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I belive http://umiststudents.com/ runs on Plone. Obviously http://plone.org does too. Neither are ugly looking by any stretch any both very usable. A lot of effort has gone into Plone to make it look "plain" - that is clean & simple to use. That's surprisingly hard with such a full featured CMS. Much easy to make one cluttered.

Setup's much quicker & simpler than the apache/php/mysql combo.There's a plone installer now that even sets everything up for you. That's your webserver, app server, content management system and database all in one.

As for Zope sites looking the same - just look at the various sites in this post. I'd say Postnuke sites all look far more alike to be honest.

Bruce Eckel's site http://www.mindview.net/ runs on standard Zope. That looks OK to me. Some UK Home Office sites too eg http://www.drugs.gov.uk/Home. All look pretty professional.

Zope is excellent at wiki's too. The whole "page is an object" model fits wikis very well. Zwiki http://www.zwiki.org is one of the best I've seen,

Zope, Plone, and Zwiki are all progressing at a fair pace. If you haven't tried in a while it's worth having another look. I think one of the main problems is that it's just so different to other solutions out there. I'm used to J2EE development. From JSPs it's reasonably simple to pick up ASP & PHP. Zope requires a bit more of a mindshift.

Bruce Eckel's been releasing his programming books electronically for the past few years. (Not sure of its licensing, however)

This is probably one of the first cases of a publisher supporting this, however.

There are also some things in .Net that I have real problems with - the first being lack of checked exceptions. To me this is a BIG issue and will cause a lot of software reliability problems.

There's a lot of debate about this - e.g. see here.

Uncaught exceptions are the main reason that Sun is adding generics to Java 1.5

Well, generics reduce *uncaught* exceptions, but that has nothing to do with *unchecked* exceptions. A language w/o generics can have class-cast exceptions thrown at runtime, and a language with generics doesn't have this problem, whether that language has checked exceptions or not. Sun adding generics to Java 1.5 has nothing to do with checked exceptions.

I must say, I don't care for the new, beardless look. (Well, not completely beardless, but close. Maybe he's just getting older, too. There's a lot of grey in his hair now.

Anyway, back to Java: I'm disappointed that Bruce Eckel has "sold out" and switched from being a C++ guru to a Java guru. We all know that Java has lowered the standards for Computer Scientists, and has crippled many a new college grad who doesn't know what a pointer is! Also Java has a bad reputation, thanks to people like Patrick Naughton, a co-inventor of Java who used it to search for child pornography on the Internet.

I must say, I don't care for the new, beardless look. (Well, not completely beardless, but close. Maybe he's just getting older, too. There's a lot of grey in his hair now.

Anyway, back to Java: I'm disappointed that Bruce Eckel has "sold out" and switched from being a C++ guru to a Java guru. We all know that Java has lowered the standards for Computer Scientists, and has crippled many a new college grad who doesn't know what a pointer is! Also Java has a bad reputation, thanks to people like Patrick Naughton, a co-inventor of Java who used it to search for child pornography on the Internet.

I am a great fan of Bruce Eckel's work. I have read his in-progress book Thinking in Patterns with Java.

Either there is a lot less to design patterns than I hoped (unlikely) or the book doesn't cover enough basic material for me to understand. I think I am going to buy the Gang of Four book just to find out if I'm missing anything.

Two years ago, the idea of a free book --- a book whose author had intentionally made it free on the internet --- was largely unknown and untested.
My arse it was largely unknown and untested. If that's your first sentence I'm not going to bother read the rest. BTW, Bruce Eckel has an interesting note about this at http://www.mindview.net/Etc/FAQ.html#BooksOnWeb

Bruce Eckel has a book

Thinking In Patterns

How does this book compare to that?

S

regarding "how to prepare for tests, how to take notes in class, how to productively complete a coding assignment": I don't see how these skills are any different just because the course content happens to be CS.

"how to write good, documented code": do it a lot. work on big projects that have modules that rot and need to be updated. have anal colleagues that give you a really hard time because you added whitespace, misspelled comments, etc.

