Book Description
Greatest teacher presents method that produced Melba, Calve; Garcia tradition. Exercises, text.
Customer Reviews:
The "Hanon" for voice... .......2006-03-22
I was just copying this link to send to a friend who was looking for vocal books - and I was pleasantly surprised to see my former voice teacher's review on here! I very much agree with her assessment.
From a personal standpoint, while I've really only tackled the first dozen pages or so, I've found that it's really helped me broaden my range, and smooth out my break.
Now... if only I could dance while I sang ;)
Nice Vocal Exercises.......2005-08-03
I bought this book to review it and decide whether or not to use it in my studio for my students.
The preface in which she describes the glottal stroke is correct in that this is what happens upon phonation, but a singer may interpret it as to start the sound with a diliberate glottal stroke which is harsh on the vocal chords.
The exercises are nice and challenging. The progression of the exercices build on each other as well. I have started using this for my more advanced students.
A must have for those who want to learn bel canto.......2001-03-14
This book is mostly scales with a few pages of actual vocal technique. This is not for the beginner to use though. The person who uses this book should use it as a supplement to their own vocal studies and have a solid technique for the scales to actually work for you. I'm thorougly enjoying the book thus far.
Don't try this alone, kids!.......2000-09-17
While the book includes a set of progressive exercises which are definitely essential, Marchesi's comments on singing technique are limited to only a few pages. When you consider that leading pedagogues such as Richard Miller, Meribeth Bunch and others have devoted volumes to vocal technique, Marchesi's advice is sparse, to say the least. A good book if you are currently working with a teacher or are an advanced singer with solid classical technique looking for some new exercises. Not for the beginner to attempt alone!!!
Bel Canto's Best.......2000-09-08
This is a must have book for the novice through advanced singer, it shows the fundamentals and advanced techniques of the most famous and timeless method of singing. Marchesi and Miller teamed up for an extraordinary work on the art of singing. Explained in a easy to understand manner, the method makes the art of singing an effortless skill that can be easily learned by anyone with the will, and wants to experience and enjoy the benefits of the art of singing.
Amazon.com
"The great majority of people are more rational and make fewer mistakes in promoting their own interests than even well-intentioned government officials," writes this impressive couple (Gary won the 1992 Nobel Prize for Economics). The short, column-length essays that make up this volume first appeared in Business Week magazine and show for a popular audience how market incentives influence human behavior in countless ways. The Beckers criticize centralized planning, racial quotas and trade tariffs, and endorse drug legalization, privatized social security and school vouchers. They also veer into unexpected terrain, addressing religion, sports and marriage with keen insight.
Book Description
From economics Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and historian Guity Nashat Becker comes this collection of the economist's popular BusinessWeek columns. These 138 essays have fueled numerous debates, touching on hot-button issues from crime to organization of sports. The Beckers' surprising--and uncompromising--positions on drugs ("legalize them"), immigration ("auction off immigration slots"), welfare ("curtail it sharply"), and other topics provide a provocative commentary on our times.
Customer Reviews:
Easy to read everyday economics.......2007-05-18
Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker published this collection of articles in the mid1990s. Even if dated, the book is a high-quality and straightforward way to understand basic economics and apply economic theory and principles to daily life. Most of the articles are interesting, it is easy to read both in content and length, the writing is consistently fine and the analysis insightful. It also sparked the vast amount of more recent books of the same fashion like Harford's Undercover economist, Landsburg's Armchair economist, Friedman's Hidden order or Leavitt's Freakonomics. Recommended.
Very readable, very practical.......2007-01-10
This book brings economic theories down to earth. The Beckers are excellent writers and the book is easy to read because it is broken down into short segments. The book would be great as supplementary reading for a principles of economics class.
Becker's "Economics of Life".......2006-03-10
This is a great read. Although outdated, it still carries lots of potent articles from the man who mastered bringing economics to the masses. Being a collection of short articles, it sometimes leaves you wishing that Becker had gone into more detail with his arguments, though.
