Book Reviews from 2001

Unlike most books on C++, this one isn't about teaching the language, or exponding on the design of it. Refreshingly, it's aimed at already proficient programmers wanting to improve on their C++ code and design by giving hints on how to best use different language constructs.

The path taken by Meyers is to tackle one "problem" at a time. The book consists of fifty concrete items split over the following chapters; "Shifting from C to C++" (4), "Memory Management" (6), "Constructors, Destructors, and Assignment Operators" (7), "Classes and Functions: Design and Declaration" (11), "Classes and Functions: Implementation" (6), "Inheritance and Object-Oriented Design" (10), and lastly, "Miscellany" (6).

For instance, item 23 is titled Don't try to return a reference when you must return an object, and explains amongst other things how a method creating a local object on the heap and returning it by reference is a disaster waiting to happen, and why (even if you'd remember to delete it later, the possible creation of anonymous objects would create memory-leaks anyway, so just don't do it). Or if you thought that one "obvious", how about item 13, List members in an initialization list in the order in which they are declared?

In short, the book is full of the kind of insights you would only learn from using the language for many, many years. These small things that really improve the state of your code, leading to elegance.

So do I like it? Yes, I do. I find the writing style pleasing; it's not very formal and makes for quite light reading, though the problems might require some thinking so you must concentrate at places, but at the same time I personally found it encouraging that I could often anticipate the problems with a particular approach or come up with the "correct" solution before Scott got around to it. You might find yourself rereading a passage, not because you didn't understand what it said, but because you feel that the new insight you just gained is just too good to rely on it being committed to memory after just the one read.

You might feel that the price of the book is quite high taking into consideration that it's really only 240 pages, but I feel that it's quite worth it. However, it would not be a bad thing if Meyers could collect his three books Effective C++, More Effective C++ and Effective STL into one volume, and sell that for a competitive price. The two Effective C++ books are available on one CD for the price of one of the books, which might be an alternative if you're not the dead-tree collecting kind of person.

Wanting to look all intellectual and stuff, I picked this one up. Actually, I'd heard that Voltaire was a satirist and a tiny bit critical of organized religion, making him a man to my taste. As satire has a special place in my heart, I decided to start my re-education on the classics by reading this his most famous work.

And satiric it is. I can almost picture him dipping his pen in ink, a visious grin framing his face, as he set out to, well, flame his ignorant contemporaries. The core of the story revolves around the utterly naïve Candide, his love Cunégonde and his philosopher friend, Pangloss, who swears by the philosophy 'everything is for the best, in this the best possible of worlds'. Of course, this philosophy is what Voltaire set out to ridicule and ultimately destroy.

This is done by throwing Candide and his party into ever more absurd situations. Poor Candide is forced to kill a whole lot of people (not a few of them men of the church), and his love is "ravished" a few times, just for good measure. Candide starts his life as a disciple of Pangloss, but will he end is life as one too?

It's a fairly short read, and you can even get it for free online.

Want to hear about a bad idea? Reviewing books sex months after you read them! <flips through pages>. Ah, yes. First of all, I have the "Revised & expanded" version. I notice that there's a 3:rd edition out. Why I didn't get that one I don't know, probably because I didn't search Amazon enough.

The short story is that I sort of enjoyed this book. Did it teach me a lot about scriptwriting? No, not really. Fortunately I had a good time reading about some of the scriptwriting history, and getting informed on the politics of Hollywood.

At the core lies a somewhat templatesque walkthrough, with chapters on Television, Motion Pictures, Animation, Radio and The Stage. Each chapter contains at the minimum sections on the history of the media, then a section called "The Art and Craft of <$chapter>" and finally one on marketing. In addition there's a chapter called "The business of Scriptwriting", containing a history of the Writers Guild of America and some tips and tricks of the trade. This information is also sprinkled over the other chapters, especially in the "marketing your whatever" sections.

You learn the format used for writing for the different types of media; how long your script can be, how you should pace it, a little bit on story development, characters and so on.

I should probably point out that the reason I bought this book was that I'm impressed by Babylon 5, which of course is the brainchild of the author, and I hoped to learn how to write good stories, for use in computer games. Thus, I'm wasn't really looking for a lot of information on how to sell scripts in Hollywood, or what rigid layout for the script I should use to do it.

While I did enjoy it, I can't shake the feeling that I could have made a better investment. You might as well pick this one up at the library, because after you've read it, you'll never have to reference it again. Part of why is that some of this stuff is just so obvious it ain't funny.

A possible free alternative to this book is to read the archive of postings JMS has made on the usenet. I haven't pursued it myself, but it could be worthwhile. Look for a site called JMS on Writing

Oooh, I really enjoyed this one. I'm a real sucker for computer and computing history, as witnessed by my constant evangelization of Levy's Hackers book. Anyway, the sub-title sort of says it all, this book tells the story about how the Internet came to be. Like the aforementioned book by Levy, this is a real page-turner, ending in an epilogue at page 257 (how appropriate!) describing the BBN 25:th anniversary of the installation of the first ARPANET node at UCLA in 1969. There are numerous mini-biographies on the influential men who did the base research and brought it all together with the building the first IMPs and setup of the first nodes of the net.

Can't think of anything really bad about this book off hand. There's even a 15-page bibliography in there for those wanting to do further research or check on things.

Anyone working with anything Internet-related should read this book. Especially those out to make a quick buck. I don't think the Hacker Ethic is mentioned once, but you can glimpse it, between the lines.

In this book Dr Carl Sagan argues the case for scientific thinking. Over some 25 chapters (about 400 pages) the benefits of a critical mind and the self-correcting nature of scientific thinking is drummed against us. Now, don't think I do not agree, I do, but if I had to question anything about this book it would have to be; whom is it for? For a reader such as myself, it's a little like preaching to the choir, and the fundamentalists and the swindlers and frauds, well, they won't change by reading this book. Maybe this book is the perfect gift for young people though, like age 14-20 (adjust for reader maturity). Actually, the class-room might be the perfect place for this book, have them all read it.

Let's return to the contents. Throughout the book Sagan brings up superstitions and frauds, like witches/UFO/ESP/Faith Healing/etc and debunks them, or tells the story of how they have been debunked by others (such as James Randi. The theme is that science makes for a better world whereas pseudo-science doesn't, and really, who can argue with that?

All in all this book is a worthwhile read, even a <cough> seasoned sceptic and freethinker like myself learned a thing or two.

If you get a copy, after reading it, consider giving it to someone you think of as not-so-sceptic. Who knows, maybe you'll make a sceptic out of them, and that would be 8UKP well spent.