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Peter H. Salus is a member of ACM, the Early English Text Society, the Trollope Society, and is a life member of the American Oriental Society. He has held no regular job in the past lustrum. He owns neither a dog nor a cat.
I'm writing this at the beginning of October. You'll be reading it after Thanksgiving (yes, I know that Canadian Thanksgiving is earlier and that the rest of the world doesn't celebrate it at all). This gives everyone some time to get spouses, significant others, parents, or whatever to buy them the books on this year's list before Christmas or New Year's. The list is at the end of the column. The UPS strike hit book distribution hard. My average number of packages dropped from five to two per day. I had only about 120 books to select from, and only a half-dozen were Java. Happily, Tcl/Tk seems to have (finally) caught the attention of some of the publishers, and several good books have appeared (three of them reviewed last issue). A Comer Trifecta A new book by Doug Comer is something that grabs anyone interested in networking, whether a small Ethernet or the Matrix. Computer Networks and Internets is an extraordinary piece of work. It not only supplies information on how networks operate; it does so in Comer's literate and readable style, avoiding excessive detail. The accompanying CD-ROM, by Ralph Droms, contains a lot of useful stuff: animations, figures, images, data, each presented as both a presentation file and a basic file. Next, there's a new edition of Comer's Internet Book. I liked the first edition in 1995; the second edition is not merely better; it is only 25 pages longer. It's the perfect book for the manager, director, or vice president who just isn't aware of what's happening. The only thing I dislike is the lack of any sort of references, further reading, etc. Third, there's a Winsock version of volume 3 of Comer and Stevens, Internet-working with TCP/IP. It begins well, as do the AT&T and TLI and BSD Sockets versions. I can't really appraise the Winsock stuff, because I've got no machine running Win95 or NT. If you are so afflicted, I'm sure this is for you. Intranets I've gotten about half a dozen books with Intranet in the title and nearly as many with Extranet. Dasan and Ordorica have created a book that's worthwhile, as opposed to most of the others. I was especially taken by their matter-of-fact attitude and their "further reading" (appendix A). Tools and Threads Multithreaded Programming with PThreads is a really fine introduction to threads. Interestingly, P1003.1c has been implemented on all the UNIX platforms, Linux, and VMS. Win32 threads under NT and OS/2 threads are noncompliant. There seem to be no plans in Redmond, WA, to adapt to PThreads, but there are freeware POSIX libraries. OS/2 has an optional POSIX library. This is a well-written, handy book that teaches you quicker than a greased Kolstad (circa 1980). The second edition of UNIX Power Tools is gigantic, thorough, and comes with a neat CD-ROM. But I found two drawbacks: first, the authors still haven't discovered zsh; and, second, the typesetting is such that items that I think need emphasis are grayed down. Some (not much) of my book is unintelligible because I can't read parts of sentences. For some books I get, this would be a feature. For an O'Reilly, there's only one word: weird. I liked Practical C Programming in 1991. The 1993 edition converted everything to ANSI C. Whether you're doing something sensible or using Microsoft C++, this continues to be a very useful book in its third edition. Have a Cuppa The Java Database Connectivity API is part of JDK 1.1. Now we have a "tutorial and annotated reference" for JDBC written by its developers. It's authoritative and useful. I especially liked the sections on how JDBC fits in to SQL and rdbs in general. Yet More Objects The first edition of Taylor's Object Technology appeared in 1990. I recommended it at that time to all those whose managers needed education in just what it would mean to use "objects." It's still true in the second edition. Smalltalk, C++, and Java are discussed; there is a mention of Eiffel and Ada95, but none of Modula3 or CLOS. Tch, tch. The Bookworm's Top Ten for 1997 (not ranked in order) 1. Donald A. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, vol. 1, 3rd. ed. (Addison Wesley Longman) 2. Ralph E. Griswold & Madge T. Griswold, The Icon Programming Language (Peer-to-Peer Communi-cations) 3. Joe Duran & Charlie Sauer, Mainstream Videoconferencing (Addison Wesley Longman) 4. Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, 3rd ed. (Addison Wesley Longman) 57. Security
Rubin, Geer & Ranum, Web Security Sourcebook (John
Wiley & Sons) Garfinkel & Spafford, Web Security & Commerce
(O'Reilly & Associates) 8-10. Tcl/Tk
Harrison & McLennan, Effective Tcl/Tk Programming
(Addison Wesley Longman) (If 13 is a baker's dozen, what's 11? Following Lou Katz's old theory, 10 must be a metric dozen [prices don't go "up"you just get ten for the price of 12], so 11 must be a metric baker's dozen. Send me your ideas, and I will print some of them. We seem to have solved the problem with C++, as have the French with "bis," but not colloquially in English. All of this is prelude to the eleventh book on the list of ten. It was reviewed last December, but was too late for last year's list.) I still have nothing but admiration for Abelson, Sussman, and Sussman, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Press). I'd like to thank UNIX Review for naming Lion's Commentary on UNIX 6th ed. (Peer-to-Peer) its book-of-the-year. John and his family were touched by this belated recognition. There are a lot o' books in them thar stores. Have a happy holiday and read lots of them.
Books reviewed in this column:
Douglas E. Comer
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First posted: 3rd December 1997 efc Last changed: 3rd December 1997 efc |
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by Peter H. Salus
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