About Reviews
I like reading technical books for developers to learn new technologies or get a broader perspective about existing
technologies. To help others decide whether they'll find a specific book worth buying and reading, I tend to write
reviews once I'm done reading.
If you have a book, you'd like me to write a review for, and publish it on my blog and other sites, feel free to contact
me. If it will sound interesting and I'll have time, I'll probably say yes. Just keep in mind, the review will reflect
my opinion about the book even if I get a free review copy.
Occasionally I'm also reviewing other things (like video courses and applications), as long as they are related to my
interests and the topics on my blog.
Applications
Microsoft Access is an often overlooked part of Microsoft Office, but this doesn't stop it from still playing a mission critical role in some companies. In such cases AccessFIX can be a life saver when important data gets deleted or the database gets corrupted and there's no backup available.
Books
The Enterprise Application Patterns using Xamarin.Forms book by David Britch is available as a free download on the Microsoft's .NET Architecture Guides website. It's a good introduction to MVVM. It can also serve as a refresher for someone with past MVVM experience who hasn't worked with Xamarin.Forms before. Although the sample code uses Xamarin.Forms, it's almost just as useful to WPF and UWP developers.
As one could expect based on the title of the book, all of the code samples are written in TypeScript. However, the concepts presented are more generally applicable and not language specific. I would recommend the book to any developer who can fluently read JavaScript/TypeScript (or any other C-based language).
I have a hard time recommending the book to anyone. Although it mostly focuses on basics, I don't think it's suitable for beginners because of how short the explanations are. For me, its value was mostly in a few random nuggets of knowledge I stumbled upon while reading.
I can strongly recommend the book to any software developer, no matter his level of experience. Junior developers will learn about techniques that will help them do their job better. Senior developers will probably already know about most of these techniques but will have a great opportunity to consider their importance as they are reminded about them while reading the book.
I was expecting in-depth content, describing the good and bad practices in different scenarios supported by measurements, pitfalls to be aware of, options to consider. Instead I only got a high-level overview of several performance related aspects, at best.
If you're looking for a book to learn SignalR from, you can't go wrong with this one. On the other hand, if you're already fluent in SignalR and just want to learn more, it probably isn't your best choice, unless you're interested in one of the above mentioned topics.
I have no reservations about recommending the book to any existing or future TypeScript developer. It can serve as the first book to start learning the language, but can teach you a lot even if you have already been programming in it for a while.
The content is not focused only on sagas at all. The samples are very contrived and almost impossible to make sense of by just reading the book. Not even the basic functionality and structure of sagas is properly explained, much less any advanced concepts and usage scenarios. I can't really recommend the title to anyone.
The book falls a bit short and remains just an overview of methodologies and approaches, with lots of pointers to further resources. It is still a good starting point to learn about DevOps: what it is and why you might want to take on the task of implementing it.
Whether you're starting to learn about NServiceBus, considering the adoption of distributed architecture in a .NET framework based project, or just want to know what NServiceBus is about, you should read this book.
The book is actually a step by step guide to iOS development in Swift for complete beginners. By the end of it the readers should have enough knowledge to write their first simple iOS application even without any previous experience.
This book is a recommended reading not only for JavaScript developers, but also for others who want to refresh or expand their knowledge of design patterns. Learning some JavaScript in the process is just an additional benefit.
I can recommend the book to anyone having TeamCity as their continuous integration server, as well as to those who are considering it as their first or new solution for continuous integration.
If you know your way around Unity, the book will probably teach you a couple of very specific advanced techniques; just don't expect to gain much general knowledge about 2D and 3D graphics, AI and shaders, or you'll be disappointed.
No matter how well versed you with C#, the book will teach you something new about it or at least remind you about the stuff you already know without being consciously aware of it. Since the author lets you choose the price for the book, you'll certainly get your money's worth from it.
I can sincerely recommend the book to anyone, trying to get a glimpse into the world of game development. It can really only serve as the first step on the path to becoming a game developer, but it's definitely enough to see if that's something for you and worth exploring further.
What could have been a show case of designing great UI featuring Telerik's controls with recommended best practices and usage patterns, turned out to only be a shallow overview of a small subset of available controls, interspersed with random opinionated half accurate information.
The book is a great first step into the world of Xamarin.Android for a seasoned .NET C# developer with no previous development experience on Android. It's definitely enough to get you started and makes it much easier to decide whether this is the right way to build Android applications or not.
I have learned quite a few new tricks while reading the book and I would have even more if it wasn't for my previous hands-on experience with many of the topics covered. If you are considering or already developing parallel or asynchronous code, I strongly recommend reading this book.
I would recommend this book to anyone with no or minimal knowledge about Windows Store apps, who's interested in developing them using HTML5 and JavaScript, even if he isn't already proficient in them.
The book is a recommended read for any team leader, no matter how much experience he already has in his job. Even if you don't agree with everything, I'm pretty sure the book will act as an eye opener and make you more aware of stuff you already take for granted.
the book should be more than enough to get you going even if you've never used StyleCop before. Based on the table of contents I was still hoping for more in-depth information on creating custom rules.
The author really managed to convey a lot of information in a concise and useful way, although not all of the topics are covered equally well: some really do shine, while others could still be improved.
The book addresses a lot of advanced topics throughout the chapters, as expected based on the target audience of experienced .NET developers. Still, most of the chapters include some basic topics as well, which slow down the pace.
The book does a pretty good job in delivering what it promises, but unfortunately doesn't really get into the advantages of developing an application in F# instead of C#. I see that as a missed opportunity of making the book appealing to a broader audience considering giving F# a more serious look.
The book seems more like a collection of blog posts, which have passed a much stricter review process. If enough of them are of interest to the reader they should provide enough value to be worth the purchase. Check the table of contents online, before buying it.
This book is a really nice introduction to Kinect programming. I can recommend it to anyone who is interested in writing his first Kinect application. It might bore you in certain parts but it will certainly save you time in the end.
In spite of all my previous experience with WPF, I've learned a couple of new tricks while reading it. I'm sure I'll be returning to it from time to time to read up on certain details.
The book is a useful resource for anyone working with the latest versions of Entity Framework. Just don't start learning Entity Framework with it; some previous knowledge and experience is definitely recommended to make the most out of it.
Courses
The course is as close to the experience of studying the topic at a university as possible, hence the name of the company. I can sincerely recommend it to anyone who needs to learn the basics of Entity Framework from scratch.