Manning Book Reviews

Thought i'd let you guys know of some books i have been reading that are pretty good, They are all from Manning which I am really starting to like that publisher more and more.

JQuery In Action: Within about 90 minutes of reading this book you will understand the fundamentals of jQuery and be ready to do basic, but powerful, jQuery code. If you are using javascript natively seriously consider switching to jQuery and get this book. jQuery also has a test framework (QUnit) and a great suite of UI plugins (jQuery UI)

Art Of Unit Testing: Easily the best unit testing book I have read (and I have read a few). Great for newbies and those still getting to grips with how to test anything more than the most trivial of examples. It is the book i would recommend to people looking to learn to do TDD well. Note the examples are in C# but they really dont require indepth knowledge of .Net, in the same way all the other books are in java and I havent written a line of a coffee flavoured code in a decade. In saying that the tools are all .Net based but i am sure there are Python, Ruby and Java equivilents avaliable for most.

NHibernate in Action: Pretty much the same as the Hibernate book but shows all the .Net stuff you can do. its also a bit more up to date that the original Hibernate book (which has since had a second release). .Net devs nusing NH need* this book.

IronPython in Action: not a bad book... it does exactly what it intends, it teaches .Net devs about python on the CLR. The question is: Do you care? For me it was something of interest, i doubt I'll ever use it in production. As a side note for the .Net kids i think the path of C# => Boo => Python =>Ruby is the one to take for the typical C# developer**. It keeps the "barrier to entry" low for the next step so you are picking up one new thing at a time (ie new syntax, dynamic language contrainst, DSLs and other scripty weirdness) and by the end of the process you have 4 languages under your belt in about the same time it would take to do the C# => Ruby jump.

that's all

Rhys

*OK no one needs anything, especially as the NH doc a pretty good, but you will be severely hindered without it.
** VB.Net devs; you know you will never learn another language, you have had years to do so!