I am new, and was just wondering what books that you all would recommend me to read in order to accomplish learning something. I heard something called oreilly's and i am guessing that they are a book company of some sort. are they any good>?
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I am new, and was just wondering what books that you all would recommend me to read in order to accomplish learning something. I heard something called oreilly's and i am guessing that they are a book company of some sort. are they any good>?
O'Reilly's has good books on every topic you can imagine....go for it :)
I would have to disagree with Ratman2 but only relative to your question.
O'Reilly's books are not really designed to be learning tools as much as reference and growth tools. If you have a good foundation in a subject then the O'Reilly's really shine. However to get the basics they are a bit dry and too referential in nature.
Therefore to learn a subject I would look for something that is in more of a lesson format. Then when you are comfortable and are ready to explore the limits more, or need a book to look back at as a reference, go with O'Reilly. I have a number of them and they have rarely failed me except in the early stage where they start over my head.
Perhaps if you listed some of the subjects you are interested in we could give more info on books used. BTW I make it a habit of buying the training book and the O'Reilly are the same time since I know that as time goes on I will transition from one to the other and having both makes that transition all the easier.
I have to partial disagree -genreally http://ora.com are best used for reference but some of the books are great to start with. The Lima Book (Programming Perl 3rd Edition) and the koala book (HTML: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition) I found were great getting started books. I found the Lion Book (UNIX Systems Programming for SVR4 ) and all the Nutshell books are great references but you need something of the understanding prior to using that book.Quote:
Originally posted here by SodaMoca5
I would have to disagree with Ratman2 but only relative to your question.
O'Reilly's books are not really designed to be learning tools as much as reference and growth tools. If you have a good foundation in a subject then the O'Reilly's really shine. However to get the basics they are a bit dry and too referential in nature.
Cheers,
-D
[EDIT]
I always go to book store and read the book before I purchase it. Is it will written and is it written on my level?
[/EDIT -forgot the above last time]
The content of their books varies greatly but I've never seen one that wasn't of the highest quality. The "nutshell" series books are referencial, but I find most of their full-sized books well written. Programming Perl is the absolute bible of Perl, and I'd hardly call it dry, written in Larry Wall's inimitable style. In short, I like'm.
why don't you try out www.amazon.com amazon offers large variety of books on anything and everything
Yeah, some of their books are actually quite good for learning everything, basics included. But it depends on the subject and the book. O'reilly has different authors, employing experts in the field. For PHP, for example, rasmus lerdorf co-authored the book, he created PHP, however if anybody asked me a good book to learn PHP, I wouldn't reccomend it, because that book gets complicated too fast without properly explaining everything. But, I also have a few of the perl books, and I forget the exact title, but I think it was something like learning Perl, where it is funny and also pretty good to get started. Though, generally, O'reilly books are really only useful if you want to really delve into a subject. If you are looking to learn from the ground up, I reccomend two things. Either you can first research and learn about the subject online, and then go and buy an O'reilly book, OR, you can buy books from SAMS, they are very friendly. They include exercises and a recap of the chapter. They don't always cover all the advanced topics, but they are extremely good for starting from the ground up, very helpful.
depends on the oreilly book. If I were you I'd check out http://safari.oreilly.com . They have 800+ of their books in html format for you to read online...and you get 10 books for 14 days for free. After that it is a monthly subscription service (unless you cancel) where it's 5 books for 10 bucks or 10 books for 15, etc.
LOL, I didn't know that O'reilly's was a publisher. Around here, when you talk about O'Reilly's, you are referring to the local Automobile Parts Store...LOL....They carry good books too...ROFL
bah fisiks, what you should do is figure out what you want to learn, read a little bit about it from various places, get somewhat of an understanding, then delve into the oreilly books. they are great, yet can sometimes be hard to understand if you are new. however, if you know about oreilly's books you cant be *too* new, so happy learning all i have to say.