While not CopyLefted, Bruce Eckel has online a 0.x version of Thinking in Python, which is more pattern oriented.

That link again is http://www.mindview.net/Books

Not only are they free, but they are pretty useful books. Bruce has done a really good job. Wheneven I start a new job and people begin to ask me silly Java questions all day I make them download the "Thinking in Java" book and look for answers there first. Bruce explains things better than me. I admit it. He also saves me time.

Sorry if I'm too lazy to look up any links or authors.

Thinking in C++/Java

Algorithms in C, the whole series.

Design Patterns by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm,Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides.

Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity and Induction : Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery both by John Holland - father(?) of the genetic algorithm - not necessarily computer books, but they do provide a different perspective on how you can write software to do thing.


The Art of Computer Programming, Volumes 1-3 by Donald E. Knuth

The problem with on-line C++ is that many people who claim to write about it don't know their subject, and consequently write superficially correct code that actually sucks. I'm sorry to name names, but the much-recommended-here CPlusPlus.com is one such site; their "Hello, world!" program at the start of their isn't even correct. I'd give sites like that a miss if you're seriously interested in learning C++.

One good source of information about C++ (and many other programming-related subjects) on-line is the related Usenet newsgroups, particularly the group specifically for learners if you're just starting out, or the moderated C++ group for more advanced subjects.

Many of these groups also have helpful FAQs, available (as usual) via the Internet FAQ Consortium. Again, for those just starting out, I'd particularly recommend the alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ FAQ, which has links to helpful on-line resources, free compilers, etc.

There are a few web sites of which anyone in the C++ field should be aware.

• You can get generally pretty sound book reviews for thousands of books on these and related subjects at the Association of C and C++ Users web site.
• Herb Sutter's web site has lots of informative and thought-provoking C++ articles by one of the guys who's advanced C++ programming technique a lot in recent years.
• Similarly, Scott Meyers' publications page has many worth-reading articles on C++.
• It would be remiss not to mention Boost, a collection of very good general-purpose C++ libraries. If you can't see how to do something with the standard stuff, the answer -- or a useful idea to find it -- may well be here.

There are a few decent on-line references to the standard library:

• Dinkumware make a standard library implementation, which is shipped with Visual C++ amongst other things, and provide some helpful documentation on-line. (NB: The version that shipped with VC++ 6 was flawed in many horrible ways, but that wasn't really Dinkumware's fault given the compiler limitations at the time when they wrote that library; please don't judge them by that alone.)
• SGI's implementation of the "STL" parts of the C++ standard library is excellent, and well-documented on-line.

About the only decent on-line C++ tutorial I know of the electronic version of Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in C++" books. You can find a complete copy of these, and several of his other books, at his books web site. (He also has books on Java, C#, Python amongst other things, and all of his work I've read has been reasonably good.)

Howsabout some Stuff That Matters? Jeez... at least timothy posts amusingly trollish crap. pudge... well really, does anyone give a fuck about minor point releases of scripting languages used by the three people worldwide who found Python too difficult to get their heads round?

Actually, AppleScript isn't really easier than Python. Even for non-programmers, I would be willing to bet that most people find Python easier to learn and more intuitive -- AppleScript has an "English-like" syntax (as its marketing says), and English is actually one of the most inconsistent and hardest languages to learn (for those who are not raised speaking it). Why? Because there are so many different ways to say the exact same thing in English, not just synonyms but the grammatical structure itself -- very unsystematic. I find that the same thing is true of AppleScript. This is often leveraged against Perl by those who would criticize it as being difficult to learn (in comparison with PHP or Python, for instance).

Whereas Perl and AppleScript provide "more than one way to do it", Tim Peters praises Python saying There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it. Anyone who's written an AppleScript can tell you this is definitely not true of AppleScript.

