The ultimate Unix sysadmin book is "Unix System Administration Handbook" by Nemeth, Snyder, Seebass and Hein aka "The Red book"
-- John Lowry, January 9, 1998
It wasn't available yet when philg wrote that he couldn't find a good, short book on NT, but one worth considering is Aeleen Frisch's "Windows NT System Administration" from O'Reilly. Not as relevant for someone just running a workstation, but see the appendix with a "quick start for Unix sysadmins."It's ISBN is 1-56592-274-3.
Don't believe the cover hype about "Effective and Painless NT Management," of course. What was Tim O'Reilly smoking the day that slipped by? ;)
-- Rob Szarka, July 15, 1998
If you write perl programms by cutting and pasting other peoples code, you should probably not comment on books about perl. You say you prefer FortranII -- that's ok just use it, but don't keep your readers from trying to learn a language that a lot of people use succesfully and efficently.
-- Martin Mueller, August 7, 1998
...perl really has come quite a long way especially with Apache's 'mod_perl', you can have a perl interpreter rolled up inside Apache...no more huge CGI overhead. The docs with Apache and mod_perl/mod_cgi are all you really need to get going. Any chance of a review of this? I note that 'Guide to Web Publishing,' gives pretty much the same review.....(awwww...come'on..)loved the book, btw....
-- Ken Wills, November 16, 1998
This is a fairly minor comment, but perhaps Mr Mueller is not the only one confused by philg's reference to FORTRAN II---apparently its infamy has faded enough that non-scientists these days don't appreciate the gut horror it's supposed to inspire. FORTRAN 77 is wretched enough: silent errors if you happen to type more than 72 characters on a line, function calls that don't even check if they've been handed the right *number* of arguments, never mind of the right types, etc, etc. And while I've been spared the experience myself, I have watched an officemate try to decipher 1965-vintage FORTRAN IV, where the principal control structure was the computed GOTO (and the program was written by a guy who thought things like llo10, note *very* carefully, made good variable names).I have never had to deal with FORTRAN II, and I hope never to face the experience, except maybe in some twisted CS carnival House of Horrors.
-- Colin Roald, March 27, 1999
I thought Phillips comments about PERL especially were interesting.. as I have just cobbled together a web robot based on other perl scripts. I then wrote some scripts in Python which I found much cleaner and shorter, although I must admit for straight text processing I still use Perl.
-- Jamie Ross, March 27, 1999
Just looking at the number of books whose description includes the word "dated" makes me wonder why -- aside from the relative convenience and comfort of "unplugged" reading -- anyone bothers with paper books about computing anymore. Writing a book about a "current" topic seems to be a losing battle. By the time the book is published, the pace development and progress on Internet Time has already reduced the value of the paper and the enclosed CDROM. As far as I can see, the only reason that paper books still appear in such prodigious quanities is that the book trade is trying to squeeze whatever revenue they can from the physical publishing model before it becomes so much history. That, and the problem that no one has figured out how to make money publishing a book exclusively on the web -- yet.Just to clarify the last sentence: I'm not saying that it can't be done, just that it hasn't (for whatever reason) been done. I'm reasonably confident that once the Powers-That-Be get over the idea that the Internet can be packaged as an inconvenient version of a cable TV channel running mostly commercials 24 hours a day, success and enlightenment will eventually come and benefit us all -- and my wife will finally get me to throw out all those books, magazines, and papers I've been accumulating for the past 20 years.
-- Frank Wortner, April 30, 1999
Here are a few reasons I tremendously like Perl:(1)
Its close to C in structure. Which means that even lesser programmers from universities across the river Charles from east Cambridge can learn and master it :-)(2)
There are an ample number of pre-written modules that are available on most every single topic. All open source.(3)
Dynamite regular expressions , as a core language feature (and not added on as an afterthought by compiling in Henry Spencer's regex library).(4)
A wonderfully written set of books . I love Programming Perl (2nd edition -- every time I have a question I find the answer somewhere within its pages). O'Reilly has an excellent set of Perl books that target developers from novice to expert.(5)
Well supported by http://www.perl.com and any number of people who are happy to charge you for support that can be found free with some searching(6)
Copious amounts of good quality documentation that come with Perl. A language is only as good as its documentation. Perl shines in this department.Quite a few programmers seem to have no problem using Perl to solve problems -- given that it has become so popular in Web development, it must be useful to many people, wouldn't you think?
And while we are on the topic, here's a retort from the creator of Perl. hope it provides some amusement:
Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [Was that sufficiently incendiary? :-)] --Larry Wall
-- Jagadeesh Venugopal, July 10, 1999
Learning Tcl
I guess that if someone were to write a book about just the core tcl language, they'd run out of useful things to say at about page 80. So most books are about layers on top of tcl. If you must kill a tree, the first few chapters of Exploring Expect, by Don Libes, have a good tcl intro. You can skip the rest.
For those in tune with 90's, there's an online book Tcl for Web Nerds, by Lydia Sandon, which is all you really need.
