Category Archives: books

Book Review: Creating an MP3 Player with HTML5

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Don’t let the size of this book fool you, the content is extremely well written and while providing the very basics of programming in HTML5 it also highlights many tips and tricks all throughout the book. As the title states, the book is a step by step guide for creating the MP3 player from scratch in HTML5 and JavaScript. It covers a lot of material from page to page but presents it in a very easy to read way. I actually read the book from front to back first and then I went through and actually wrote the code and skimmed back through the book. The entire process took less than a couple of hours, if that. I am a pretty experienced programmer so much of the information was not new to me but I really liked the way the author has written this and I actually learned a few tips around the HTML5 player object. If you are trying to learn HTML5 I think books like this are excellent. Any book that is written in the “by example” format is a great way to learn programming.

Book review: If Not Mistaken by Ben Langhinrichs

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If Not Mistaken Ebook By Ben Langhinrichs

Since I got my iPad I have really enjoyed reading short stories and articles. I even purchased a few larger books but I am really liking the short stories and eBooks. This book is by an industry colleague (Ben Langhinrichs), and when I saw his blog post about the book I had to give it a go. It is a very short story but don’t let that fool you. I started reading this and was captivated from the first page on. Ben is clearly a closet author and has an amazing talent. The story itself is a little strange but the way Ben structures the sentences and the dialog is absolute perfection. For 99 cents this is a steal. I hope to see more eBooks by Ben in the future.

 

Introducing KidWrite.net!

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For the last month or so I began a project to get kids reading and writing online. The project was KidWrite.net!

I started KidWrite to promote reading and writing in children as early as possible. I am a writing advocate and want to see children advance in the art and science of writing and reading. I truly believe using the computer for writing is a way to get children comfortable with a computer in a safe and educational way. I hope to see KidWrite being used by all schools where they promote writing and reading in the cloud.

KidWrite was designed to let kids start writing and expressing themselves through written content. All kids are encouraged to write and share their work with others on this site. This site will promote writing through sharing and writing contests. Kids can optionally just use the Journal feature to keep a private online journal where their writing and thinking skills can remain private.

Check it out and send in any feedback on the site or back to me on this blog. The site is pretty new and some kinks are still being worked out but I feel it is in good shape to publicize.

 

 

Dojo and Duck Typing

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JavaScript is powerful yet unruly language but through creativity, standards, and best practices you can control the unruliness. Dojo has put a lot of this into consideration and the topic I am writing about today is a technique called Duck Typing.  In the book, Dojo The Definitive Guide, there is a chapter dedicated to utilities and within that chapter there is a section on type checking.

“Duck typing is based upon the saying that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a dck, then its a duck.”

Dojo comes with a bunch of methods to help with this, like isString(), isArray(), isFunction(), isObject(), isArrayLike(), isAlien().

These kind of functions can make your code a lot more safe if you expect a certain type in your function and use them to test that you received what you expected.  Unlike in Java where you can use actual interfaces and class types, you do not have that in JavaScript.

Online Interviews with the industry best

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The book I have been blogging a bit about lately has a site with a section under posts where the actual interviews with the industries brightest are posted.  Each  interview is a part of a chapter in the book, I believe Sam will be posting them all eventually.  I think this is an interesting concept and I found the actual recording more interesting than the written interviews in the book because I got to hear their voices.  I do think the textual versions of the interviews are very good in that you can reference them but I really like hearing the voices.  Maybe in the future there will be some sound chip on the page where you can listen to it.  It would be cool if the eBook version had the audio attached to the interview pages – hint Sam…

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Software is a team sport

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That line was taken from Making it Big in Software by Sam Lightstone.  I really love this book and since I have read it I have used it frequently as my little hidden consultant and mentor.  The great thing about the book is it really is a mentor because it literally hits on every aspect of my job at IBM.  I do have a primary team at IBM but the reality is I am on many teams.  Management teams, documentation teams, test teams, development teams, sales teams, etc.  IBM is a massive company and many times your product or your skill set is required to help any one of those areas – whether its in a new sale or a critical situation with a large customer – you can get called on at any time.  The book goes into talking about the difference between School and Profession – where it states how school makes you be selfish in your ideas and work while the professional world is the exact opposite – teamwork prevails!

So once again, I highly recommend this book but I also want to give my readers the importance of working as a team.  I love sharing information and I love giving credit where credit is due, heck I love it when the team creates something amazing or does something well.  If you are on a software team, remember…. it is a team sport!

Book Review: High Performance JavaScript

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This book is a great resource and reference.  It is probably not something you will read from front to back but more reference the individual sections when needed.  What I did was somewhat scan the entire book first and then revisited each chapter for a clearer picture.  What I found was an amazing amount of tips and tricks to have high performing JavaScript in your code.  Many may think with frameworks like Dojo you don’t need this stuff but that is not the case.  You will need to write your own code at one point – unless you only reference Dojo declaratively – and even so, you could always check the Dojo code to see if it is using the techniques suggested in this book!  What I really like is how the book explains the current browser landscape and shows performance numbers between the different browsers in most cases.  This sort of time stamps the book but it does not invalidate the many examples of making your script perform well.  From simple string concatenation to regular expressions, the book has a wide range of tips to help your applications.  I recommend this book to anyone writing web applications that use JavaScript for any platform or browser.  This book could easily enable developer leads to create a checklist of code review items for JavaScript.

Book Review: Making it Big in Software

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This book was captivating from the preface.  I knew it would be a good read after the first chapter.   This book is a must read for software professionals, students, and managers in the software industry.

The book gave some very interesting quotes from the industries most successful people.  Chapter 2 has the “reality checks” section and it is something I can definitely relate with.  The Lotus community is an interesting group where “compatibility” and “new” must coexist peacefully – so in short somethings get widely accepted while others fade away.

“Great innovations, brilliant new technology, and breakthrough ideas are truly great only if people use them and find them valuable.”

If you are in school or nearing your degree completion Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 are absolute must reads.  The chapter on resumes is critical to anyone applying or changing jobs and the following chapter (Chapter 5) is even more critical with the tips for the interview process.  Great stuff!

By the time I got to Chapter 15 I realized this book was more than just “making it big in software”.  This book is a guide for making it big in any company!

The ending chapters are what I consider the areas where I have been personally focusing my career on for the past 5 years – Patents, Publishing, Presenting, etc.  I do believe in the myself that I can in fact master any technology or new idea and I think that is important for longevity in this field.  I started my blog to make my writing style better and in my own opinion at least I feel it has gotten a little better over the years.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a job!

Eclipse Rich Client Platform, Second Edition

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I just read from Chris’s blog the second edition for the ever so popular book Eclipse Rich Client Platform can be pre-ordered at this time.  Check out the books site and pre-order your copy today.  This series has been what I consider the books to get your head around what Eclipse really offers, if you are serious about Eclipse or any of the products based on Eclipse then this book is for you.  This is not a book review and I could of course be wrong about promoting this but I am pretty sure from this case of authors and editors the information within will be well worth it.