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Title: Program Phases, A Programming Language and API Translator
Subtitle: 
Author: Dave Mihalik
Publisher: 
Publication date: Nov 18 2008
ISBN: 1438263295
Pages: 742
Price: 44.99 US
WWW book information: http://www.programphases.com/
Book's examples: http://www.programphases.com/
Errata: 
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**Blurb from the publisher**

Program Phases, A Programming Language and API Translator allows programmers to quickly learn new programming languages by providing indexed example programs written in multiple programming language/API combinations.

The following language/API combinations are used to implement the example programs: [Java]/Swing, Visual FoxPro, C/Win32, C++/Win32, Visual Basic 6, C++/MFC, C#/.NET, Visual Basic .NET, Managed C++, [Python]/Tk, [Perl]/Tk, [PHP] CLI/GTK, [Ruby]/Tk, [Tcl]/[Tk], Delphi, C++/QT4, C++/wxWidgets, [C]/Core Foundation, C/Carbon, Objective-C/Cocoa, C/Gtk, JScript, and [JavaScript]. Instructions for dealing with the multi-platform combinations, compiling and debugging are provided for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.

**Comments**

[LV] 2009 Aug 1
I looked through some of the online examples provided (which unfortunately didn't include the Tcl code) and it seems to me that the goal isn't "how would a good programmer solve this problem in the language at hand" but instead "how would one literally solve the problem exactly the same as done in the other languages". In the online examples, this approach makes someone comfortable in a particular language want to scream.  I noticed, in at least one of the simplest examples provided - the plain C version of Hello, world - a printf-ish line which produced a white space character in the output that didn't appear in the other programs. I also saw a comment in the perl Hello world that referred to the ''array'' $ARGV (and then used @ARGV appropriately). The web site has a web forum for people to discuss the "phases", and so hopefully examples will be corrected as people begin to provide feedback.

The site provides videos demonstrating how to install some of the languages on particular platforms.

The site refers to this as '''Volume 1'' , which ''[[...]] provides eighteen plus Program Phase implementations of each of the four Program Phase Tasks.'' On the site, I see this list of programming languages covered, which doesn't exactly match the list from the publisher (JavaScript appears to be missing...)


   01. Java (J2SE 5.0) 
   02. Visual FoxPro
   03. C
   04. Visual Basic 6
   05. C++/ MFC
   06. C#/.NET FW - Mono
   07. VB.NET/.NET FW
   08. Managed C++/.NET FW
   09. Python
   10. Perl
   11. PHP-CLI
   12. Ruby
   13. Tcl
   14. Delphi
   15. C++/QT4
   16. C++/wxWidgets
   17. C/Mac OS X
   18. Objective-C/Cocoa
   19. C++ Online only
   20. JScript/ASP Online only
   21. Python/wxPython Online only
   22. Ada Online only
   23. LISP Online only
   24. Flex/ActionScript Online only           


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