PC Interfacing, Communications and Windows Programming

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to Win 32 programming
Review: I would like Buchanan's approach, straigth to the point and have a very good presentation of Win 32 programming;however, the book would have been better if the serial com chapters were explained in C++(it can be Visual C++ or Borland C++ builder) rather than Visual Basic. The author spent too much chapters explaining how Visual Basic works; it may be better if he can put this info as an appendix or refer the reader to another book in Visual Basic.

Rating:
Summary: Technically helpful book mangles English
Review: William Buchanan's PC Interfacing, Communications and Windows Programming fills a niche in the technical world; however, I found it distracting to read because it so often mangles the English language. Subject and predicate sometimes disagree in number ("There are four areas of memory called segments, each of which are 16 bits . . ."). The author seems afraid to write a simple sentence, often choosing instead to join independent thoughts with a comma, creating run-on sentences. The book also shows signs of being spell checked by computer, in that misspellings that happen to form other words are missed ("register/memory. Specifies a memory of register operand . . ." instead of ". . . Specifies a memory OR register operand . . . ") In short, this book suffers from the appearance of being written hurriedly, no copy editing supplied by the publisher, Addison-Wesley.

Rating:
Summary: Technically helpful book mangles English
Review: William Buchanan's PC Interfacing, Communications and Windows Programming fills a niche in the technical world; however, I found it distracting to read because it so often mangles the English language. Subject and predicate sometimes disagree in number ("There are four areas of memory called segments, each of which are 16 bits . . ."). The author seems afraid to write a simple sentence, often choosing instead to join independent thoughts with a comma, creating run-on sentences. The book also shows signs of being spell checked by computer, in that misspellings that happen to form other words are missed ("register/memory. Specifies a memory of register operand . . ." instead of ". . . Specifies a memory OR register operand . . . ") In short, this book suffers from the appearance of being written hurriedly, no copy editing supplied by the publisher, Addison-Wesley.