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Summary: P-H-E-N-O-M-E-N-A-L!!
Review: Never have I been so awed by a product I haven't seen! Philip's high-quality web site inspired me to purchase his book sight-unseen. I have just returned to Amazon to peruse the customer reviews of the book. I can't wait for my copy to arrive!
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Summary: Greenspun Rules!
Review: Finally, a technical book that tells it like it is! If you're looking for an honest, straight forward, authoritative reference on web publishing, this book is for you.Philip Greenspun is passionate about the web and he speaks from the practical experience that can only be gained from building database-backed web sites from the ground up for years. An invaluable resource for anyone seriously considering an 'industrial-strength', scalable web site solution that works!
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Summary: All that's left to get is the content
Review: Philip supplies the "how", all you need is the "what"
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Summary: A cracking good read, and practically useful too.
Review: I found the electronic version of Philip's book by accident. I already knew that Philip was a fine photographer, as a link from elsewhere had taken me deep into his photo.net site, but it was weeks later that my browsing took me to the section devoted to his ideas on computing, and I realised that we had more than photography in common. I immediately took his outspoken and passionate style. So many books on computing these days are boring pot-boilers, or when they try to be chatty end up being condescending, that it was great to find an author who was not only outspoken, but witty, engaging, and informative. And of course his opinions are backed by a deep knowledge of computing, and a wealth of practical experience, as demonstrated in the examples. Having suffered much as he had with the shortcomings of so much commercial software finding someone else that was obviously just as exasperated made me feel good. But more imnportantly than any of that, when I discovered Philip's book I was engaged in developing software for a large British Utility that would let users find and view the reports produced overnight by their batch systems. It was to replace a system of FTPing the files out to all the regional offices each night. The old system had grown to the point where this just wasn't feasible any more. We intended to use an Oracle database, fronted by a Web server, and accessed through a Web browser. We had already figured out how to use Perl's DB interface and had the bones of the database structure in place. Philip's description of the difficulties of storing large objects in Oracle persuaded us to keep the reports themselves as compressed archives and just to store meta-information in the database. This alone saved us days or weeks of research and experiment. The hints on organising tablespaces and indexes were also more practically useful than the official Oracle manuals. Philip also pointed out the big performance hit of using conventional CGI which we hadn't thought much about, so we changed to use mod_perl which gave a huge performance increase. We improved performance further by transferring the files gzipped. In fact although the finished system was eventually deployed on a big HP K class machine my little desktop workstation would have been quick enough. I won't bore the readers with more details of our design, but just say that throughout our development effort I kept referring to Philip's book, and always found it helpful and inspiring. It is a great read. I recommend it unreservedly
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Summary: Finally, a web book for engineers written by an engineer!
Review: I admit, I was forced to read this book for a course at MIT, but this is the best $30,000 I ever spent! The most valuable lesson you take away from this book is that the web is a tool NOT a "solution." Phil shows you how to use that tool successfully.
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Summary: A Pleasure to Read
Review: Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing is a wonderful book. Those of you who know me or know of me might say I'm biased. But this much is true: If Philip weren't such a great writer we never would have met and fallen in love. In the Summer of 1997, Philip's first book Database Backed Web Sites had just come out. I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, dating a computer consultant named Scott who had picked up a copy of the book. Scott would laugh out loud and excitedly tell me about Philip's interesting thoughts, intelligent ideas, humorous observations. Scott told me that Philip was god, which I obviously thought was crazy. But before I knew it, I found myself lying in bed, reading Philip's book, rolling with laughter and learning a ton at the same time. Well, the thing between me and Scott died a natural death. But I remembered Philip Greenspun, and the next time I found myself in Boston, nearly a year later, I had to meet him. And so it goes from there... Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing is even better than Philip's first book. It has more examples, more information on ecommerce, and discusses a wider range of applications. With all the emphasis I've put on Philip's humor, you might think this book is not very technical, but in fact it is. The book is full of useful code, with many Oracle8 SQL examples. I'm an experienced web application developer, yet I used it as a reference twice in the last week. I don't know of any other writer who can make complex technical ideas seem so simple and accessible, nor has any other technical writing been able to keep me awake this long. I recommend this book for programmers, managers, and anyone who wants to create high-quality, scalable web sites.
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Summary: Excellent, the ¿must-to-read¿ book for any web programmer.
Review: I started and couldn't stop for 3 weeks reading it. Book is excellent. First, it explains things simply, gives funny and easy-to-remember comparisons. It is all built on many real life examples, so you feel like you are with the author working trying to build sites and solve misc. problems. Book is very believable, the author is honest, doesn't pretend that he knows everything or can do everything - though he knows more than anybody I know - and I am not new to programming (Ph.D., 20 years experience). Author shows how you can find excellent solutions and build reliable enterprise-sized web applications with simple tools. And I really like pictures in the book. I believe I have spent more time with the book and on the author's web site than with any other single publication or web site. In fact, I was so excited, that I was talking to everybody about this. And of course, it is a lot of fun (like Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock or The Game) as well as discussions with people who've "been there, done that". This book is absolute must for anybody who wants to claim that he or she knows how to do web programming.
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Summary: Cuts through the baloney
Review: Greenspun cuts through the vendor hype and tells it like it is. His explanations of key concepts is crystal clear, concise and memorable.
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Summary: Web advice for real-world situations
Review: I have spent the last six months working as the sole CGI/database programmer for a web design and hosting business, basically keeping the place running along with my husband, the system administrator. Phillip's book really resonates with those of us who are down in the trenches, hip deep in muck - the problems and pitfalls he warns the reader about are very real, and his solutions make a whole lot of sense. So much so, in fact, that we have decided to go out on our own and run our own business using Phillip's ideas along with our own experience as a starting point for figuring out how to do this right. I think his book is well worth reading for everyone; even if your site doesn't currently get the kind of traffic to justify using Oracle and an HP-UX server, next year it might and you'll be in a much better place if you were prepared for it from the beginning. Besides, his writing style is wonderfully irreverant and funny, and makes reading about technical stuff fun. What more could you want in a book?
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Summary: Excellent Guide to Developing a Web Service.
Review: Before you put your business or yourself on the web, read this book. It provides excellent advice on how to approach building your web site (or, rather, your web service) and some crucial insights into how the web is likely to evolve.
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