Showing posts with label finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label finance. Show all posts

Excel 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) Review

Excel 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)
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Excel 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) ReviewProgramming books usually take one of three approaches. It either assumes you know absolutely nothing and gives you a very exhaustive history of not only the subject at hand, but programming in general. Or, the book is written "cookbook" style. Finally, some programming books are written as reference books.
This book claims to be a reference book, but it's not. As someone who's programmed for over a decade in a ton of languages and just had to learn enough to get this project done, I wanted a reference book so that I could say, "how do you write an 'if' statement?" "What's the syntax for logical operators in this language?" Stuff like that. You will find *none* of that in this book's index or table of contents.
For example, I had to write a simply if block. if ((condition A) and (condition B) Then 'Do something
I didn't know if the "and" was supposed to be && or AND or something else. So I looked up "logical operators" in the index. Nothing. So I then looked up just "operators". Nothing! Google to the rescue!
I needed to know how to increment a variable. In many languages (Perl, C/C++, PHP), if you have a variable named x, incrementing it would be as simple as x++. I may be wrong, but it doesn't appear that can be done in VBA and you'd have to do x = x + 1. It would be nice if there was a section quickly explaining this stuff.
There are a TON of examples such as this. For example, the books talks about functions. None of the examples, however, show you how to return a value from a function. The syntax is different than in most other languages, so it should at least be given a small mention. Again, google to the rescue!
In some cases, although you can't find it in the table of contents or the index, it *is* in the book. Of course, this then forces you to just aimlessly search from page to page trying to find what you need. For this project I'm doing, because I know nothing of this new language every page teaches me something I didn't know. So I found myself putting post it notes on pages. "Well, I'll need this bit of information to finish this project so let me just bookmark it. Right now, however, I'm looking for X and I still can't find that."
Listen, there is information in there and if you know nothing of VBA, you'll get something from this book (the only reason why I didn't give it 1 star). However, I bought it specifically because it said it was a reference. When I want to know the answer to something, I want a concise, quick way to look up how to do it so that I can move on. Unix Powertools is the PERFECT example of such a book and is probably the best cross-referenced book I ever read. In the end, I should have just saved my money and used google. I'll be returning this book.Excel 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) OverviewThis book is aimed squarely at Excel users who want to harness the power of the VBA language in their Excel applications. At all times, the VBA language is presented in the context of Excel, not just as a general application programming language.
The book is loosely divided into three sections:

Primer (Chapter 1)
Working with Specific Objects (Chapters 2-27)
Object Model References (Appendices A-C)

The Primer has been written for those who are new to VBA programming and the Excel object model. It introduces the VBA language and the features of the language that are common to all VBA applications. It explains the relationship between collections, objects, properties, methods, and events and shows how to relate these concepts to Excel through its object model. It also shows how to use the Visual Basic Editor and its multitude of tools, including how to obtain help.

The middle section of the book takes the key objects in Excel and shows, through many practical examples, how to go about working with those objects. The techniques presented have been developed through the exchange of ideas of many talented Excel VBA programmers over many years and show the best way to gain access to workbooks, worksheets, charts, ranges, and so on. The emphasis is on efficiency—that is, how to write code that is readable and easy to maintain and that runs at maximum speed. In addition, the chapters devoted to accessing external databases detail techniques for accessing data in a range of formats.

The final four chapters of the book address the following advanced issues: linking Excel to the Internet, writing code for international compatibility, programming the Visual Basic Editor, and how to use the functions in the Win32 API (Windows 32-bit Application Programming Interface).

Finally, the appendices are a comprehensive reference to the Excel 2007 object model, as well as the Visual Basic Editor and Office object models. All the objects in the models are presented together with all their properties, methods, and events.


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The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) Review

The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals)
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The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) ReviewThis should be a couple of blog entries in a B+ blog, not a $20 book.
The book is not only badly written, it does not hardly any useful content either. Everything said here should be obvious to any person who has lived for any time near any web business. The author has unnecessarily made the book fat by having many long interviews with his friends - most of them add little to the content .
If you find this book useful - you should ask if you are the right person to run a business and perhaps spend sometime learning "basic business stuff" first.
Here is my recap of content:
* Chapter 1: Introduction: Funding a web startup today is easier than ever and many options exist including self-funding (duh!!)
* Chapter 2: Create value. There is no shortage of just "ideas" (duh, again !!)
* Chapter 3 & 4: There are lot of tools available to you like SaaS platforms, open source cms and local meetup groups (duh, duh ,duh !!)
* Chapter 5 is about raising money. It is filled with meaningless generalizations ("raising money is like falling in love") - none of them of much use.
* Chapter 6 is about social media. More generic stuff. Nothing said here is so remarkable that you cannot find it online - just google "how to market on social media" and just read the top 5 links. you will be WAY AHEAD of this book.
* Chapter 7 - The summary is - You need to be clear about what your USP is (duh !!)
* Chapter 8 - A long chapter on GTD methodology. There is no reason for it to be in this book. If GTD is your way, read a book on GTD.
* Chapter 9 - a needlessly long chapter about author's recommendation of 6 blogs to read.
Throw this book in fireplace - that will be more useful.The Web Startup Success Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) OverviewFor every one brick-and-mortal business that is created, there are ten web startups, begun by everyday folks who have development knowledge and access to a web browser. The Startup Success Guide is a highly readable, on-point text written by an authority in startup consulting. Packed with unique interviews with successful startups and their founders, and offering loads of practical advice and what-not-to-dos, this book clearly has a time and a place in today's economy, where the ranks of un- and under-employed developers increases.

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