Dated, repetitive, superficial.......2006-01-15
I bought this book with great expectation but this book failed to meet it. The topics are wide ranging but most of the arguments are based on few assumptions such as individuals behave rationally and each person can decide what is good for them independent of family and social influences. I find these assumptions overtly simplistic and both social scientists and later economists question such assumptions. After reading this book, I could not but help wonder author's political leaning. If you want books that are incisive, understandable and readable, The Tipping point, Freakonomics are great books. To a certain extent, the wide breadth of topics itself makes it difficult to avoid repetition but in that case editors should have been more ruthless.
Good, but the columns are getting old.......2005-11-17
Based on Becker's columns in Business Week, the book is starting to suffer from the fact that the columns are dating, and that any book made up of columns is bound to get a bit repetitive and disjointed.
That said, the original columns are well-written and often provocative. It's not the best introduction to Becker's economics, which is more distinctive than this material, but it is a good read.
Amazon.com
A collection of more than two dozen essays by diverse authors, this collection focuses on the role of gender and how it affects ordinary people. A cynic might say that some of the essays are merely academics stating the obvious, only in oddly tortured and clunking prose. Yet the themes explored in the collection, such as pieces dealing with people working in jobs that are not traditional for their genders, are deserving of the serious treatment they are given.
Book Description
Situated Lives brings together the most important recent feminist and critical research that illuminates the lived experience of ordinary women and men. Focusing on gender and culture, these essays situate gender in relationship to the historical and material circumstances where gender, race, class and sexual orientation intersect and shape everyday interaction. They explore several critical social issues: how new technologies are altering reproduction, what new forms of family and household are emerging in response to economic and material realities, what transformations are shaping the workplace, and how men and women in colonial and post-colonial societies resist the cultural construction of their lives by those with greater power and control over the images and ideology.
Utilizing rich ethnographic accounts and first-person narratives, these articles examine how ordinary men and women are responding to the complexities of genetic counseling, surrogate motherhood and the abortion debate inthe US; resisting management policies in the new workplaces of Malaysia; and contesting forms of cultural and economic domination in Jamaica and the US-Mexican border. Several essays explore the politics of representations, including how colonial administrators, missionaries and the tourist industry have represented "Other," such as the Tswana of South Africa, the peoples of Sumatra, Java and Malaya or Pueblo women potters in the Southwest.
In analyzing cultural transformation, gendered practice and varied forms of resistance, these scholars give a sense of hope. Even in the most fouled work sites, repressive regimes, rigid notions of the family, or segregated neighborhoods, men and women express their own cultural meanings, take matters into their own hand and work together.
Customer Reviews:
A collection of the best work on cultural issues of gender........1998-01-25
Situated Lives is a collection of the most interesting up-to-date research examining cultural values and gender issues such as abortion, reproduction, the meanings of 'macho', the use of Central American women as underpaid/ overworked domestic workers, and women's issues in different areas of work in different countries. Each of the articles is careful to situate its findings in particular national/cultural/socio- economic contexts to avoid broad generalizations and instead work to understand specific dynamics. Contrary to the amazon.com review, I find the writting eloquent and topical. If you are interested in issues of women and work, gender in Third World countries and different ethnic groups of the US, or cultural questions that are key in our 'mulitcultural' world, I highly recommend this book.
Book Description
The first edition of this work, Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: A Newfoundland Illustration (Cambridge University Press, 1986), published before the 1992 moratorium on cod fishing, focused on the inshore, small-boat, village-based cod fishery that flourished from the early 19th century to the mid-20th, when it increasingly gave way to a factory-based, open ocean, deep-sea trawler fishery. The purpose of the first edition was to use the village fishery as a doorway into the logic of merchant capital. In its general features, merchant capital was both the fundamental form of economic, political, and social organization in Newfoundland and more--it was the predominant political-economic form for much of the world.
