View Review Details
| Book: | Programming Collective Intelligence | |
| Subject: | A fascinating read with lots of code examples | |
| Date: | 2009-03-05 17:41:45 | |
| From: | www.thegeniusfiles.com | |
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Rating:
 
If you are a computer science student and want to learn about the algorithms and theory behind Web 2.0, this is a good place to start. Although the author tries to make the book intelligible to novices, you will benefit by having some previous programming experience - say, perhaps up to the 300 level. Also, the code is Python, so you might want to study up on that first. In my opinion a good Linux distro like Ubuntu will simplify the coding experience (it's easier to download and install the Python libraries in Ubuntu Synaptic than to install them in Windows). The really nice thing about this book is that the author explains the principle of what each code example is doing before launching into the code. That's important because much of it is grounded in methods of statistical analysis. As another reviewer pointed out, there are some errors in some of the code examples. If you have no prior experience with Python, this would be very confusing. However, you can access the revisions through Safari Online, so all is not lost. If it weren't for the code errors, I'd give this book 5 out of 5. |
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