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What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:32 am
by pedrotuga
This is probably not the best place to talk about dead-tree format books if we think of how compreensive and to the point php.net is. But I'll give it a try.
More often than not I find myself in a situation where I need to learn a technology in a short period of time and I find myself wasting time trying to figure out with docs will teach me something and which wont. It boils down to this:
to learn something quick, I need a comprehensive reference I can rely on. PHP.net, perldocs, java.sun.com are such references.
On the other hand other languages or technologies do not have official documents covering every single aspect:
Ruby, python, C++, twisted, rails, most of linux distros, etc. are such cases.
In these cases I kind of hope a book can play that role, but I find it particularly difficult to tell if a book is good or not before using it for a while.

I opened this topic hopping to get a bit of different points of view and opinios on different book series and labels:

I've red books of almost all these series and publishers:
  • wiley (wrox, for dummies, bibles, ... )
  • OReilly(head first, cookbooks, pocket references, in a nutshell, etc)
  • Apress (appears to loosely catalog by titles like "beginning with XPTO", "advanced XPTO", "Pro XPTO" )
  • pragmatic programmers bookshelf
  • packt
  • hanning
But I still don't have a clear opinion about them. O'Reilly's CookBook and pocket references series are the only two series I kind of trust to be good.

I would very much appreciate feedback and opinions about the above book publishers and/or series. Or about others of course.
If you would have to pick a book about a certain technology just by looking at the cover, which one would you pick? Why?

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:40 am
by papa
I buy Wrox if there is a book for the subject I want to learn. I have php beginner, proffesional, ajax and javascript professional. I like the way the books are written and often good examples that you can relate to.

I have one O'really book about JS which I didn't like. Not very good examples and not inspiring to read. I also have a book about html/xhtml but it was a couple of years ago I read that one so can't say much about it. :)

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:10 am
by matthijs
Am I banned if I mention the books from sitepoint?

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:20 am
by papa
matthijs wrote:Am I banned if I mention the books from sitepoint?
Haha :)

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 11:39 am
by pedrotuga
matthijs wrote:Am I banned if I mention the books from sitepoint?
I didn't understand the joke.

But since you already mentioned them, I guess it won't cause you any further harm to ive your opinion about them.

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 12:27 pm
by matthijs
I happen to have quite a few of the sitepoint books and like most of them. You can download preview chapters from them, read reviews from customers so there's a good chance you'll find the book that suits your needs there.

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 4:45 pm
by Bill H
Black Book series from Coriolis Group Books

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 7:23 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Addison Wesley are certainly the most interesting read for me, but they're all theory-based rather than "how to" books.

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:08 pm
by alex.barylski
I cannot stand "Dummies" books nor do I appreciate "Heads First" series -- to many illustrations and non-practical anologies.

Sams "Teach yourself xxx" in 24 hours is just misleading although I don't mind the style/format so much as I do the "basics" approach they have to take on everything.

Wrox, Adison Wesley, McGraw Hill, Wiley and Waite Group are excellent IMHO.

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:25 pm
by Chris Corbyn
matthijs wrote:Am I banned if I mention the books from sitepoint?
I get to read them before they come out in the shops :) Keep buying the books and you keep me in work :P

Re: What's your favorite book series? Why?

Posted: Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:51 pm
by alex.barylski
I get to read them before they come out in the shops Keep buying the books and you keep me in work
Any chance you getting a hold of a copy of Jennings(?) Email Marketing for me? My birthday is less than a month away? :P

I built an email marketing application (which is sort of in limbo right now -- based it off Swift) and I could use as much marketing help to pump the product as I can possibly get.

Cheers,
Alex