Since the moratorium, the situation in rural Newfoundland has become so stark, and the multiple and discordant histories that are being shaped so divergent, pulling people apart from one another even within families, that it provides a chance to see history happening: to people, to communities, and to capital. The spaces that are developing between those who are and those who are not "making it" since the demise of the cod fishery are vast, and the struggles of people to survive and to succeed in the new situation are meeting with highly diverse outcomes. They enable us to see how both difference and inequality are made, how they are transformed, how they are used, and how people living within, and necessarily also against, these new inequalities reshape the world more profoundly than they seem to have first intended. To introduce the conceptual framework for that task is the special purpose of this second edition.
Customer Reviews:
Making and Breaking Everyday Life.......2004-05-17
Gerald Sider focuses on the critique, elaboration, and explication of key concepts such as culture and class and their implications for peoples' everyday life struggles. Linking field research with political activism and theorizing, Sider challenges anthropologists to conceptualize their commitments to those studied in ways that engenders a creative antagonism between those who `just want to get on with it' and solve the world's problems and others who remain locked in the ethereal worlds of text, theory, and reflection. Sider is able to span both domains and sidestep a binary either/or thereby creating a new way forward for anthropology.
Sider's work is notable for the way he picks up a concept, elaborates upon it via close ethnographic description, and ultimately stretches it beyond its normal configuration. Whether he is critiquing the notion of resistance, the everyday, or exploring the implications of hegemony for fisherfolk in Newfoundland, his underlying concern revolves around issues of power within a capitalist social formation.
In Becoming History the concept of hegemony is a central link between production and of culture and appropriation of labour. Here hegemony is taken up and twisted in a way that reveals the ways in which a people actively participate in their own oppression while simultaneously creating a space of resistance. In doing this Sider avoids the pitfalls of a mechanical materialism. He carefully explicates the interconnections between the production of culture, the making of class, and the historical movements of appropriation that have resulted in the Newfoundland we know today.
Updated and revised with significant new materials this book is one that every person interested in the reason why our world is as it is should read (by Charles Menzies www.anso.ubc.ca/menzies).
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Inside Thai Society: Religion, Everyday Life, Change
Niels Mulder
Manufacturer: Silkworm Books
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ASIN: 9747551241 |
Book Description
Thailand is often called the "Land of Smiles", a nickname which sounds at once pleasant and mysterious. It is said that the Thais have a smile for every emotion, and with so many nuances of smiling, the smile often hides more than it reveals. Inside Thai Society looks behind smiles and appearances in order to discover those regularities and expectations that pervade everyday life. It identifies the basic ideas that give meaning and order to existence and that make life in Thai society eminently reasonable.
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Cultural Change and Everyday Life
David Chaney
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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ASIN: 0333761448 |
Book Description
It is generally accepted that the modern era has been a period of unprecedented cultural change. But what is the nature of this change and how has it impacted on our day-to-day experience? This landmark text proposes an innovative framework for understanding the shifting forms of mass culture and everyday life, and does so by examining changes in a number of important cultural spheres, from food to fashion, tourism to media representations. Vivid and ambitious, it both synthesizes a diverse literature and advances theoretical debates.
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Inside Southeast Asia: Religion, Everyday Life, Cultural Change
Niels Mulder
Manufacturer: Silkworm Books
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 9747551233 |
Book Description
Written for both general readers and specialists, this book explores how modern, urban Southeast Asians view and manage their social life. By comparing the ways they live with their religious representations, with intimate and more distant others, and with their rapidly changing environment, the author demonstrates the marked similarities in the perception of individual and society in three civilizations along the inner littoral of Southeast Asia, irrespective of the great religious diversity that appears to characterize the region.
