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Title: COM/DCOM Blue Book: The Essential Learning Guide for Component-Oriented Application Development for Windows by Nathan Wallace ISBN: 1-57610-409-5 Publisher: The Coriolis Group Pub. Date: 06 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.99

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Average Customer Rating: 1.9 (10 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: An impulse buy victim
Comment: Yet another example of how dangerous it is to impulse buy a computer book at a bookstore based on it's potential.

It's a great concept, but the depth of the errors and inconsistency in the language make it clear much of the content is surface level regurgation and not the teaching of someone who really gets it. There is much more wrong here than typos and cut and paste oversights; some of the errors are fundamental, and grievously misleading. Furthermore, I've tried to contact the publisher about corrections or explanations of specific issues and gotten no response.

The bright side is you will actually learn something as you struggle to understand how to make the examples work. It was painfull but I made progress using MSDN info and ATL source. I've also formed plenty of questions that I'm sure I'll now better apreciate expert answers for.

Beware, don't let it's potential suck you in. It took me way to long to give up on this book.

Other lessons learned:

1) Resist the bookstore computer book section, the odds are worse than the lotery. 2) Look for author's that stand behind their work with a personal email address for comments, questions, and suggestions. 3) Be extra suspicious of this publisher.

Rating: 1
Summary: I wouldn't take this book from a friend for free.
Comment: Here's a little blurb from the "Why is COM Needed" section:

"... Each compiler produces a set of machine language instructions (binary numbers) that are designed to be fed by the operating system into the CPU of the computer in structured ways to produce program behavior....".

With gems like that early in the book, how could I take the rest of the book seriously as a technical work? I pressed on, but basically the rest of the book seemed disorganized and filled more with studying example output from "wizards" and such.

Maybe if you're looking to study micros~1 Visual Studio "wizard" output, then this book is for you. If you're looking for a solid understanding of the basics, stay away.

BTW, ALL authors should lay off the lame attempts at humor. Readnig bad attempts at humor are much worse than reading a technical book that is dry.

Rating: 4
Summary: Good Reference
Comment: The fact the Mr. Wallace dedicated two big chapters to ActiveX, which includes builds in both ATL and MFC makes this book a definite addition in my reference library. If you read this book from cover to cover you kind of get lost in the process but as a programmer how reads cover to cover you just read the section you need.