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Re: Recommendations for a programming book?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg55805] Re: [mg55752] Recommendations for a programming book?
  • From: Clifford Martin <camartin at snet.net>
  • Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 03:12:09 -0400 (EDT)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

David,

I do believe that David Wagner's "Power Programming
with Mathematica. The Kernel" is a good book. He has a
nice section on writing packages. It's a bit dated
also but I still use it and find it a good book.
Trott's book takes a bit of getting used to. I believe
it is a good reference (I found things in there I
found no where else, including Wolfram's book) so I'm
glad I bought it.

Good luck.

Cliff

PS I've learned more on this list than any other
single source!

--- David Kirkby <david.kirkby at onetel.net> wrote:
> Has anyone got any recommendations for books on
> Mathematica programming 
> - i.e writing packages for a set of routines you
> develop for your own 
> (or others) use, packing them together properly,
> documenting them for 
> the user etc? Insuring routines that are used
> internally (private) in 
> your package are not visable to the user when he/she
> reads it in to 
> their Mathematica session, whereas the ones you
> intend (public) are 
> fully documented.
> 
> I have the book "Programming in Mathematica" by
> Roman Maeder (1989), 
> based on version 1.2 of Mathematica. This assumes
> some familiarity with 
> the program, so does *not* start with 1+1=2. I like
> the book, but 
> thought it might be a bit dated now - remember my
> copy is 6 years old.
> 
> I thought perhaps there would be something to be
> gained by a more up to 
> date book than the old copy of Maeder's I have, So I
> bought "The 
> Mathematica Guidebook for Programming"  by Michael
> Trott:
> 
>
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0387942823/qid=1112651074/sr=8-4/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xgl/026-8217107-8364418
> 
> but it was not what I expected. My mis-understanding
> of the title I 
> think. The first example in the book is
> 
> In[1]:= 1+1
> 
> Out[1]= 2
> 
> and then seems to repeat much of what there is in
> Steven Wolfram's book 
> "The Mathematica Book"
> 
> The book seems to have a huge number of unnecessary
> references - there 
> is over 1100 references in the introductory Chapter
> 1, and other 
> chapters have hundreds of references each.
> 
> I only got the book today, so have not looked at it
> carefully, but it 
> certainly does not fill the gap I was looking to
> fill. It does however 
> look quite a reasonable introduction to Mathematica,
> and is a little 
> more manageable in size than the official book -
> although still quite big.
> 
> PS for anyone in the UK thinking of buying this
> book, or the Mathematica 
> book by Wolfram, I suggest you click on the "New and
> used" section of 
> the Amazon site. Often there are dealers in the USA
> who will ship a new 
> copy of the book to you for a *lot* less than Amazon
> UK sell it for 
> directly.
> 
> You can save over £8 on the Mathematica Book, and I
> saved twenty odd 
> pounds on the Trott book. It seems strange Amazon
> providing links to 
> dealers undercutting them by a lot, but I guess they
> get some share of 
> the profits when you buy via the Amazon site.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dr. David Kirkby,
> G8WRB
> 
> Please check out http://www.g8wrb.org/
> of if you live in Essex
> http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/
> 
> 


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