Excellent guide to programming with REALbasic

Mark Choate's "REALbasic Cross-Platform Application Development" is one of the most comprehensive books about REALbasic currently available, not to say "the best book" about this (still exotic) language overall.

While beginners may be scared about the 656 pages, they definitively should leave their fears behind and give it a try. Although the book isn't the typical starter's tutorial, the author has taken any effort to explain all important aspects of object-oriented cross-platform programming in a way even a novice computer user with some background knowledge may understand it.

The contents cover all major topics of programming with REALbasic, so even professional software developers familiar with Visual Basic or any other programming language (Perl, Java, etc.) will find this book a good source of diving into the world of REALbasic.

Luckily the book isn't overloaded with screenshots and other space-filling things (like command references or charset code tables), so the 656 pages you get are 656 pages full of useful information, straightforward explanations and consistent programming examples.

There is just one little negative point to mention: The book is dated 2006, so the underlying REALbasic version is from 2005. That are over three years... a long time, seen the fact that REALbasic is updated several times a year. On the other side, all provided information are still valid and no fundamental changes have been applied to the language since this version was released.

All in all, "REALbasic Cross-Platform Application Development" can be recommended to everybody interested in this programming language, novice users as well as experienced developers.

Other Reviews

• Not backwards compatible
• Excellent guide to programming with REALbasic
• Waste of money and time!
• I liked this book
• I beg to differ