New Multi-Technology Handbook

I was very pleased to come home yesterday to find in my mailbox my copy of Coding: The Handbook for Information Technology from Blue Line Press, a new player in computer book publishing. This is a unique book in that it includes exactly one chapter each on a wide variety of languages, tools, and platforms:

Java, C++, C#, VB.NET, Perl, COBOL, HTML, XML, JSP, PHP, ASP.NET, VBScript, JavaScript, Windows, Unix, Linux, Mac OS X, Oracle, PL/SQL, SQL Server, T-SQL, and DB2

I had some small involvement with this book as the technical editor of the VBScript chapter. The publisher, Blue Line Press, contacted me awhile back to ask if I could help out. At the time thought this is was an interesting idea for a book, but I also know that this kind of project can be difficult to pull off, so I was a little skeptical. Nonetheless, I was happy to pitch in and help.

I can say for sure that we came out with a pretty solid overview of VBScript. If the rest of the book offers the same quality of coverage (and it looks like it does), then this is a real value for consultants, contractors, and support people who deal with a wide range of technologies. If you were stuck needing to maintain some VBScript code or crank out a VBScript program on the spot, this chapter would set you up nicely, and you definitely would not find all this information online in one place. You'd have to dig around in several different places, or get a dedicated VBScript book, which might be overkill for on-the-spot, one-time-only situations. The rest of the book, of course, follows this same pattern for the other technologies.

Now that I have a copy of the actual book I must say I'm impressed. I have not been able to read all the content yet, of course, but I certainly am impressed with the design. To start with the book has a clean, smart typographic cover design, which I like. The best part, though, is that the publisher has packaged the book as a kind of field guide, like a plant or bird identification guide you might take with you out into the woods. It's hard to tell this from just seeing the cover image online. Instead of the usual large profile that you get with this kind of technical tome, this book is smaller, and therefore easier to carry around. As an added flourish to further evoke the field guide look, the right-hand corners of the pages and cover are rounded, and the cover stock is a thick semi-gloss, as if it needs to be prevented from getting wet. It's a really sharp book.

If this seems like the kind of book you would find useful, I recommend it. Here's an Amazon link for the book if you want to order one.

Dan

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