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Politics of Everyday Life: Continuity and Change in Work and the Family
Helen Corr
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0312036744 |
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A Tale of Two Cities: Global Change, Local Feeling & Everyday Life in Manchester and Sheffield (International Library of Sociology)
Karen Evans
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415138280 |
Book Description
A Tale of Two Cities is a study of two post-Fordist cities in the North of England and of the texture of every-day life within them. It explores the hopes and fears and the present pre-occupations of young professionals, the unemployed, young people, the elderly, ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in Manchester and Sheffield. Throughout, the book draws on an international range of theory from Raymond Williams to John Logan and Harvey Molotch in order to understand the trajectories of local development in these two superficially similar but actually very distinct cities.
Book Description
Their entire relationship is founded on a secret. Now that secret is in jeopardy. In this exciting new novel, award-winning author C. J. Cherryh takes us deep into the private lives and thrilling adventures of Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and the world?s most famous super hero, Superman.
Where is Superman when you need him?
The Daily Planet offices rumble in the aftershock of an enormous explosion. As Lois Lane stares through the settling dust, a terrifying sight takes shape: the high-rise hotel down the street has completely collapsed. Hundreds of people are trapped inside, including an entire children?s soccer team. And Superman, the guardian of Metropolis and the love of her life, is half a world away.
Even with his super powers, Superman can?t be everywhere at once. As he struggles desperately to save a village threatened by a bursting dam, Lois races through the pandemonium of the collapsed hotel, throwing herself into the rescue effort—and emerging a hero. Not just a reporter anymore, suddenly she is a celebrity caught in the glare of national media attention. Recognized everywhere and hounded constantly by the press, nothing in her life will ever be the same again . . . including her relationship with Clark Kent.
About the Author
C. J. Cherryh is the author of more than thirty novels, and her work has been translated into fourteen languages. She has won the coveted Hugo Award three times, in addition to numerous other awards and honors. Perhaps best-known for Downbelow Station and Cyteen, her novels regularly appear on bestseller lists. Ms. Cherryh lives in Oklahoma.
Customer Reviews:
Super Reader.......2007-08-06
Luckily, as far as this book goes it is pretty far away from the other Lois & Clark type books. It is much more of a straight Superman adventure. This, as far as reading the thing goes, is most definitely a good thing.
Cherryh does a reasonable job of handling Superman doing one thing, and Lois another, as usually happens. If you are a Superman book fan and see this somewhere really cheap, you may as well grab it.
now this is a Lois & Clark *NOVEL*.......2006-06-11
I'd read some of the other Lois & Clark novels and absolutely hated them. I found them juvenile, fluffy, and riddled with the problems that had been a part of the tv show itself. The show, I loved, but I was not blind to its faults and the novels seemed to build themselves on those faults. Not so with this novel, this is a novel which does something Lois & Clark never quite managed to do, make Superman, Lois, Clark, and their world *REAL*. Superman truly goes international (and brings in the political problems that would inevitably arise with that, the US feeling proprietary over him) and Lois is competent, strong, and sure in herself which is something most incarnations of Lois Lane are not. This is a book I could *NOT* put down. That is something I cannot say for the other Lois & Clark novels I've read. They could barely be called novels, this one? It's a novel for Lois & Clark and general Superman fans alike. It could be a 'gateway' book for Superman fans, introducing them to the Lois & Clark world. It's definitely one I'm going to be re-reading on a frequent basis.
Save your money.......2003-10-09
I have to say, that I was very disappointed in this book. I have read far better stories on the fanfiction archive, and believe me when I say they are also more loyal to the show. The book was one long drag, and thinking back I can't remember how I even ever got to the end.
There's Superman, there's Lois - where's Lois and Clark?.......2002-04-06
...I had thoroughly enjoyed Cherryh's fantasy novels and so had high expectations of this book - based, so the blurb claimed, on my favourite series and penned by one of my favourite authors. How could it fail?
Well, quite simply, it failed for me because calling it a novel based on the TV series was a fraud and a misnomer. Calling it a novel based on the comic books would have been more honest.
What a huge disappointment! If you are a fan of the comic books you will probably enjoy this tale of Superman battling disasters while Lois investigates an entirely separate plot strand back in Metropolis. I think they were together for about 2 paragraphs in total.