-- Ken Mayer, July 23, 1999
I would like to add a suggestion.. Python is another excellent scripting language that leans more to the simplicity of TCL but has a lot more power to develop applications, especially for the net. There are a couple of good references (Programming Python for the World Wide Web comes to mind) for doing HTTP clients and spiders and there are very good modules available.. Its free of course and available from www.python.com There are also modules for interfacing to many dbs
-- Jamie Ross, July 29, 1999
The MacOS Human Interface Guidelines are available online at:developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGuidelines/HIGuidelines-2.html
-- Michael Edwards, August 20, 1999
Perl is a very expressive language. Programming Perl, you have the choice to trade readability for programmer efficiency. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
-- Christian Lemburg, September 2, 1999
After the passage of days, weeks, years, etc., when you find yourself staring uncomprehendingly at code written by someone who traded readability for "programmer efficiency," you might begin to wonder if all that trade was such a good idea.I'm not knocking Perl -- cryptic code is possible in any language. Whether cryptic code ever provides a reward without some accompanying "punishment" is debatable.
-- Frank Wortner, October 7, 1999
Can't believe nobody mentioned PHP here. I learned Perl, I looked at Tcl (thanks to Philip), but nothing comes close in ease-of-use for writing web applications. There's just so much already there, that you would need to "re-invent" for other languages and by combining ideas from C, Perl and Java, PHP gives you the flexibility to implement the way you need. Highly structured and organised or just quick and dirty. The PHP community is growing fast and very supportive. See: http://www.php.net/
-- Marc Burgauer, October 18, 1999
Hola! from the most wired dormatory in America,
In case you were in a cave for the last 5 years, and just now discover a copy of Programming Perl at the entrance--why not read this tip on how to digest it easily.
I thought my CS friends were crazy. Fell asleep to Chapter 2. I dare not even look at the alphabetical Ch. 3 and 7. How can this be the famous tutorial? The problem is simple: it's a bible. Quite literally. No nonsense details, and lots of it. Don't give up. The authors thought of you. There's hope.
Heed Ch. 2's subtle suggestion as to how you might want to use the book as a tutorial:
A. The >contexts< in which Perl language features, basic Perl functions, and core Perl libraries will be used in are not in Ch. 2, 3, or 7--Ch. 4-6 reveals all. Look there instead. Code examples and real world use are simply saved for later. This is a great way to preserve the succinct nature of a deskside reference.
B. Read it backwards! Skim past Ch. 2, 3, and 7 if you have some programming background. Refer back to them as you stumble across strange terrain during your careful study of Ch 4-6. Read this way the reference becomes a tender tutorial. Your fingers will also become very familiar with the whereabouts of each toy in this treasure chest.
This book is a pearl. So is the community.
-- Li-fan Chen, November 4, 1999
Ken Mayer advised in June that, "For those in tune with 90s, there's an online book, Tcl for Web Nerds, by Lydia Sandon, which is all you probably need." I've recommended ... Web Nerds myself. However,
- While it's been corrected some since this summer, it still embeds a number of errors.
- It's rather narrowly targeted to users of old AOLServer. While Tcl is at version 8.2, and several books are current with 8.2, *... Web Nerds* targets version 7.5 (!). There have been a LOT of changes since then.
- It does a very, very disappointing job of pointing to other pertinent and useful material on-line.
- It's Tcl written for LISPers. Ms. Sandon tries to write idiomatic Tcl; sometimes she falls short.
- There are HTML errors. At least some of them got in the way of reading as recently as the end of November 1999.
-- Cameron Laird, November 27, 1999
As a reasonably clueful person with some SQL and DB experience who went looking for a book on Oracle8 and bought one, I can say that (1) the Oracle8 Complete Reference is an adequate reference, (2) it's probably better than many of the other big thick books on Oracle8, and (3) nevermind those two qualified recommendations, but the author(s) must have been lifelong crack users whose previous programming and DB experience was gained by reading comic books. Well, maybe that's a little harsh, but there is some VERY silly and misguided stuff in this book, occurring mostly when the author strays into attempting to explain something other than Oracle features. Caveat emptor.
-- Joseph N. Hall, March 6, 2000
A shorter (& new / fun) book by Alan Cooper - The Inmates Are Running the Asylum ISBN: 0672316498 or (UK)
Also The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin ISBN: 0201379376 or (UK) looks interesting
-- Daniel Bodart, March 23, 2000
It's nice to see the language debate(s) is/are alive and well!I've been a Perl hacker for many years, and I'm thankful [on a near-daily basis] that it exists. I can't say the same for TCL. Although I've grown to accept its existence, and have learned to deal with its idiosyncracies (simply because I can't use anything else inside the mighty AOLserver (yet?)), I do so begrudgingly. Syntactically, I find TCL to be a pain-in-the-tush, and far less intuitive than my beloved Perl. Additionally, its math model is primitive and rather brain-dead.
The bottom line is that I find myself wishing Perl was embedded in AOLserver rather than TCL.
-- Gary Chambers, May 8, 2000
It might be interesting to know that SICP is available online, from MIT Press:http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
-- Patrick Hudepohl, December 3, 2001
I have bought Mastering Regular Expressions because I found the review here, but I just would say two thinks:If anybody still thinks of buying the book, he is adviced.
- This is the first book by Jeffrey Friedl, and this guy knows nothing about how to write a book. I guess he is better administering Unix systems and not writing.
- The web is the last thing the author thinks about. He never shows examples of html.
-- Albert Walnut, December 10, 2001
In response to Alberto's comment about Mastering Regular Expressions, It should be noted that the book is not titled Regular Expression Cookbook for the Web.It is however one of the clearer and more complete reference to Regular Expressions and it has proven very useful to me with Perl, PHP, vi, sed, grep, Visual Studio and so on. The book tries to explain the concept of Regular Expression, not their use. To limit regular expressions solely to the web sites and HTML is like limiting the use of electricity solely to lighting, an aberration.
-- Alexandre CV, November 9, 2002