Notebooks Aren't...
Lectures
We don't let just anyone write a developer's notebookyou've got to
be a bona fide programmer, and preferably one who stays up a little
too late coding. While full-time writers, academics, and theorists are
great in some areas, these books are about programming in the
trenches, and are filled with instruction, not lecture.
Filled with conceptual drawings and class hierarchies
This isn't a nutshell (there, we said it). You won't find 100-page
indices with every method listed, and you won't see full-page UML
diagrams with methods, inheritance trees, and flow charts. What you
will find is page after page of source code. Are you starting to sense
a recurring theme?
Long on explanation, light on application
It seems that many programming books these days have three, four,
or more chapters before you even see any working code. I'm not sure
who has authors convinced that it's good to keep a reader waiting
this long, but it's not anybody working on this series. We believe
that if you're not coding within ten pages, something's wrong. These
books are also chock-full of practical application, taking you from an
example in a book to putting things to work on your job, as quickly
as possible.