Book reviews Book reviews
I think it is not a really bad book as it provides quite a good introduction to Zend Framework. Especially with a lack of any good Zend Framework literature i guess it may be still worth to read it.
I would not recommend it to people who work with Zend Framework already. You will probably not find a lot of new information in it. If you are starting your journey with Zend Framework or with MVC in general i guess you may benefit from the book quite a lot.
Book also provides some nice foundation for the CMS design. So if you decided that Drupal is not good enough and you want to spend months writing your own CMS then you may want to check out this book :)
It has been a long time since i read any non technical book. I was tempted to read this one for a long time so i did. It is a very strange book but also very inspirational.
First of all there is a lot of debate over the translation so each translator puts his own twist on how it should be interpreted. Second of all there is confusion who actually wrote the original text.
It is a very different read than anything i have read before. Interesting in a way but not really easy nor fun as text is much more difficult than i am used to. I thought the book would have more of psychological aspect and discipline than actual tips on how to deploy your troops. I hoped for a bit more philosophy and little bit less warfare ;-)
To make it short and clear, I liked the book a lot. From a very begining it is clear that author has a vast experience in software design and development.
There are a few bits that really stand out.
First of all I loved the chapter showin pair programming and minimal effort principles. It is really fun to read and shows some very interesting observations.
Well, i am not sure what to think of this book. It is a bit uneven as it is a composition of many separate articles written by different authors.
First chapter was really poor. A lot of talk but no real value. How many times do we have to hear that architecture and design are important? Entire chapter is a very vague and buzzword filled blob.
Second chapter was actually very entertaining but again also bringing little value. Author describes two systems he used to work on. He brings a list of factors that made them fail / succeed. I like the chapter as it seemed a bit funny and had some good points.
After many years of reading references to it, i finally read Design Patterns by the famous Gang Of Four (GOF). Book is probably one of the most quoted and refereed IT books ever :-). Many of the articles I have read, that referred to the book, were really badly written. In most cases I had a feeling that authors did not understand design patterns at all. As a result my impression was that book has to be poor as well and does not do good job explaining patterns. This made me think that book has to be horrible if so many people write these vague and confusing articles referring to the GOF book itself.
Personally i think it is a good book but it lacks details, tools and practical solutions. Reading the book is quite enjoyable and it definitely contains a lot of useful tips and tricks.
What i liked the most is the fact that the book is meaty and condensed down to less than 150 pages. I really like books that are focused so i was not disappointed here.
The thing that author covers really well is the analysis and preparations of the testing plan and processes around it. You will read a lot about what to consider, how to prepare your self, what to check etc. There are also some useful checklists.
Good news, another good book!
The Art of Capacity Planning is a really decent book with a good overview of how to measure and predict web based applications load.
Book is very short (130 pages) but I love that in books. Author does not waste time nor paper just goes straight to the point.
In my opinion "JavaScrip: the good parts" is a good book. It is a little bit different than other books i have read so far but it contains a few great fragments and just for that reason it is worth reading it.
The book is very short but it is a good thing. Author expects some knowledge of programming and JavaScript it self and does not waste time on lengthy examples or tedious explanations. Book is focused all the time and reading it is quite entertaining.
Finally i got a book that is truly worth recommending! It is a very good book and i think every web developer should read it.
Book is a sort of a continuation of another good book High performance websites but to be honest i think i like this one more.
Book is very condensed, there is no wasted page in it. Information is well structured and you can see that authors prepared well for the publishing. Information is backed by a decent research and some of the tricks are really cool.
From time to time I like to read some non technical books. It always gives you some new perspective on life and you can easily pick up on skills that were completely neglected : -)
10 Day MBA is very good book. It is written in simple and easy to read way. It provides nice overview of marketing, accounting, planning strategy etc. All the pieces you need to understand better how businesses work and how money is earned.
This post is my final look at the total of nearly 1200 pages long CISSP book.
In the end i think it was not a total waste of time as i really liked the physical security chapter and also chapter about cryptography was not that bad. Maybe it was not that bad of a refresh. But was it really worth it?
I would definetly not recommend it as i cant see who can really benefit from that book, its not senior and not junior, does not explain things well nor provide deep insights. Its just a too long poorly written book in my opinion.
I personally liked the chapter about physical security. I have not heard about some of the ideas described there and I must say its quite interesting. I am happy I kept on reading so far as this part was quite cool.
Authors describe what are the high level factors of physical security. They describe how different types of physical security elements work for example keys, magnetic cards, chip cards, as well as construction elements. Its even hard to describe but I really liked that chapter.
Synopsis: Its the first time i decided that i have to cut the book in parts to actually read it! Yes i took the biggest knife i had at home and cut the book in 5 parts.
Second part of the book is even a bigger disappointment than the first one. I read chapters 4 to 5 which amount to about 250 pages.
Chapter four is a very vague description of access control methods in the organization. It is a ton of fluff and very little real concrete information.
Its the first time i decided that i have to cut the book in parts to actually read it! Yes i took the biggest knife i had at home and cut the book in 5 parts. Thats why i will review this book in parts : - )
First part i read is chapters 1 to 3 which spans over more or less 150 pages.
Seems like i am out of luck lately when it comes to books. I must say this book was not really my type. Sometimes it is not easy so describe why, but book is just tough to read.
The thing i did not like about the book was that examples drag for entire pages. I know its difficult to show some things in concise way but i think this book had the longest code examples i have ever seen : -)