Besides that, AS hooks nicely with scriptable apps on the Mac. It even lets you call shell scripts and other languages' scripts directly. I don't use AS much, but one of my favorite little tools is a script I incorporated into my text editor ( BBEdit ) -- I highlight a function name and hit F8, and my web browser pops open and serves me the man page for that function (using php.net's awesome URL-based function lookup.

No, none of this really matters for non-Mac users, but then why are you reading apple.slashdot.org if you're not interested? Besides, as you can see from the release number, it's not like AppleScript has been updated much in its 14+ years of existence. For Script-savvy Mac users, this is "news that matters".

id like to add Thinking in C++ to the list, by Bruce Eckel. You can download it from here

O'Reilly Open Books Project
Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in..." books
Data Structures and Algorithms books
MIT's Structure and Interpretation of Programming Languages
Numerical Recipes series
Handbook of Applied Cryptography
The Art of Assembly Language Programming
Object-Oriented System Development
GTK+/Gnome Application Development
GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool
Effective Perl (partial)
Programming Pearls (partial)

Let's turn this topic around a bit and collect links to free books that can be found on the net. My favourites are:

• Dive Into Python - an excellent Python book aimed at experienced programmers
• Thinking in Java - concentrates on OOP principles. Check out Thinking in Python/C++/C# on the same site
• Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO - calls itself a HOWTO but it's practically a book
• Linux From Scratch - build your own linux distribution

I suppose you could buy Thinking in Java, but I'd prefer to download it for free

-tim

Bruce Eckel discusses unit testing the examples in his books in a chapter of Thinking In Patterns. He says it improved the quality of the code in his book. Why can't book authors and publishers do the same, require a full set of tests for the source code? Even if it verifies that the code compiles without warnings and errors it would contribute greatly to the publication's quality.

For me the "showstopper" for C# is the lack of checked exceptions. I predict this will kill C# software reliability. I fear many people don't understand in time what a fatal mistake this is. Otherwise, I might have liked it.

Well, many people believe that checked exceptions in Java do more harm than good for large projects. For example:

http://www.mindview.net/Etc/Discussions/CheckedExc eptions
http://www.java-zone.com/free/articles/Kabutz03/Ka butz03-1.asp

Adding checked exceptions to CLR is even less appealing because you'd have to implement them for all languages.

I would really appreciate someone who understands the subtle nuances to explain.

Bruce Eckel explains some different approaches to GC, pros and cons, etc., especially as it relates to Java. Check out Thinking In Java 2nd Edition, pp. 207-219. You can download it here.

Bruse Eckel's books are some of the best resources for delving into the world of programming witout having a CS background. "Thinking In Java" was my first introductionto Java and his writing made it very approachable.

Then I discovered his website. What a treasure trove. Updated book releases and drafts of future publications. I've even downloaded a few of his recorded seminars. Great stuff and all of it free. I gues he figures he'll havea better product when it hitsa the street and maybe a few more customers if their appetites have been whetted by the drafts.

I may not be the best programmer, but reading Bruce Eckel's writing helped me kake up my mind to change my profession to programming. Nother is better than a teacher that loves what he's teaching

Use the third link in the story if you just want to get the book. I didn't even see how to get there from the "first incarnation" link the story poster provided.

I looked at Ruby. It is certainly a heartfelt attempt. However, it seems to me that yet another poor communicator has written yet another language.

Not only that, but the Ruby creator has created his own syntax. A new language has one big advantage for the creator: The creator finds the syntax very familiar. Everyone else must struggle.

Links:

The Ruby Home Page

Ruby Language Reference Manual

The Ruby Language FAQ

Programming in the Ruby language by Joshua D. Drake, who is a good communicator.

A Slashdot story and comments: Programming in the Ruby Language

Positive comments about Ruby:

Introducing the latest open source gem from Japan

Thirty-seven Reasons I Love Ruby by Hal Fulton.

Negative comments about Ruby:

As mentioned above, Bruce Eckel does not like Ruby:

"IMO, the Ruby syntax is ... often annoying... Ruby requires more typing for no particular reason, and has an uninspired choice of syntax ..."

