[.ca] C++ Network Programming, Volume I: Mastering Complexity ... (ISBN 0201604647)

Wonderful book!:
I discovered ACE almost two years ago after a coworker told me about it. As a developer in the networking / streaming media / distributed computing space, i've all too often run into the problems that are inherent in developing this sort of software -- scalability, maintainability, not to mention all of those bugs ... ACE makes all of that much easier, and delivers the promise of true reuseability; not just classes, but common behaviors (patterns). This book explains why ACE was needed, the problems it solves, and how to use it. Though it's highly technical, it's not boring or overly verbose -- the problems developing networked apps are presented, and the solution ACE uses as well. Doug and Steve did an amazing job with this ... highly recommended.

Read the on-line docs first:
I became interested in ACE for a project I'm working on, so before spending money on a book I decided to check out all the on-line documentation, which is pretty detailed. That wasn't quite enough to get me over the learning curve, so I went and bought the book. I was disappointed though - while it was very clear and thorough, it didn't tell me much more that what I had already learned. So my advice is to save your money and stick with the on-line documentation and tutorials.

Good ACE overview:
I have been trying to learn ACE for the past few months now. Their docs are not that great. I ran C++ doc generator on the API's and that helped alot. The book really closed the deal for me. I work with many customers that are just begining to use ACE and I recomended this book to them as well.

Excellent reading for any network programmer:
This is an excellent reading for any network programmer. More than ACE itself the concepts covered are of a great value. I am a beginner to intermediate network programmer, but an experienced programmer otherwise, and found this to be an extremely valuable resource in terms tackling large application frameworks from the ground up. The concepts are precise upto the point but extremely easy to read and digest. Of course, the book is assuming that you know quite a bit of every thing else that is not covered here. There are quite a bit of things that are totally missing or not correct based on the OS and the advances in Posix threading. Nevertheless this is an excellent source for any network programmer.

A decent overview:
A good book to begin learning ACE (not TAO!). Well written, illustrated. Very high level though, keep that in mind, no depth. Also, some parts are overloaded with trivialities (sockets, multithreading, etc.) for a book of this kind that's out of place, I think. Very similar to the online docs. Overall, a good read for those starting to work with ACE.