Video Review: An Introduction to iOS Programming by Alasdair Allan

An Introduction to iOS Programming

From Getting the SDK to Submitting Your First App

By Alasdair Allan

This is an insanely great video for those starting out fresh with iOS Programming. iOS programming is much more complex than Android programming due to the large initial setup and licensing agreements. This video makes it easy to understand what exactly needs to be done and when. The author has made it look dead simple. Making absolutely no assumptions whatsoever! I was amazed at the detail oriented coaching that the author has put through with this video. It covers everything from the basics to getting your app prepared for sale on the app store and uploading it to iTunes Connect. This is so much better than reading a book. I was able to play the video side by side on a dual-screen with me trying out stuff in the first screen. It was an enjoyable experience.

 

Book Review: Super Scratch Programming Adventure by The Lead Project (O"Reilly)

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

I had heard of Scratch before but I didn't know what age group of kids it targetted. I assumed it was for teenagers that had an interest in computing but weren't interested in developing heavy-weight enterprise level projects. Since my kids are not teenagers yet, I put Scratch on the backburner. I was wrong!!!

This book made me rethink the target userbase for Scratch as anyone 8 and above (although 7-years olds will do well too!). Each page in the book is very colorful and full of graphics which makes it a pleasure to read for kids as well as adults (me!). I thoroughly enjoyed reading each page as I felt like a little boy out on an adventure. Once I did completed this book, I got my kid started and enjoyed his feelings and thoughts on Scratch. He hasn't completed the book yet but I know he will go slow and steady on it.. probably reading a chapter a week. This is his third week and he is on chapter 3 and he hasn't put the book down yet. I don't think he will!

Book Review: What's new in CSS3 by Estelle Weyl (O"Reilly)

If you are a serious HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript developer, chances are you have heard of Estelle Weyl, seen her presenting at OSCON and other conferences, or bookmarked her standardista.com website. Estelle Weyl is a very popular speaker and author so I was naturally excited to get this book. For the most part it is good stuff.

This book is a very very brief overview of what's happening in the CSS3 world of specs and recommendations. Most of the chapters are extremely small. For example, Chapter 10 and 11 are just one paragraph each. Chapter 9 is just two pages. The writing is of high quality just like the author. However, I am slightly disappointed by the total lack of any depth in the book. It would easily have been an article on the web or just a blog. The actual book content (excluding TOC, Preface, etc) is about 25 pages. If you remove the last pages of the chapters that are just a paragraph long, it's even lesser.

In short, I absolutely love the author and am a huge fan of her presentations on OSCON and other conferences. This book falls short of my expectations, not in the quality of the content but in the lack thereof.

Book Review: WebGL: Up and Running by Tony Parisi (O'Reilly)

This book makes it easy to learn WebGL. Although not targetted for advanced users, it made it easy for me to understand WebGL and the three.js library. Honestly, I haven't worked in 3D so most of the concepts were pretty new to me. This book cleared some of the concepts and didn't overwhelm me with complexity. Tony Parisi has definitely taken care to keep it simple and useful.

There isn't much coverage on how WebGL works natively and I probably don't need to learn that. What I got out of this book are concepts and more depth on three.js and for a beginner, that's more than enough.

Book Review: Head First HTML and CSS, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly) by Elisabeth Robson, Eric Freeman

There are two kinds of people in this world - those who know Elisabeth Robson and Eric Freeman and those who don't. If you have read any of the "Head First" series of books, you would know why the web developers love these guys. "Head First HTML, CSS, and XHTML" was a super-hit when it launched and most of us, including me, had great pleasure reading it. The book is back with a refresh and with a couple of new chapters on HTML5 and also loss of a chapter on XHTML. If you are a fan of the "Head First" series, then this is the book to get on HTML and CSS before you venture out to "Head First HTML5".

Since I had read the first edition, it was great to quickly skim through this book and stop occasionally to read some new material. My only disappointment was that there was no in-depth coverage of CSS3 but overall this book is worth it. I do hope the authors come up with a "Head First CSS3" book in the future. I would be the first to buy it.

 

Book Review: Windows PowerShell for Developers by Douglas Finke (O'Reilly)

To be honest with you, I had just a slight idea what Windows PowerShell was. I had never used it before but I had heard of it being a scripting language for .NET and the Windows Platform. Similar to what BeanShell provides for Java. There is a lack of resources on Powershell that explains the power you can unleash for automation, testing, repititive tasks,etc. This book explains the concepts step by step so that not just the pros but also regular developers can take a shot at using it without fear.

The first three chapters are very basic and are devoted just to help you get started. This includes installation for the different flavors of Windows and also the language constructs. They are very well written so that the reader gets curious to continue reading more. The rest of the book takes a deep dive into explaining how to embed PowerShell in your applicaiton, use it with web services, XML and JSON processing. It also shows how to create UIs and interacting with DLLs. I found interacting with DLLs very useful as I needed to do that for one of my projects which had a third-party DLL and I wasn't ready to buy Visual Studio and learn C# .NET just to play with the DLL. This book helped me quickly get started on doing that.

This book is definitely for any developer, not just .NET or Java or Ruby or Python developers. If you are working on the Windows Platform, regardless of your language of choice, this book will take you to new heights. As a plus, it offers an overview of PowerShell V3 and Windows 8 so that you are ahead of the curve.

Review: Velocity Conference 2012: Complete Video Compilation

The Velocity Conference motto is  "Building a Faster and Strong Web". As such, the conference is focused on Web Performance and Operations. This conference is targetted for web professionals from companies of all sizes. I happen to be one of those web professionals. Unfortunately, this year I couldn't go. Or so I thought until I got access to this video compilation of all sessions! I am happy again.

The whole gamut of web performance has been covered in this video sessions. All the sessions are pretty good so I am unable to say "this one was better than that one". Also, I haven't watched all the videos since it covers whole 3 days. I do make it a point to watch in my infinite spare time and I learn something new each time. Regardless, these videos are making me smarter and standing out at my work place. It's been incredible. I strongly recommend this compilation to anyone wanting to make a difference in their app performance.