Eckel again: "... Python has 10 years behind it and a big, very smart, very active community, a nice number of good books and more on the way, a large set of libraries and a whole process and team in place for developing the language. Recent improvements to the language have outstripped whatever Ruby could offer, I think, and there's currently lots of very good work going on to further improve Python."

For those who would like to quickly see for themselves, there is a section of the The Ruby Language FAQ called Show me some Ruby code

Quotes from Ruby's creator, a Japanese man with an incomplete command of English:

What is the history of Ruby?

"Well, Ruby was born on February 24 1993. I was talking with my colleague about the possibility of an object-oriented scripting language. I knew Perl (Perl4, not Perl5), but I didn't like it really, because it had smell of toy language (it still has). The object-oriented scripting language seemed very promising.

"I knew Python then. But I didn't like it, because I didn't think it was a true object-oriented language -- OO features appeared to be add-on to the language. As a language manic and OO fan for 15 years, I really wanted a genuine object-oriented, easy-to-use scripting language. I looked for, but couldn't find one.

"So, I decided to make it. It took several months to make the interpreter run. I put it the features I love to have in my language, such as iterators, exception handling, garbage collection.

"Then, I reorganized the features of Perl into a class library, and implemented them. I posted Ruby 0.95 to the Japanese domestic newsgroups in Dec. 1995.

"Since then, highly active mailing lists have been established and web pages formed."

--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

I love Perl, wrote many a fine script in it, and a couple mostly unreadable messes. I started using Python, and am using it for most of my scripts now. I poked around Ruby's web page a while back and tried to find out what all the hoopla was about, but couldn't find anything really revolutionary. Bruce Eckel (of Thinking in C++/Java fame) doesn't seem to think much of Ruby.

Sure, maybe there's some cool new syntactic sugar. Sure, it's sexy to be able to say you're developing in/developing libraries for/developing a brand new computer language. But unless there's some significant additional benefit to this new design, why re-invent the wheel with Yet Another Language?

So, SOMEONE must be able to tell me what's so *great* about Ruby that we should start calling Python obsolete. Either that, or acknowledge that Ruby is just a fun, impractical project that truly is re-inventing the wheel.

for a free smalltalk implementation, check out Squeak. But if they know C, throw Java at them. Free tools that work on most any platform, plenty of good books (c.f. Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel, which you can read online in a variety of formats (scroll down some on that page)), and not a huge syntactic leap to get in the way of the OO concepts, yet enough of one that they can't just code "C in C++". I've always been fascinated by Obj-C but I've had little luck finding good intro material.

HTH :-)

"an ineffective security measure does NOT give you the RIGHT to circumvent it."

An ineffective security measure does not HAVE to be circumvented, that's why it's ineffective! Take "secure" ebooks. They are already defeating their own protection by decoding themselves for end users to view. It's not even a question of circumventing the protection, the technology is doing that for you. However, thanks to the DMCA, it is a criminal offence to even TALK about it. That is WRONG. Don't you see where that kind of thinking can lead?

Centuries ago when the printing press was invented, book publishers put scribes out of business, because information became a lot cheaper to copy. Now we have a global data network that renders copying information basically free. (A simplification, but for the purposes of this argument, essentially true). The publishers don't want to go the way of the scribes, and they're rich, so they guide the inception of legislation to protect their antiquated outdated archaic profit scheme based on the scarcity of their product. With the Internet, information will never be scarce again, but we will see all the old dinosaur publishers struggling to impose artificial scarcity to keep their profits high.

Have you heard of the book "Thinking in Java"? The author, Bruce Eckel, released the book entirely for free, on the web, and encouraged reader feedback. He got lots of feedback and corrections, and improved his book. Soon, he was FLOODED with requests for a hard copy book to purchase. Now he's made quite a lot of money off something he initally offered for free. Read his notes on this subject.

"Just as with someone who steals cars, the fact that he is ABLE to do it doesn't justify his actions.

It's amazing (and a little disheartening) how people are so quick to admit that they are untrustworthy."

