Programming the Be Operating System

This is a great introduction for programming the BeOS. It's a great introduction for those who have never programed before, and it's a great transition book for those who have worked with other APIs and want to learn Be's API. True, the book is simplistic and it doesn't go into any great detail of the API classes, but thats what the Be Book is for. I give this book 5 stars for more than adequately doing what it was written to do.

This is definitely the book to have if you want to start programming on the BeOS. The first chapter alone helped clear notions in the Be API that I didn't quite grasp.There is talk about the fact that the book was supposed to come with a CD. But the way I understand it, the author only refers the reader to sample source code that's provided on the BeOS CDROM or on the Internet.

I'd say this book is pretty much as the author describes it above -- it's great for getting started in programming for the BeOS. I come from a Windows programming background, and this book made the transition to Be programming smooth. It was a fairly quick read, and got me up to speed in writing simple Be apps. Now I'm digging in deeper with more advanced docs.

I thought the book was an excellent introduction to programming the BeOS. The book focuses on the essentials, particularly of the interface kit, and provides an efficient means of becoming familiar with the API. The book clearly demonstrates the elegance of the BeOS API. I was concerned about the references to the CDROM, but I'm sure those will be corrected in the second edition. I just downloaded the code from the "Examples" page on the O'Reilly site. I'd take this book with some minor errors over not having a hard copy intro to BeOS programming any day.