Hello Everyone,
A few weeks ago I saw posts about Mark S. Choate his new book called
"REALbasic Cross-Platform Application Development" ISBN 0-672-32813-5. I
bought this book by "http://www.amazon.co.uk"; and was delivered yesterday.
Here is my personal opinion about this book.
For years we had to do with Matt Neuburg's book "REALbasic The
Definitive Guide" which was for that time one of the best. Nevertheless
it was not an easy book to read and is out of print for years now. I
have the version which covers REALbasic 2.0 but there was a second
edition who covered 3.5.1 if I remember correctly.
But now we have in my opinion a very excellent successor from the hands
of Mark S. Choate. It covers REALbasic 2005. The book is very clearly
written with real world examples. It covers an comprehensive range of
subjects starting from the very beginning to more extensive subjects.
Here is a short table of contents :
1. Introduction to RealBasic 2005
2. Programming with RealBasic (which is a very interesting section for
novice programmers but more experienced programmers will find many
interesting subjects as well).
3. Classes and Objects (a very clear guide for working with classes,
sub-classes and objects).
4. Cross-Platform Application Development
5. Designing a Desktop Application
6.XML and Advanced Text Processing
7. Console Programming and the Shell
8. Databases (together with chapter 5 a must read for everyone).
9. Networking and Internet programming
10. Graphics
11 Scripting and Extending REALbasic
I tried a few examples and they worked fine. Also the explanations are
very detailled. When you read this book you immediatelly feel that the
background of the author has a no-basic roots which is a nice addition
to our community.
Even if you do not create Multi-Platform applications, this book still
has a lot to offer. You can also download the examples from the
internet. But in my opinion, you learn much more by typing in the
examples yourself. I have one remark by the examples, it should be
better to give descriptive names for objects than using the standard
names given by REALbasic. Nevertheless you can as an exercise replace
the standard names with more descriptive names if you like. There are a
lot of interesting examples inside the book.
My conclusion at this time is (I am now reading chapter 3) that this
book is surely a "must have" for any serious REALbasic programmer. You
can learn a lot by yourself, but it is better to have the knowledge of
such an experienced teacher as Mark S. Choate at your side combined with
the REALbasic forums and mailinglists. By the way Mark S. Choate readed
posts of the mailing list very regularly while writing his book which is
a compliment for all active people here on the mailing list (whose
credits are mentioned in the beginning of his book).
I am very excited with this book. One word advice to the author; in
contrast with Matt Neuburgh's book make sure you keep it up to date. So
maybe it is a good idea to create additions to your book on your website
(which I did not visit yet but will surely do). In this way your book
will always be up-to-date.
To finish this post. I am NOT paid by everyone to raise this positive
comment. If it was poorly written I would not hesitate to mention that
here.
So rush to your bookshop or to your Amazon internet shop (payment card
necessary) and by the book. It is surely worth every Euro, Dollar, Pound
you spend on it. This book will give you many interesting insights in
the field of programming.
Excellent work, well done, Mark S. Choate!!!
Friendly greetings,
Bad_Wolf
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