Rating: 
Summary: Wealth of Knowledge
Review: Hesselberg wrote an extremely useful book for professional programmers and consultants. The wealth of best practices and insights is overwhelming. The style is easy and enjoyable to read with many practical examples that I found very useful and educational.I strongly recommend this book !
Rating: 
Summary: YAMW--Yet Another Money Wasted
Review: Is there any reason why people would simply not tell the truth about a book? If the so-called 20, 000 lines of TextEdit is what is attracting you then please know that it is not an editor designed and implemented from the ground, it is Windows standard RichEdit control. Here is a consultant with so-called many years of Windows program yet gave up on implementing font picker in a property sheet! A book should have a target and who is it in this case? I was attracted to the book my a news in DevJournal mailing list, followed by the authors excerpt on subclassing is C. I then thought as a C/API fan it is time to add another stuff to my bag. The result--disappointment. The codes are implemented in C++, and not even in classes that you can reuse outside the richtext editor. The insult...why will I want to write file copying installation program for my editor in an industrial strength programming? Even if you cannot afford installation programs (ie assuming a simply zip file is not enough and you did not receive the free Visual Installer from MS), a lot of professionally written ones are freely available. For a C++ programming in Windows with Borland C++Builder around and MFC/WTL/ATL sitting on my table why will I really wish to bypass these well tested classes and frameworks to write one? With MFC appwizard assisting, you can get the so-called 20, 000 lines TextEdit up in 2 hours (for a newbie) and did I mention you have print preview for free? With WTL out, please you now have a choice if MFC is not for you. Here is an example of industrial strength programing, from the book #define PRIVATE static Just imagine how this "private" was used! May God save the programming industry.
Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive, "user friendly" guide and reference.
Review: Programming Industrial Strength Windows is a comprehensive instructional guide and reference for developing "production quality" applications capable of running on any 32-bit Windows version software, including Windows 2000. A production quality application is one that is reliable even under the most rigorous circumstances. Petter Hesselberg shows how to build applications so that they move seamlessly between Windows versions, including details of drag and drop, shell integration, testing, internationalization, and installation. A highly recommended, "user friendly", and much appreciated addition to the Windows programmer's reference shelf, Programming Industrial Strength Windows takes intermediate and advanced developers step-by-step through an original application and demonstrates all aspects of application design, platform compatibility, usability issues, and the myriad details of error handling and recovery, testing, and more.
Rating:
Summary: A comprehensive, "user friendly" guide and reference.
Review: Programming Industrial Strength Windows is a comprehensive instructional guide and reference for developing "production quality" applications capable of running on any 32-bit Windows version software, including Windows 2000. A production quality application is one that is reliable even under the most rigorous circumstances. Petter Hesselberg shows how to build applications so that they move seamlessly between Windows versions, including details of drag and drop, shell integration, testing, internationalization, and installation. A highly recommended, "user friendly", and much appreciated addition to the Windows programmer's reference shelf, Programming Industrial Strength Windows takes intermediate and advanced developers step-by-step through an original application and demonstrates all aspects of application design, platform compatibility, usability issues, and the myriad details of error handling and recovery, testing, and more.
Rating: 
Summary: Some good info, but padded with listings
Review: Some good info on overall app design and the little things it takes to make an app complete and slick, but maybe 2/3 of the book is nothing but code listings. Between pages 150-200 there are about 10 pages of actual text that isn't part of a code listing, for example. Code listings can be very useful -- especially in a book like this -- but the inclusion of such things as 1 line inlines and forwarding funcions doesn't add much value for the forty bucks I had to lay out. The description of the book mentions error handling right off but I didn't find in the book a very substantive discussion of this topic. Chapter 6 was devoted to exceptions and error handling, and there was some useful info, but the entire chapter only contained 6 pages of discussion. The rest was code. Again, don't get me wrong. Code listings can be useful. It's just my opinion that this book went beyond the point of diminishing returns in printing so many pages of them. The description also mentions Win32 API programming, but if you want a book on that you should stick to Petzold or Win32 Programming by Rector and Newcomer. This book has some very good advice that is hard to find elsewhere. I would have liked more of that in the book. Leave the inlines and macros on the CD.
Rating:
Summary: Some good info, but padded with listings
Review: Some good info on overall app design and the little things it takes to make an app complete and slick, but maybe 2/3 of the book is nothing but code listings. Between pages 150-200 there are about 10 pages of actual text that isn't part of a code listing, for example. Code listings can be very useful -- especially in a book like this -- but the inclusion of such things as 1 line inlines and forwarding funcions doesn't add much value for the forty bucks I had to lay out. The description of the book mentions error handling right off but I didn't find in the book a very substantive discussion of this topic. Chapter 6 was devoted to exceptions and error handling, and there was some useful info, but the entire chapter only contained 6 pages of discussion. The rest was code. Again, don't get me wrong. Code listings can be useful. It's just my opinion that this book went beyond the point of diminishing returns in printing so many pages of them. The description also mentions Win32 API programming, but if you want a book on that you should stick to Petzold or Win32 Programming by Rector and Newcomer. This book has some very good advice that is hard to find elsewhere. I would have liked more of that in the book. Leave the inlines and macros on the CD.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent field guide on how to "do it right".
Review: The book holds loads of valuable tips and techniques from all aspects of the development life cycle. I especially enjoyed his fresh thoughts on user centered design. The example application (a much improved notepad) that he developes throughout the book holds loads of innovative user interaction techniques. This is a good book on how to develop solid programs, not only under Windows. There is much hard won experience here that goes way beyond the wierd incantations of the Windows API. Combine this one with Steve McConnell's Code Complete, Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code, and Charles Petzold's Programming Windows, throw in a solid dose of practice, and soon you can apire to the level of Windows wizardry that Petter is clearly the master of.
Rating:
Summary: Bill Gates should get this book
Review: This book contains a lot of detail about how a complete Windows application fits together, and it includes some information that I haven't seen anywhere else. (I never knew how complex the command line could be.) There is only one chapter explicitly devoted to exceptions, but there is something about robust programming in almost all the chapters: Designing exception-safe wrapper classes for various resources, for example, not to mention designing the conceptual model of the user interface so that errors go away. (I think it's the first time I've seen a book that can both say something sensible about usability and show you how to implement it at the same time. I loved the design of the Find dialog.) The most important thing I learned from this book was how little error-handling code you can get away with if the error-handling architecture is properly designed. (Well, not exactly "little", but at least the error-handling code is mostly divorced from the functional code.) I highly recommend this book to all Windows programmers, unless you are a beginner, in which case you should read something else first. Read this afterwards.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent programming techniques to write robust code
Review: This book contains some very good hints, tips and techniques to write robust code. In addition, the author's language is entertaining, making the book fun to read(!) On the downside, the code listings get boring; you could easily print them out yourself...
Rating:
Summary: A must-to-have-book for pure Windows programmers
Review: This book covers many aspects of Windows programming, especially low level API programming. Based on the sample code provided with the book I developed in quite a short time a tiny installer that saves me and my customers quite a lot online time: The installer is only 50KB where typical installers add around 1MB to an installation.
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