Upshot: A popular Erlang tutorial site becomes a book. Any downsides? Nope, unless you don’t like the style. But you won’t. Support the author!

I was a bit skeptical that there was another “Learn You Some…” book out there written in the same style as the Haskell book. But, as of this post, Learn You Some Erlang For Great Good! by Fred Hebert is one of the six & counting books recommended on Erlang.org. And while $40 seems pricey for an eBook, this one is a monster at 624pp (on my iPad, 954pp). I found the tutorial style very accessible. If you have some programming/scripting under your belt, I think you will too.

So why would you buy what is essentially the contents of the Learn you Some Erlang site? Maybe you work in a secure environment. Maybe you live with spotty or no internet as I used to. Or maybe you’ll be using the book ‘in the classroom.’ The bottom line is, if you seriously want to learn Erlang, and you match the skill level outlined in the book, then this book is for you.

The best part is, you can ‘test drive’ the book via the author’s web site. I recommend you buy the book, either from O’Reilly or NoStarch to get DRM-Free copies for all of your devices.

Aside: Peeking in ePub’s code.. Take a wild guess who assembled the book for NoStarch. Yup, O’Reilly. So you know the ‘build quality’ is there.

Resources

LINK: http://nostarch.com/erlang

SITE: http://learnyousomeerlang.com (sample files available)

Disclosure: I received the eBook download(s) from NoStarch for review purposes.

Upshot: It’s a “Cookbook.” Truth in advertising, you’ll find recipes. Upsides? It’s from O’Reilly. So the quality’s there. Any downsides? Windows-centric, probably not meant to be read cover-to-cover.

I already owned the 1st edition of Regular Expressions Cookbook 2nd Edition by Jan Goyvaerts & Steven Levithan, so when I picked up the 2nd, I was curious as to what changed. Unlike some other O’Reilly books there was no explanation of changes. That said, there’s about 8% more pagecount here.

What you’re getting here is a cookbook, full of recipes, that DO vary by platform. I think the authors do a very good job of covering the sometimes maddening variations of Regex across the 7 programming languages presented. And I was impressed with their inclusion of Unicode issues.

Where the book may come up short is in the Mac & Unix coverage. For instance, the authors encourage you to use their Windows based Regex tools in VMWare Fusion (repeatedly) instead of having CLI or Mac-based tools. This might not be optimal when you’re eye-deep in XCode or another IDE, which tend (also) to be resource hogs.

Also, *as* a cookbook, it’s a dense read of codepoints, differences between programming languages, et cetera. This is NOT an introduction to Regex, despite what the authors may say. There are other ORA books— like ‘Introducing Regular Expressions by Michael Fitzgerald‘— that I’d advise readers to go to first.

Recommendation: Not as high as most of the books I review here, but if you can get past (or do not need) Mac support, then 3/5 star type recommended. If you use Regex up at down, should probably be on your shelf, virtual or otherwise.

LINK: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023630.do

SAMPLES: What?? No samples? For Regex, maybe unnecessary.

READ: DRMFree Pub using Bookreader.app for Mac, iBooks on iPhone/iPad

Disclosure: I received the eBook download(s) from O’Reilly for review purposes.

Upshot: As this is an ‘Up & Running’ book, there’s no wasted time. Upside: All the info, VERY concise. Any downsides? You’d better be intermediate, as with other ‘Up & Running’ books, this is a dense crash course.

If you’ve gone through a couple of these ‘Up & Running’ books, you’ll know what to expect from WebGL: Up and Running by Tony Parsi. The first portion of the book starts with a whizbang intro to the world of 3D, which you’ll need in order to get into the WebGL API. 

After that it’s on to Three.js, and other JS libraries you’ll be using to do 3D as well as animation. Yes, I said animation, tweening & all. The end project? A car racing game. Impressed yet?

There’s a lot in this very concise book. Warning, it’s a very dense read. But if you want to get into WebGL, it’s well worth your time. Recommended.

LINK: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920024729.do

SAMPLES: https://github.com/tparisi/WebGLBook

READ: DRMFree Pub using Bookreader.app for Mac, iBooks on iPhone/iPad

Disclosure: I received the eBook download(s) from O’Reilly for review purposes.

Upshot: Do you need background or even a refresher in Web Design? This is your book, now in 4th edition goodness. Upsides: Lots. A full survey of the current state of the web, including HTML5 & cutting edge CSS/JavaScript. Any downers? Not really.

I have to say, I’m really impressed with this ‘soup to nuts’ book, “Learning Web Design by Jennifer Niederst Robbins”. This really is a ‘from the ground up’ compendium of everything you’d need to know, from a *designer’s* standpoint, of how to author for the web, even coming from a print background.

I’d say that Jennifer systematically does a good job of covering what’s most important when authoring HTML, CSS, & JavaScript. What can’t be covered in depth is backed up by timely resources online that are MOSTLY a click away, even in iBooks (read on). But I have to say: From the basics to the cutting edge, it’s all there: Responsive Web Design, Modernizr, “Mobile First” — exercises and answers in the back. This is a complete textbook on the topic.

Are there any downsides to this book? Not really. The ePub does have a mix of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ (you have to copy/paste) links, and maybe O’Reilly should run a URL parser to make sure all the links end up ‘hot’.. but this is a VERY minor point. Every link I visited was useful, and was, most importantly, NOT DEAD. This is why you buy ORA books: Fresh, relevant info that does not waste your time.

In a mature 4th Edition, very highly recommended.

LINK: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023494.do

SAMPLES: http://learningwebdesign.com/

READ: DRMFree ePub using Bookreader.app for Mac, iBooks on iPhone/iPad

Disclosure: I received the eBook download(s) from O’Reilly for review purposes.

Upshot: A nice primer on how to get started with web ‘bots & spidering via php. Use your powers for good! Upsides: great linked sample site and scripts. Concise examples to get you going. Any downsides? Maybe the book is a bit Windows-centric… But Wintel folks need all the help they can get.

I was really impressed with Webbots, Spiders & Screen Scrapers, 2nd Ed. by Michael Schrenk. What you have here is a primer on how to set up and maintain web ‘bots (and screen scrapers, and spiders). Michael also goes into the legal ramifications of running these against targeted sites. I knew he was serious when he brought up ‘trespass of chattels’… 

I think where the book might plod for some is where the author brushes off platforms other than Wintel. ‘If you have a Unix like Mac OS X, you can use cron..’ — where Apple would rather have cron be deprecated, and, say, have you might use launchctl and/or iCal triggers instead.

The author also brings up a nice tool for browser macros/emulation, iMacros is by iOpus (http://www.iopus.com).. One tool that I would mention is Fake.app (http://fakeapp.com) for the Mac by iTod, that uses Javascript to do much the same thing.

Finally, I’d like to give kudos to NoStarch for their very well-formed ePub version of this book. I was able to easily read it in iBooks.app as well as copy code to my editor of choice on the iPad. Highly recommended.

LINK: http://nostarch.com/webbots2

OFFICIAL SITE (w sample files): http://webbotsspidersscreenscrapers.com/

Disclosure: I received the eBook download from NoStarch for review purposes.