What is with all these personal attacks!? Ever hear of devil's advocate? I'm not trying to justify anything, or claim I'm some 1337 ebook hacker, I'm merely pointing out WHAT WILL HAPPEN, and how easy it will be. The DMCA encourages (hell, ENFORCES) ignorance of technology. I always thought technology was about the empowerment of the individual; it appears it is becoming a tool of oppression and corporate dominance. Orwell was right, he was just off by a couple of decades.

"an ineffective security measure does NOT give you the RIGHT to circumvent it."

An ineffective security measure does not HAVE to be circumvented, that's why it's ineffective! Take "secure" ebooks. They are already defeating their own protection by decoding themselves for end users to view. It's not even a question of circumventing the protection, the technology is doing that for you. However, thanks to the DMCA, it is a criminal offence to even TALK about it. That is WRONG. Don't you see where that kind of thinking can lead?

Centuries ago when the printing press was invented, book publishers put scribes out of business, because information became a lot cheaper to copy. Now we have a global data network that renders copying information basically free. (A simplification, but for the purposes of this argument, essentially true). The publishers don't want to go the way of the scribes, and they're rich, so they guide the inception of legislation to protect their antiquated outdated archaic profit scheme based on the scarcity of their product. With the Internet, information will never be scarce again, but we will see all the old dinosaur publishers struggling to impose artificial scarcity to keep their profits high.

Have you heard of the book "Thinking in Java"? The author, Bruce Eckel, released the book entirely for free, on the web, and encouraged reader feedback. He got lots of feedback and corrections, and improved his book. Soon, he was FLOODED with requests for a hard copy book to purchase. Now he's made quite a lot of money off something he initally offered for free. Read his notes on this subject.

"Just as with someone who steals cars, the fact that he is ABLE to do it doesn't justify his actions.

It's amazing (and a little disheartening) how people are so quick to admit that they are untrustworthy."

What is with all these personal attacks!? Ever hear of devil's advocate? I'm not trying to justify anything, or claim I'm some 1337 ebook hacker, I'm merely pointing out WHAT WILL HAPPEN, and how easy it will be. The DMCA encourages (hell, ENFORCES) ignorance of technology. I always thought technology was about the empowerment of the individual; it appears it is becoming a tool of oppression and corporate dominance. Orwell was right, he was just off by a couple of decades.

C/C++/Java How To Program -- Deital & Deital

While I'm here, I'll recommend (as others have) getting one of Sedgewick's algorithms books and Stevens' Unix Network Programming. Also, if no one has suggested it yet (I haven't seen it), I think that Graham's ANSI Common Lisp is another essential programming book.

Finally, I highly recommend Eckel's Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++. Btw, for any who wants to check it out, Thinking in C++ is available free here.

--

Rapid Development is the third best use of my money to buy a computer book that I can recall. The best was Oracle8i: The Complete Reference by Kevin Loney, George Koch (Perhaps the only book with the word "Complete" in the title that doesn't make me cringe), It is quickly followed by Javascript bible by Danny Goodman. Others that helped have been UML Distilled by Martin Fowler and Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel (free online but dead trees are easier to read) A web guy.

imho...

C++ isn't easy to understand for a beginner.
The books listed below are the best at explaining it.

This book is online:

Thinking in C++



You'll have to pay for these:

Accelerated C++

C++ Primer

Free as in Free beer... http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/
This is a real book, not a 15 page tutorial.

I started Java not so long ago and this book was recommended by a friend who works with Java at Sun. I was looking for a thorough introduction to the language and that's what I got. I wouldn't say that the examples are concise, but the writing is superior and you will learn the required concepts. Exercises at the end of every chapter are included. The solutions are available at bruceeckel.com. Best of all, the author has put the book online, so you can peruse it without dropping any cash.

Apparently you haven't used Python, or even read the docs; modularity is one of its strongest features.

Programming in python might produce better code, but it is enjoyable to write? Most write-only code (ie, scripting tasks) are tedious if you write them the "nice" way.

