The Open Source Zone

I am a very experienced C/C++ software engineer currently taking a community college class on WinSock networking programming. I'm used to dealing with difficult text books. However this is one of the worst I have ever wrestled with.<p>There are no exercises in the book. All their examples are long; no short examples of code to clarify any topic. Their way of explaining most subjects seems to me to be unclear, their wording such that I have to read a paragraph several times to figure out what they are trying to say. Finally and especially, their explanation of the key topic of socket states is flat-out awful. I have had a little experience dealing tangentially with socket states on my last project, and I still came away from this chapter confused and with my head spinning.<p>I hope that there are better WinSock books than this out there!

I'd not recommend to read this book - waste of time. First 13 chapters contain tons of unimportant information about specifications, history and general words about how networking is great. Although these chapters contained a bit of example code - this didn't work at all. Since the 13th chapter there is a terrible example of a full scale FTP client that is totally unclear. At that point I closed the book. My friend had the same book, he went further - threw the book away.
In fact I learned basics of Windows sockets from the greatest book of Petzold "Programming Windows", where every code was working and then ported my knowledge of UNIX networking to Windows.

Although this book is focused on Windows and most of my (current) programming focuses on that, I usually end up referring to two UNIX books instead ("UNIX Network Programming" and "Advanced Programming for the UNIX Environment"). Those books have nearly identical syntax, but do a better job of explaining things. For Windows, there are some peculiarities (i.e., shortfalls) that you need to be aware of, so you really should own all three books, as I do. The amount of time that you save will be well worth it.

While this book has a lot of good information, it is out dated, sometimes wildly so. It continually hampers itself with discussions of 16-bit Windows which, while still in use in 1995/1996, was clearly on the way out, contrary to what the writers assert in the first chapter. Having said that, it is well written and the book deserves a second edition, dedicated to Winsock2 with nary a word on 16-bit windows.

This is a Winsock 1.0 primer. There is a hastily-written ending chapter on 2.0, but it is far too brief.<p>In short, this book was a disappointment and is badly in need of a new edition.