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O'Reilly, Manning, Wrox, or Other

 
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Does anybody have any particular publisher they trust more than others for programming books: O'Reilly, Manning, Wrox, PH, Wiley, or maybe some other? I mean if you absolutely had to choose one over the other, which would you choose?
For myself, I go back a ways (back to my Perl days) with O'Reilly and have come to trust them. Lately Manning has been putting out a very strong list of Java publications. As far as Wrox goes, I have a couple, but really don't care too much for their line as a whole. PH certainly has put out some of the classics (the Core series, the C Programming Language, Applying UML and Patterns, Thinking in Java, many others), but their line is so expansive that the PH name itself doesn't really mean too much to me.
Any opinions?
 
mister krabs
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I like APress:
http://www.apress.com/category.html?nID=32
 
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Judging by the contents of my Java bookshelves, O'Reilly is a clear winner. I find those monster WROX compilations a mixture of good and not so good.
Bill
 
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I like O'Reilly and Addison Wesley. The former has larger volume on my shelves, but the latter has a higher percentage of classics, IMO - Effective Java, GoF, UML Distilled, The Pragmatic Programmer, Refactoring... Also a book by some guy named Gosling.
[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]
 
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I personally go for Oreilly. While I find the Wrox books to be particularly complete, I find them a pretty disjointed read as chapters will be written by different authors with differing writing and coding styles.
However I always check the Amazon review of a book, and if its a Java book, I check to see if its been reviewed here as well.
Cheers,
Mark
 
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I teach java. All companies mentioned above write good reference books. To bad OReilly and Wrox do not publish textbooks.
 
Thomas Paul
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Wrox has "Beginning Java" by Ivor Horton which I use aas a textbook for the class I teach at Hofstra University. It works pretty well.
 
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Could you really recommend the camel book ( Programming PERL ) as a serious work? It's a thingy... I think quality at O'Reilly is slipping. I went to the discount bookstore the other day looking for one of their XML books, though. TP gave it 9 horseshoes in the bunkhouse.
Currently Addison-Wesley leads my recommendation list. Through the years John Wiley has been good.
I've never tried a Manning publication.
 
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As per me Orielly is best ..
Wrox are good but generally, they come up with thicker versions of orielly.
Oreilly is concise and good.
 
Thomas Paul
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There is a new Java and XML book out that I recommend much more highly than the O'Reilly book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201771861/jr_bunk-20
The author really knows his stuff and gives example after example.
And it's by Addison-Wesley.
[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]
 
James Chegwidden
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Wrox has "Beginning Java" by Ivor Horton which I use aas a textbook for the class I teach at Hofstra University. It works pretty well.


I like that book- however it has some exercises.
It does not however fit the "typical" textbook mode.
 
Jason Menard
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Originally posted by Rufus BugleWeed:
Could you really recommend the camel book ( Programming PERL ) as a serious work?


A serious work? Like what, A Tale of Two Cities? I would recommend it as a resource to use if you want to learn Perl. That is after all its purpose. I think legions of Perl programmers who successfully learned the language using that text might agree.
 
Thomas Paul
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Originally posted by James Chegwidden:
It does not however fit the "typical" textbook mode.

Is that a bad thing?
 
Jason Menard
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Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
There is a new Java and XML book out that I recommend much more highly than the O'Reilly book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201771861/jr_bunk-20
The author really knows his stuff and gives example after example.
And it's by Addison-Wesley.


Thanks for the recommendation. I went ahead and ordered it. Also in case anyone is interested, it's available online for free from the author at http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava/ . As the author pointed out though, it is certainly cheaper to buy it than it is to print it out.
[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]
 
Rufus BugleWeed
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Oh thank you TP and JM. I have Brett McLaughlin's Building Java Enterprise Applications and was leery of buying his XML book. Now there is no need.
 
James Chegwidden
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No, not being a "typical" textbook is not a bad thing. Just pointing out here that there are usually differences between texbooks and reference books.
 