Okay, slight exaggeration. But what I wanted to read about was the characters in the TV show and I didn't find them anywhere in this.
Coupled with the Superman dominated storyline, I found myself increasingly irritated with references and characterisations lifted straight from the comic books - in direct contradiction to the characterisations set up in the TV show. In Cherryh's novel for instance Lois has a cat. She does in the comics, certainly. It must have been invisible on the screen because I never saw it there. Or ever heard it mentioned. There were other such anomolies throughout.
By the end of this book I was wondering if Cherryh had even watched an episode of the show before penning this one.
Nice cover though.
Wonderful tv tie in novel that stands on it's own 2 feet.......2001-09-25
As a fan of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman", I have to say that Cheeryh's portrayal of their relationship, and the characters themselves, was spot on for me. She did a marvellous job of conveying the depth of feeling the two characters have for one another, and portrayed a realistic relationship that was all the stronger for it's rocky patches. The plot is top notch, and rings true and while a lot less flamboyant than the series scripts in many ways, it remained true to the unique premise of this 1990s version of the Man of Steel and the Planet's ace reporter. I can't recommend this book enough, and hope that all the FoLCs enjoy re-reading it as much as I do.
Customer Reviews:
Super Reader.......2007-08-06
In a scorching hot Metropolis summer, some dodgy Hollywood types are out to sabotage the production of a big budge crappy plot update of the Robin Hood story.
Perry White sends Lois and Clark in undercover to find out what is going on with all the accidents. Lois works it out while Superman runs around saving lots of people from heat-induced accidents.
Great show, great book!.......2002-01-23
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of L&C. The characters and the tone of their relationship are(is) true to the television series. MJ Friedman really paid attention to detail and it paid off. I really enjoyed this book and found it a fun read. There is great interaction between the title characters, just like in the show, and the plot moves along nicely. Great book!
Great book!.......1999-04-06
Romance, mystery, show business, and even some *heat*. I love this book
A Great L&C book!.......1998-03-25
This is really a great book and all FoLCs (Fans of Lois and Clark) ought to really enjoy it. It was just like watching an episode of the series, except with more detail. I truly loved it and will read it again often.
Customer Reviews:
The comic book stories that inspried the television series.......2004-11-09
"Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" supposedly brings together the comic book stories that inspired the ABC television series. But if you watched the television series with Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher do not expect to read any stories that will remind you of specific episodes. What you will get is a sense of how "Lois & Clark" reflected the new and improved version of the Superman mythos that was created in 1986 when writer-artist John Byrne revamped the Man of Steel. That is why the most interesting part of this collection is Byrne's introduction where he explains his thinking on changing the dynamic between Lois Lane and Clark Kent.
Although the decision to have Ma and Pa Kent still in alive when Superman was an adult was seen as the most controversial element of Byrne's new mythos, the keystone to freeing the character of Lois Lane from the strictures of the past was the simple exercise of eliminating global knowledge that Superman had a dual identity. No longer was Lois trying to figure out who Superman "really" was, which meant she no longer had to be constantly working on some scheme to find out that secret identity. This also meant that when Lois met Clark Kent all she saw was Clark Kent, the man who got his job at the "Daily Planet" by beating her to the first exclusive on "Superman" ("The Story of the Century"), which is not something that would endure him to her.
But in the end, Byrne decides something even more radical with the infamous "Triangle Built for Two," because this time around Lois is going to end up loving Clark as much as he loves her from the start. The big secret in this new version is that Superman is the secret identity and Clark Kent is the real person. That is why it had to be Clark than won Lois' heart and not the superhero. Unfortunately, that is only touched upon in the comic book stories from 1986-90 that are reprinted here (e.g., "The Limits of Power" and "Survival"). What you get more often are the inevitable problems that arise when a third party enters the picture (e.g., "The Name Game").
