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O’Reilly’s “Head First” Books Now Available in PDF

head_first_books

These days, I try to get the PDF version of a computer book when it makes sense. When it comes to more timeless books — say Code Complete (the book from which Jeff Atwood gets the name for his blog, Coding Horror) and The Pragmatic Programmer – I think I’d still prefer a dead-tree edition. For books on a specific version of a language, platform or tool, which have a limited lifespan, I would argue that the PDF version is the better choice. I used to hate reading PDFs onscreen, but in these days of LCD screens with resolutions at least 1200 pixels wide, and especially with a dual-monitor setup, I find them pretty readable.

One book series that I wished was available in PDF form is O’Reilly’s Head First series. A co-creation of Kathy Sierra, who knows how to communicate knowledge and passion at the same time, this series features lively prose, story-telling and pictures aplenty to create some of the most comprehensible and enjoyable tech books out there. Consider the original “Gang of Four” book on design patterns and Head First Design Patterns: while the former is considerably meatier and more rigorous, I consult it rarely, and only as a reference work. The Head First book? I pick it up every now and again and re-read it just for kicks, and it’s the book I send people to when they ask about design patterns. It’s that way with all their books; when I was taking a project management course, Head First PMP was the only book that didn’t anaesthetize me.

O’Reilly has just announced that the entire Head First series is now available in PDF form – even the books that aren’t available in dead-tree format yet, namely:

The PDFs are all priced around US$30, which is about $10 cheaper than the print editions. These prices seem a bit steep compared to the PDF editions of Pragmatic Programmers books, which hover around US$20, but then again, the Pragmatics’ print books are also $10 cheaper than O’Reilly’s. Still it’s nice to have the Head First series available as PDFs. If you’re doing some last-minute Christmas shopping for a geek friend, you could always give one of these PDFs (especially for one of the not-yet-in-print books). If you’re feeling especially generous, you could give it on a USB key.

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HoHoTO

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What happens when Toronto geeks decide to throw a party on short notice to raise money for the local food bank, using Twitter to put forth the initial idea and as a way to publicize the event? HoHoTO happens, and 600 people show up and over CAD$20,000 gets raised!

To find out more, go read my article on the HoHoTO on my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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Taking Windows 7 for a Spin

windows_7_ultimate_installer

I had my first look at the next version of Windows – Windows 7 – at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles back in October, a week after I joined the company. By the powers vested in me as a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, I got my paws on an installer for a recent beta edition and a spare machine – a Dell Latitude D830 with a 2GHz Core Duo processor and 4GB RAM — on which to take the new operating system for a test run.

The installation of the Windows 7 beta went considerably better than my experience installing the Windows Vista beta back in 2006: this time, it worked.

setup_is_preparing_windows

Over the next little while, I’m going to spend some time – perhaps a day a week – doing actual daily work on the Windows 7 machine in order to really experience it. It’ll also give me a chance to try out some “developing for Windows 7” example code. I’ll post my observations here on Global Nerdy – at least as much as the non-disclosure rules allow.

Links

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“Raving Rabbids” Cookies

Thinking of doing some baking for someone with a Wii? How about cookies shaped like “Rabbids”?

raving_rabbids_cookies
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

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IronPython 2.0 Released!

Python icon

Hot on the heels of the release of Python 3.0 (a.k.a. “Python 3000”) comes the release of IronPython 2.0, the .NET implementation of the Python programming language. Some quick facts about IronPython:

  • It runs on the .NET 2.0 SP1 redistributable
  • It’s compatible with CPython 2.5 with a few differences
  • It’s fast: it runs up to 1.8x faster than Python 2.5 on the standard PyStone benchmark
  • It can call on most standard Python and all .NET libraries

If you want to get your paws on IronPython 2.0, head on over to its page on Microsoft’s CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site, where you can download the IronPython 2.0 installer and code samples.

I’ll be posting IronPython tutorials and sample code…watch this space!

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Cue the “Damien” Choir

I haven’t been posting much this week because I’ve been pouring heart, soul and brain cells into my first presentation at a Microsoft conference – TechDays 2008 in Calgary — which happens at 1 p.m. Mountain Time today. My regular posting should resume tomorrow or Friday at the latest.

The Empire’s still got some money to throw around, so every speaker gets two official button-down dress shirts with logos, one for each day of the conference. I have to admit I never thought I’d seen the day when I’d be wearing one of these:

Joey deVilla at TechDays 2008 calgary wearing a Microsoft shirt

My friend and co-worker John Bristowe keeps singing the “Damien” choir music from the The Omen every time I run into him with this shirt on.

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“It Looks Like You’re Trying to Stank Up Your Code. Would You Like Some Help?”

Gojko Adzic points to this photo taken at QCon San Francisco 2008 by John Grae. It’s a slide featuring YAGNI, the Development Assistant, the programmer’s answer to “Clippit”, a.k.a. “Clippy”:

yagni_development_assistant_qcon_slide
Photo by John Grae.
Click the photo to see its Flickr page.

YAGNI, short for “You Aren’t Gonna Need It” is a development maxim that suggests to programmers that they shouldn’t add features or functionality to applications that aren’t necessary at the moment, but might be in the future. YAGNI has the DRY (“Don’t Repeat Yourself”) Principle has a cousin and among its ancestors are Occam’s Razor and the KISS Principle (as in “Keep It Simple, Stupid” and not “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day”).

YAGNI, the Development Assistant comes from Bunk and Rambling, a blog by Darren Smith, where he put it forth as an IDE feature request back in May 2006, when he wrote:

While pair programming helps you to write high quality code in an efficient manner there are times that a pair of programmers will end up going off on a tangent and working on something that ultimately ends up not being necessary. To counter the unbridled enthusiasm that usually causes this to occur I give you Yagni, the Development Assistant.

YAGNI is meant for developers who believe strongly in test-driven development, so here’s how it would hypothetically pop up if you tried to create a class and started entering non-test methods first:

YAGNI, the Development Assistant: "It appears that you are creating a class without a unit test. Would you like to * discard code? * create unit test?"

I’ll leave it to other people to argue over whether or not you always have to have unit tests. 

Here’s another notice from YAGNI:

YAGNI, the Development Assistant: "This development spike appears to be going too long. Would you like to * discard code? * go longer?"

And finally, what I feel is YAGNI’s most important message – a warning that you’re in danger of embarking on a long, “let’s reinvent the wheel” project:

YAGNI, the Development Assistant: "It look like you're trying to write a framework. Would you like to: * discard code? * find an open source framework instead? * find a new job?"

Since YAGNI’s not likely to appear in any IDE soon, you, your pair programming partner or whoever does code reviews with you will have to play its role for the foreseeable future.