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There is Elliotte Rusty Harold's "Why I Like Writing for O'Reilly" article on the site, Jason gave a link to -- right on this thread's topic
 
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O'Reilly, i find their books are clear, consise
to the point, enough examples, it is still my choice and thinner too , unlike wrox, they are far thicker, but I have different preference for UML/OOAD books.
have a good read guys...
 
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If it is abt the publisher, I prefer Addison-Wesley, but O'Reilly comes as close second. Wrox is boring!!!
As for Elliotte Rusty Harold's book, it's too good. I'll buy it no matter who publishes it.
- Manish
 
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Initially I used Wrox books more. But during last 3 years I am preferring O'Reilly as they are very useful. For the last 6 months I have been using Manning books which I consider now as second to O'Reilly and better than others. Ofcourse I am talking about average and overall cases...
 
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1. Addison Wesley
2. Wiley
3. O'Reilly
4. Prentice Hall
In my experience Manning is uneven. And Wrox is way too verbouse.
 
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I prefered Wrox for a while. Lately though, O'Reilly has been my preference. I bought 2 .NET books from Wrox...they both had good reviews, but turned out to be a disaster. Here's books you don't want to buy:
"Professional ASP.NET, 2nd edition"
"Beginning Visual C#" (5 stars on Amazon :roll: )
I found Wrox has a big problem with different people authoring different chapters, and what you get is much ado about nothing (not A-D-O, "ado"). Both books jumped from one topic to another without any sence, scope, or direction. The only logical thing about both was Table of Contents.
I used to like some of Sybex books, but I can't name a good one lately.
Shura
 
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A big factor for me is the book cover.
I like the Manning books (especially the Sun Certified Web Component Developer book), but they have GOT to stop putting pictures of crossdressers on the cover of their books. I have to take that thing on the train with me!
Wrox has the very worst book covers. They apparently thought it would be a good idea to put an enormous picture of the author(s) right on the cover of the book. Let's face it, most of their authors have a good face for radio.
The silliest Wrox books are the ones that have 87 authors. They try to fit all of their miniature pictures on the cover like a mosaic.
What are they thinking? Do you really want to walk around town carrying a humumgous picture of some computer author?
O'Reilly's concept of using animals was cute at first, but has gotten way out of hand. My "Web Design in a Nutshell" has a least weasel (Mustela Nivalis) on it. They explain that "the diet of the least weasel is made up of primarily voles and mice, which, because of their high metabolism, they hunt constantly." Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. I don't know what a "vole" is, but I'm sure he's got his own book too.
O'Reilly really dropped the ball when they wrote the book about the Ant build tool. If they insist on putting a picture of an animal on the Ant book, it should have been an ant!
 
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Rick, "book cover" problem was examined in these threads:
Book give away and Worst book cover ever.
But you made a significant contribution!
----------------------------
"I like the Manning books, but they have GOT to stop putting pictures of crossdressers on the cover of their books. I have to take that thing on the train with me!"
Rick Silva
 
Shura Balaganov
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More on "Worst Book Covers" topic, since I didn't participate in that other discussion... The more I talk to programmers the more I realise they are mostly introverted, unsecure egomaniacs.
We are educated. We usually know more about topic than our boss (well, at least we tend to think so :roll: ). We usually earn good living (when not employed by a sweatshop). WE usually keep a few tricks up our sleeve that we think set us apart from other developers. Oh, and by the way, who wrote that crappy code??!!....
So why are you surprised to see these faces blasted all over big-fat books? Look, mummy, I am so smart they printed my face on a cover!...
Shura
[edit]Ok, I did participate in these discussions...I think I am having memory loss....what memory loss?...[/edit]
[ December 27, 2002: Message edited by: Shura Balaganov ]
 
Shura Balaganov
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Another "boo" for "ASP .NET" I mentioned above. They made a cool insert page that described what Babelfish is, from "Hitchiker's Guide to Galaxy". But then they put it between eve-ry frea-kin' chapter...some 30 times, same page.... :roll:
Shura
 
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O'Reilly
 
He's dead Jim. Grab his tricorder. I'll get his wallet and this tiny ad:
a bit of art, as a gift, the permaculture playing cards
https://gardener-gift.com
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