You also have stories where Lois & Clark are spending some serious time doing reporting. "Tears for Titano" is basically an illustrated Lois Lane piece. There is also a nice Lex Luthor short, "Metropolis - 900 mi," and "Home for the Holidays" is a Christmas story that glosses over the fact that Clark is about to leave the "Planet." While the first story is the most important for the new Superman mythos, the last two are the best stories in the collection although they have nothing to do with inspiring the television series whose stars appears on the front and back cover. Byrne is responsible for half of the offerings while Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, Dan Jurgens and others write and draw the other half.
Product Description
When Lois Lane, star reporter for the Daily Planet, covers a "routine" story, she soon discovers that the plight of missing children is anything but routine! Consuming her life, the story forces her to clash with her editors, friends, and even her estranged sister and leads to deadly danger!
Book Description
This introduction to programming places computer science in the core of a liberal arts education. Unlike other introductory books, it focuses on the program design process. This approach fosters a variety of skills--critical reading, analytical thinking, creative synthesis, and attention to detail--that are important for everyone, not just future computer programmers.
The book exposes readers to two fundamentally new ideas. First, it presents program design guidelines that show the reader how to analyze a problem statement; how to formulate concise goals; how to make up examples; how to develop an outline of the solution, based on the analysis; how to finish the program; and how to test. Each step produces a well-defined intermediate product. Second, the book comes with a novel programming environment, the first one explicitly designed for beginners. The environment grows with the readers as they master the material in the book until it supports a full-fledged language for the whole spectrum of programming tasks.
All the book's support materials are available for free on the Web. The Web site includes the environment, teacher guides, exercises for all levels, solutions, and additional projects.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book for Rookies and Veterans.......2006-12-26
I have been professionally developing software for about 5 years. I found this book to be one of the most useful and helpful books to help my coding skills. Even though I have been programming professionally for a few years and have a computer science degree, I learned a lot of new neat concepts from this book. It also helped to me to remind me of all the basic good practices that I have forgotten.
It is also an excellent book for beginners. The books doesn't use a popular programming language like Java to accomplish its goals. Instead, it uses Scheme so the student can focus on the concepts rather than syntax. It also teaches great concepts and breaks the problem down on how to solve various problems. Also it isn't "hardcore" like SICP-- it is very friendly to non-MIT level people.
A Recipe for Programming.......2006-07-06
This book opened my eyes. I'd finished a Ph.D. in computer science, and had a decent exposure to quite a few programming languages and paradigms, before coming across this book. I was surprised to start working through this introductory book, and find myself learning new things! The book transformed my approach to programming.
From page one, HtDP starts talking about good program design, and gives a methodical approach. Until this, I'd always thought programming books were "here are ten small example programs; go write ten more." That's hardly teaching. But HtDP builds up a straightforward design recipe, to guide programs along. If I get stuck or have a mistake in my program, 90% of the time I realize it's because I strayed from the book's recipe. The approach is language-independent, although some programming environments make it much easier to implement the design recipe; the book provides links to a good (free) Scheme environment, which it uses for its code examples too. (I've come to use that environment day-to-day). My code--in any language--has become much more robust, and when I do have a bug I usually locate it early, thanks to this book.
In addition, HtDP made me think about things I'd taken for granted: How is assignment to a variable fundamentally different than assignment to a structure's field? Even, *why* do I use assignment statements in certain situations, instead of choosing a functional approach? How often do my programs actually need the efficiency of imprecise floating-point arithmetic, vs using bignums which totally liberate me from numerical inaccuracy?
Although the text is available on line, I cherish my hardcopy. This is a book to first learn programming from, and one to revisit every five years.
Everyone should learn to design programs.......2004-06-03
As a programming do-it-yourselfer I've had many conflicting responses to this text -- it's didactic style, its attention to detail, its sometimes patronizing tone, its rigor and broad scope and at the same time its immersion in minutia and quiddities I have never encountered in 'computer books' I had ever perused. Perhaps it's my liberal arts background, or love 'em/hate 'em sensitivity to all those broad stiff-spined textbooks I had carried in back-packs since childhood, combined with a disdain for the authoritative stilted style these educators exude -- despite their patent love of their subject. I felt at once both patronized and condescended to.
