the code but why certain choices are made. Frederick, Ramsay and Blades have done a good job of working through the examples in a concise manner. While the book is the result of group work, it does not have the feeling of being written by a community. I did not run into an abundance of repetition and topics flowed well. Learning Ext JS also covers installation and integration of the library as well as a very quick survey of tools for development. While short these sections would be extremely important to anyone coming into web development with little experience.

It's a quick read, and doesn't delve extremely deeply into more advanced topics. Rather, a reader new to Ext JS will get a launch that should make the library usable in a practical way and also give them the framework to push deeper. The book was written and published just as Ext JS moved between versions. The new version is backwards compatible with the material in this book and a number of the changes in version three would not have fallen within the scope of this book, so it is still a good place to get started with Ext JS. Those who want to dig deeper will need to look elsewhere.

The brevity of the book wont work for those folks who want to really dig down deep into Ext JS. I on the other hand, wasn't looking for a massive tome to lug around and grind through. I was happy to have a very accessible tool that would get me started quickly and that is what I got. On the other hand I do like to be able to find what I need quickly and nothing is more important to me when learning than a solid index. Unfortunately the only really large ding I have for the book is that the index is weak. It would be a lot worse if the book were larger, so the brevity helps here a bit, but it's still unfortunate. This does make the ebook version a little more attractive. Packt will bundle them at a cost that makes the addition of the electronic copy very attractive. That said, the easy flow does it make it easy to read this book front to back while working the examples. Learning Ext JS just wont be my first choice when I need to quickly check a reference.

I've discussed the shallow coverage, but this does not mean that the book is not useful. The Ext JS library bundles enough functionality into the stock widgets, that decent applications could be written with nothing more. Creating custom widgets is covered and extending existing code as well, but this is later in the book. The material prior to that covers not only the use of the provided widgets but how to tie them together, theme an app and then handling data. This means the reader pretty much has everything in hand to build a stock application. The focus is on dealing with these issues on the client side. The examples do include a small amount of back end code when necessary for the execution of examples. All the examples are available to download from the Packt site and come packaged with all necessary scripts, images, etc.

I've always worked primarily with desktop applications. I've done some work with web applications, but it seems to me that increasingly the tools that I use the most are web based. With technology like Google Gears making those applications available whether I'm connected or not they have become much more attractive. Tools like Ext JS make it much easier for me to transition over to this new way of developing applications. I've found that Learning Ext JS has been a valuable resource in taking what is a great resource and allowing me to get the most out of it more rapidly than I would have otherwise. Reviewer: JR Peck Title: Learning Ext JS Author: Shea Frederick, Colin Ramsay, Steve 'Cutter' Blades Publisher: Packt Publishing Pages: 309 ISBN: 978-1-847195-14-2 Rating: 8/10 Tagline: Build dynamic, desktop-style user interfaces for your data-driven web applications."

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