<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Not that good actually
Review: Another failure of O'Reilly's. The book is thick but watery, writing is bad, editing is lacking. The expository parts are hard to understand, for example the chapter describing Monitors is impossible to comprehend (unless you already are familiar with that, in general quite comprehensible, concept.) The book is seriously fattened with reference-level material, in most cases inappropriately, imho. And finally, the C++ library built on top of Win32 threading API is totally out of place--plus its reference occupies half the book, which is unwelcome as well. Moreover, the authors' C++ is highly questionable. I don't think the authors are accomplished C++ designers, their C++ reeks of C, even syntactically. I guess this tome may be helpful somehow somewhere, but I'm yet to figure out in what way though. Finally, I'd like to say that this is not the first underwhelming book from generally-respected O'Reilly that, I notice, is edited by Ron Petrusha (another one was this Windows Error Messages fiasco (edited), and some other, authored pieces.) In the future, I will be very careful buying books with his name--whether as an author or an editor--on the cover, I think to see him having contributed to a book is a bad news. Finally, my suggestion to Windows programmers is to read Richter--he's got enough to make you comfortable with the API, and then carefully work through Kleinman's "Threads" and Norton/DiPasquale's "Threadtime". Both are on pthreads rather than Win32, BUT! -- they are written very clearly and cover the concepts very well; applying these concepts to Win32 environment should be a much lesser task than attempting to grasp them from the muddled babbling in Cohen/Woodring book. "Win32 MT programming" has been sitting on my shelf for a while now, and whenever I work with MT issues I kinda pick it up in perhaps search of some ideas, but no, it's been consistently useless.
Rating: 
Summary: The only book you need for multithreading on windows.
Review: Excellent book on multithreading. I like the way the thread library was built into the learning process. Maybe it was not appropriate but I would have liked to see something on RPC threads also. Another O'Reilly kudo.
Rating:
Summary: The only book you need for multithreading on windows.
Review: Excellent book on multithreading. I like the way the thread library was built into the learning process. Maybe it was not appropriate but I would have liked to see something on RPC threads also. Another O'Reilly kudo.
Rating: 
Summary: This one is a Keeper
Review: Here's what I liked about the book: (1) It provides simple explanation of central concepts and issues around multithreaded programming. This knowledge is platform independent. (2) Provides clear explanation of Win32 specific API and Kernel Objects, knowledge that is necessary to do Multithreaded Programming on most Microsoft Platforms. (3) Builds a simple C++ based OO Wrapper class Library for Multithreaded programming that elegantly conceals Win32 APIs idiosyncrasies. (4) Also builds additional higher Level OO Abstractions (like Monitors) that Win32 does not need to support directly but Programmers need often. (5) Great illustrations of Multithreading problems, solutions and Patterns through the trailing part of the book. (6) Code and Diagrams abound. What's there not to like?
Rating:
Summary: A lot of useful techniques
Review: I do not deny that the style of writing can be terse at some points. However this book covers a lot of ground on how to write a good , thread safe codes. The class included has provided a lot of usable codes that can be used in complex sowftware projects.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: This is a great book! It covers kernel objects in detail (mutexes, semaphores, etc.), with simple example code. It also covers methods of interthread communication (memory mapped files, anonymous pipes, etc.). It does not, however, cover the different Win32 threading models (single, apartment, etc.) at all. This is a good book for understanding the basics of Win32 multithreading concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: This is a great book! It covers kernel objects in detail (mutexes, semaphores, etc.), with simple example code. It also covers methods of interthread communication (memory mapped files, anonymous pipes, etc.). It does not, however, cover the different Win32 threading models (single, apartment, etc.) at all. This is a good book for understanding the basics of Win32 multithreading concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful class libraries included in this book...
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. Before reading this book, I didn't have experience of multithreaded programming in Windows NT. The class libraries inside give me a good paradigm on how to write safe multithreading codes, and help me to finish the software development at my job as soon as possible. I honestly appreciate that the authors made their efforts to write this excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful class libraries included in this book...
Review: This is the first O'Reilly book I've ever read that I cannot wholeheartedly recommend. The introduction to the book states the it is aimed at the novice. However, the examples in the book contain several novice mistakes. The book also glosses over a few point that an experienced MT programmer would understand, but would be baffling to a novice. I also found a few Win32 mistakes such as their handling of redirection of standard in, out, and error. If you know MT and Win32, it's probably a good book. If you don't keep looking.
<< 1 >>
| 