From the very start of their journey into a detailed six step-by-step process that show the reader how to analyze problem statements, how to formulate goals, make up examples, outline a solution, and test a solution the authors proclaim their pedagogical ends: "We [...] believe that the study of program design deserves the same central role in general education as mathematics and English. Or, put more succinctly, everyone should learn how to design programs..." This is not a textbook, this is a revolutionary pamphlet calling for educational reform. I had read nothing like this in the tens of 'Dummies' and 'In 24 Hours' books I had exposed myself to. One part priggish, two parts pedagogic. I often found myself asking for whom was it written? First-year college student?, ambitious would-be high-school programmer wanna-be? Math mavens? Surely not a middle-aged bookish clerk who tastes run more to Turgenev and Dostoevsky than Turing and Dijkstra. But then I demanded more than mere anonymous web-lurking from my lowly pc. I remember myself many years ago trying to learn BASIC on a massive time-share computer and telling myself surely there was had to be more magic to computing than this. Well, after reading more texts and having had to unlearn the 'Dummies' and the 'In 24 hours' style of disinformation I had finally found the marrow of a discipline that is as demanding as any I had ever come across and as vexing as any artistic rigor I had ever been inspired by. Come be confused, come be amused, amazed and intellectually abused. Sorely, if I find I have little talent for this excruciatingly logical endevour, I have also found a full-blown appreciation of such daunting computational cheekiness. Much to learn here, and this is only the "core subject of a liberal arts education." What had I been wasting my time on all those years as a professional student?
The joy of learn programming.......2003-11-15
Great book! I liked the way the author approaches how to begin designing programs. I am half-way through the book and I am finding it very entertaining. Yeap! I recommend this book.
Should be read by Everyone who wants to program........2001-09-27
Have you ever looked at other people's codes and said to yourself something like "No... this isn't the way it should be written!". Or, worst yet, have you ever been asked by someone who wants you to read his/her codes and tell him/her what does it do?
Both things happened quite often, though.
The problems are mainly because they don't know how to "design" their programs properly. Being able to progam doesn't mean being to design/organize a good code at all. And being good at finding/inventing algorithms for problem solving doesn't mean that either.
One another thing, I (maybe just only me, I don't know) think that C shouldn't be taught as the first language (at least, not anymore). This is mainly because, in C, you can hardly express yourself. Also, C codes look cryptic to those new to programming. And you must know a lot, and practice a lot, (that takes a lot of time, friend) to be able to express what you want.
And also, several times, I saw many people just playing around with the * and & (well, the pointer-dereferencing, and address-taking symbol in C/C++), adding one more, deleting one off, to see which will make their programs work. (Sometime, it just works by miracle...)
This book, using Scheme (a modern dialect of Lisp) as the language of choice. I, personally, agree of choosing it. Scheme was designed in the way such that programmers can focus on what they want to express, rather than imprementation details. From my own experience, I became a better programmer after learning it. (I was already a C++ programmer by that time. I just have to use Lisp on my study/research).
One thing that I like is that, it focused on how to "design" programs, not just how to program, while college classes are mostly focused on how to write programs. No matter how students write their codes, if it could run, then it is fine.
Then, I think, a lot of people do have ability to program, a lot are good at it. However, the number of people who knows how to design programs are much lesser. And this would result in something like those silly examples at the beginning of this review. Therefore, this book had emphasized on quite an important thing.
And the last thing to say about this one is: MIT Press' textbooks are very high-quality, and this one is not an exception. It is very easy to read and to understand. And, even the html version is available at the book's official homepage, it is nice to have the printed version.
How to "design" programs is very important for every CS major people, and is important to everyone else in general (to program your "everyday life schedule", etc). Whether you want to become a professional programmer (write codes for living, etc) or not.
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