Review: Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Jonathan Stark

I really have to say this book has everything a great development book should have, very readable, tons of code, links to useful websites, walkthroughs for setting up your environments, etc. It is indeed a great step by step guide to turning your HTML websites into almost-native Android Apps in a very short time.

The author assumes you have good working knowledge of HTML, CSS and Javascript, in fact the whole point of the book is to teach you how to leverage that knowledge for building native Android Apps without having to learn additional technologies like Java or Eclipse. That being said you certainly don't have to be an expert, as the book also includes a crash course and some basic info as technologies are introduced on each of the chapters.

Even being an Android specific book, I'm sure I'm not the only one who had an epiphany mid-book about applying these technologies for iPhone development, and in fact is possible! All these technologies are standards based and not limited to the Android ecosystem. That reason alone makes this book “double great”, since you're not only getting a guide to building Android Apps, but you're also getting a head start for doing the same for the iPhone and Apple's App Store all in one book!

Although I'm enthusiastic about the book, it is far from perfect. it does feel as an on-line tutorial sometimes and the author recurs to repetition a bit too much for my taste. Again beginner users might find this very valuable, but for professional devs it might be a little frustrating even if you can easily skim through those sections. I'm also on the fence about the code provided on the book's website, I find that a finished version of the code projects would've been a great addition.

Building Android Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Disclosure: As showcased on the right pane of this blog, I’m writing this post as part of O’Reilly’s blogger review program. While I’m not getting paid to review books, I do get a complimentary eBook copy of this title.

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!