Digital Altruism

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Digital altruism

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Review: The Quick Python Book, Second Edition

Vern Ceder

This is IMHO the *best* book to learn Python for professional programmers or people that already know how to program on a different language.

If you're interested in learning Python but want to quickly get up to speed not only on the language itself but its real essence, its elegant syntax and effective coding style, this is really the book for you. It has all the basic stuff without the "fluff". You don't have to put up with basic tutorials for non-programmers or super advanced topics for language experts, Just what you need to start effectively writing Python code that is up to the standards of the Python community.

This won't be your only Python book, but it definitely has to be your first!!!

On the last few chapters it'll scratch the surface of more advanced topics and effectively point you to a wealth of online resources, where you'd be able to learn more and then decide if you want to continue on your own or pick a more advanced book focused on a specific topic.

It's a great book not only to learn the syntax and features, but grasp the "Zen" of Python which makes it such an elegant and "sexy" language.

Review: DSLs in Boo: Domain Specific Languages in .NET

Ayende Rahien

DSLs are taking the enterprise world by storm, and if you're not prepared for them, you are going to be missing out on all the productivity benefits.

Don't get scared away by the Boo name on the cover. Boo is a "Pythonesque" language on top of the CLR (.NET) with access to all the great features you know and love about .NET, it just happens to be better suited for more "expressive" DSLs than say C# or VB but you still get all the power of the .NET framework plus a more elegant syntax and flexibilities to tap into the compiler and enhance the language. 

As you might have guessed, this book is not for beginners on .NET or newcommers to DSLs, if you want to capture the theory I advice you to first read Martin Fowler's book Domain-Specific Languages (Addison-Wesley Signature Series) and then come back to this one. Don't get me wrong this book does give you the "essence" of DSLs too, but there's a lot of heavy details that you *should* know, before you even attempt implementing a DSL and this book won't be giving you those.

The greatest thing about this book is that it doesn't just tell you how to build a DSL in .NET, it explains how to build different kinds of DSLs depending on the business needs and walks you through how to implement a whole infrastructure to design, produce, support and maintain multiple DSLs successfully thought-out the life-cycle of your projects.

If you want to get the *full* benefits of DSLs in a .NET enterprise environment you have to read this book!

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