Programming Book Reviews

Writing code well is easier and cheaper than writing code badly. This page reviews programming books of particular interest to 4D developers.

Mastering Regular Expressions edited by Jeffrey E. Friedl and Andy Oram: Regular expressions (grep) enable you manipulate text based on patterns instead of literal strings. Mastering grep is a essential when you're working in a text-processing oriented languages like Perl. Grep is an enormous convenience when editing source code in any language. If you're new to regular expressions, this is the book to have. Review added March 2001.
Code Complete by Steve McConnell: A Top Ten Book List selection.; This is the first three programming books you should read. It is the single most readable and useful book in my computer science library. Review added 1998.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler: A Top Ten Book List selection.; Refactoring is a system approach to restructuring code to increase reliability, increase code reuse, and simplify system modifications. Refactoring offers detailed examples and a catalog of specific refactoring practices. The author has a Web site about refactoring.
The examples are all in Java and some of the refactorings are only possible in an OO language. If you are a 4D programmer and have read and understood Code Complete, then Refactoring will be valuable for you. Check the Object-Oriented Book Reviews page for suggested OO readings, including Martin Fowler’s UML Distilled. Review added June 2000.
The 4D 6.5 Companion by David Adams: The most detailed and comprehensive guide to 4D 6.5 available. All of the contents apply to 4D 6.7 and later as well.
This product is distributed by Automated Solutions Group. Review added June 2000.
Programming 4th Dimension: The Ultimate Guide by David Adams and Dan Beckett: Obviously if you’re interested in 4D you should read this book ;-)
This product is distributed by Automated Solutions Group. Review added 1998.

Read a great book lately? Send an email to dpadams@island-data.com.