Customer Reviews

M Programming: A Comprehensive Guide

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M is a delightful applications language. Recently I've been struggling with C++ STL, trying to use the "map" container to get perhaps a tenth of the functionality you get from an ordinary M variable, and, believe me, I miss M.

This is the M book we've all been waiting for, and it delivers exactly what it promises. It is, as the blurb says, "the only source M programmers at all levels need."

The style and presentation reminds me a little of Stoustrup's book on C++: the organization and style are tutorial, but not elementary. It is up-to-date with the current standard.

What I particularly admire about it, and what is all too rare in computer books (especially those written by professors of computer science) is that it displays an intelligent awareness of real-world commercial implementations of M. Too many books either describe a pure-standards abstraction on the one hand, or a specific vendor extension on the other. Walters identifies popular M implementations by name and calls attention to variations where appropriate. Like M itself, Walters' book is directed at real programmers trying to solve real problems in the real world.

There are a few places where one can see that the book is an (extensive) rewrite of his older book, rather than a completely new work. I thought it was harder to locate the "argumentless DO" than it should have been, and I felt there should have been a coherent discussion in one place explaining the (historically weird) relations between the various forms of DO, and when $T is and isn't stacked. Similarly, it is disconcerting to see on page 199 that the "NEW" command is described as a "recent extension... not yet formally included in the standard." These are cosmetic problems that do not seriously mar the book I've been waiting for.

This book provides the needed instruction for a beginner with no knowledge to learn the fundamentals of M programming. Combine the book with a free M program downloaded from the internet and you are on your way to becomming a beginning programmer.

This book does a good job of explaining the reasoning behind the language's (sometimes strange) behavior--most of the time, anyway. The book suffers from numerous typos in the code fragments. Also, it would be nice to have a nice reference section where each command's syntax is explaned succinctly; this is important, especially because M is not a free-form language, i.e., the white spaces are significant.

Was trying to write a mumps interpreter. This book ended up being not so useful. Early in the book, he has a completely wrong definition of "bootstrap loader." This bothered me, because mumps is such an old language, you would think someone that knows mumps would know about the meaning of that phrase. In any case, I believe the author knows Mumps completely, but I did not find the book energizing or inspiring.