Wrox Rocks: A Trip Down Memory Strain
- Category: Book Reviews
- Posted On: 12/7/2006
- Views: 3,874
Wrox has been and continues to be an influential publisher for my career. It wasn't long after learning HTML and basic JavaScript that I found the need for reference books. I purchased my first Wrox book "Professional JavaScript" in 1999 for $50. Since then, this book has seen several editions as have most books I started with. Following is a summary of some fundamental books I purchased from Wrox with a review of the original editions and suggestions for would-be readers. Read on and enjoy a trip down memory pain and strain...
Professional JavaScript
 | I read and analyzed every character printed in the original edition. It was so fascinating to see how something I had come to learn through web development also applied to so many other platforms; FESI, WSH, ScriptEase, JavaScript Beans, etc. I read and re-read the section on regular expressions, memorizing the syntax. To this day, the basic knowledge gathered from this book helped foster concepts in scripting that most web developers still have very little knowledge of. I highly recommend buying an enormous book on JavaScript and delving into its diversity. |
Professional ASP.NET
 | When Microsoft first announced their plans for the .NET platform, I knew that, as a primarily Microsoft-based web developer (classic ASP), I simply had to learn this new technology. Well, it has been a bumpy ride through versions, but here we are at version 2.0. If I could do it all over again, I would have skipped learning anything in version 1.x and simply waited for 2.0 to be released. But, the trip has given me an invaluable understanding of the .NET framework and the foundations beneath the technologies like ASP.NET. Prospective readers beware: there are some enhancements working their way toward a production release that will drastically change how we develop web applications and code in .NET. So, get a good grasp on version 2.0 while keeping an eye on what's coming, like ASP.NET AJAX and LINQ. |
Professional C#
 | Quite honestly, this was my first real programming language. I certainly learned a little from Java, Perl, Python, TCL, VisualBasic 6, and scripting leading up to the release of C#. But, my day-to-day work was done in classic ASP with a detailed knowledge of mark-up, CSS, JavaScript, and occassionally touching VB6 for COM libraries. Getting my head into C# was just like when I first started researching JavaScript. In fact, I never felt fully comfortable with "programming" until C# came along. I couldn't seem to translate the object-oriented principles I had learned in JavaScript to anything but Java, which I never had the time to really learn. Just as before, I dove into every word my new C# book had to offer. As a result, my boss at the time recognized my achievements and tasked me with a project to create a scheduled console program that parsed bulk-load data files and communicated them to the XML-RPC API offered by SalesForce.com. The API of course was written in Java on their end and XML-RPC was a completely new thing to me and relatively new to the industry. So, what support did C# have for XML-RPC that I could build on? None. Support for XML was fantastic and parsing files was a cinche! I scanned the web for two days looking for information anyone had on C# and XML-RPC and I found a single soul... Charles Cook who had begun work on a free code library that lasts to this day. He was incredibly responsive and helpful to my questions while I attempted to build on top of his foundations. The result was nothing short of a miracle! Once again, as a result of my in-depth review of the language, I gained invaluable insight into the underpinnings of .NET which has given me a detailed, comprehensive understanding that few developers have. And yet, somehow, I still suck when I read other developer's blogs and articles. |
- Category: Book Reviews
- Posted On: 12/7/2006
- Views: 3,874