I have mixed feelings about this book... it's good to see a book like this for the BeOS, but I wish there was a little more care invested in it.

First, the good. The book is very step-by-step and well organized. Lots of code snippets and screenshots to follow along with. The chapters are logical and the book reads well. The book covers BeIDE and sections of the BeOS API that you will be dealing with most in real-world programs. By the time you get through this book, you should be ready to tackle other BeOS kits on your own that aren't covered in the book.

Now for the bad... the book constantly talks about sample source code, which you don't get with the book! There are references to the book's CD-ROM (which there is none), and sample code on the book's Web site (which there isn't any either). This wouldn't be a big deal if the book listed all the changes it made to the example code, but it skips essential parts like the header references. Nothing in this book is going to compile without the proper references to BeOS header files, and you won't find any in this book. It seems to me this book was written with the idea that there would be sample code with it, but then they didn't include it. Well, it makes the book pretty frustrating when you are following along with the code in the book and it won't compile.

With that said, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in BeOS programming; just accept the fact that you can't type in the code from the book and make it work. The sample code included with the BeOS will hopefully fill in some of the cracks for you. If you are a beginner to BeOS programming and want a good book to get you started, this is the way to go.