'Hands on' computer books

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Hey guys,

I recently finished going through some of the books from the O’Reilly ‘Learning…’ books (Learning Perl, Learning SQL, etc) and I really enjoyed them a lot more than the standard computer books that I was used to reading to pick up info (although you still need to buy a ref. book anyway)

I was just wondering if anyone could reccomend similar types of books that I can use instead/in conjuction with these kind of books…especially in respect to covering the more advanced aspects of a given computer language. I’m looking at the O’Reilly Cookbook series of books but since my local Borders doesn’t have any in stock, I can’t really tell how they are.

Any suggestions?

2

I really like the Perl Cookbook, but it’s not really a learning text. It’s for finding the answers to specific questions on the spot. If you’re writing a script and suddenly can’t remember how to, say, process all the files in a set of directories, your answer’s right there. It’s quicker and easier than slogging through Google Groups results.

I haven’t used the other O’Reilly cookbooks, but I’d imagine they’re pretty much the same.

3

Great way to check out their other books.