First of all, I use the interactive Python console to accomplish simple scripting tasks, which is a breeze. I spend so little time accomplishing my goal that I can move on to something I really enjoy in short order, such as a more challenging program.

If the task is slightly more complex, I figure out the basics on the console and then write the complete program in a module (in Python, a module is just a file of code--a "script"). When I'm done with my simple scripting task, that module lies around waiting for me to need some slice of its functionality (a function, for instance) in the future. If I do, I just 'import' it and go to town.

For more complex tasks I use OOP, which is pleasant in Python, though not as formal and featureful as in the likes of C++. For example, I've written a fairly involved network app that uses both multithreading and sockets extensively. OOP happens to match the way I think, so I consider solid support for it indispensable (before you suggest this, I was not "raised on OO" and therefore did not begin exploring the broad world of languages with a favorable bias toward it).

As for power, Python has it aplenty. The language's philosophy, though, is that extra power should be added uniformly--through the modules and class mechanisms--rather than cluttering the core language with lots of bizarre constructs.

Concurrent programs are a breeze with the threading, there's a parser module for manipulating Python parse trees, an shlex module for concocting simple lexers right off the bat, a Numeric module for maxtrix manipulation and other scientifically oriented numeric programming, various imaging/graphics modules for graphics programming. These are just a few of the modules that I actually use. All of this, and the core language remains the best compromise of simpilicity (Lisp) and comfort I've ever used.

For most programming tasks (even complex ones), C++/Java-type languages aren't clearly superior. Bruce Eckels, author of _Thinking_in_C++_ and _Thinking_in_Java_ (thus clearly well acquainted with both), says "Python is my language of choice for virtually all my own programming projects".

Moving from C++ to Java results in a 2x improvement in programmer productivity, he says, while the move from C++ to Python results in a 5x to 10x improvement. He is still developing his reasons as to why this is the case, but he believes that Python allows a programmer to focus on concepts, rather than on mechanics.

Lacking any scientific studies, Bruce offered his top ten reasons why he loves Python:

10. Reduced Clutter - The indented nature of Python makes it easier to read, an important criteria since code is read more often than it is written. According the the extreme programming (XP) folks, consistant formatting really is important.

9. It's not Backward Compatible in Exchange for Pain - Many popular languages promote their backward compatability, but at the cost to the programmer of awkward syntax (C++ and Perl) and lots of typing (Java).

8. It Doesn't Value Performance Over Productivity - Rather than forcing the programmer to implement awkward coding sequences for the sake of "speed," Python implements easy-to-learn idioms (but allows extensions to be written in C when performance becomes an issue).

7. It Doesn't Treat Me Like I'm Stupid - Python doesn't prevent operator overloading, doesn't insist on type declarations, and it doesn't pretend to be something that it isn't.

6. I Don't Wait Forever for a Full Implementation of the Language - C++ still does not fully implement features invented by the C++ committee.

5. It Does Not Make Assumptions About How We Discover Errors - Python does not force static type checking, moving the programmer quickly along to the discovery of errors using "real" data.

4. Marketing People Are Not Involved... Yet -- Java and MS Visual C++ have been over-hyped.

3. I Don't Have to Type So Much - Not obscure like APL, not endlessly inventive like Perl or FORTH, not verbose like Java.

2. My Guesses are Usually Right - Java and C++ require programmers to constantly look up syntax in a language reference. Python idioms are easier.

1. Python Let Me Focus on Concepts - No stumbling through Java designs, no fighting with C++ compilations or runtime bugs."

PS...if you've been living under a rock, Zope is the Open Source Application server and is Python's "killer app". Also, Bruce's books are available for free online and available from mirrors listed at http://www.mindview.net/DownloadSites/

Curious George

The problems with incompatibility with the GPL will probably be resolved in time for the release of KDE2.0 and QT2.2.

If you REALLY wonder why plain old C is the wrong language, you should read Bruce Eckels free(as in beer) book Thinking in C++ for an introduction to the advantages of OOP.