Jeff Heaton books.. any comments?

I'm trying to build up a small library for new SL team members to use at work, and have put three scripting books in my Amazon shopping basket, all by Jeff Heaton:

Introduction to Linden Scripting Language for Second Life

Scripting Recipes for Second Life

Introduction to Textures, Animation Audio and Sculpting in Second Life

They would seem to be two goor introductory texts, and one someone with some programming knowledge can get their teeth into... and this Jeff Heaton guy seems pretty knowledgable judging from other books he's written.

Just wondering if anyone has any good or bad first hand experience of any of them?

never heard of him, but that doesn't mean much..

heck I didn't know anyone had actually put out any books of lsl scripting, so you may have to tell us if it's any good =)

What's his main avie's name?

I have his book. Not too impressed really. He has a lot of script examples but most, like 95% are not really useful for anyone who is serious about SL.

He has a rudimentary camp script, but I've seen three that are free in SL much much better than his - it's a dance camp script that I don't believe even uses a menu.

However, he also includes some vendor scripts, vehicle scripts, tipjars, and a few other items. Essentially nothing is included that is new, unique or stands out. No radio scripts, no video scripts, no rental scripts (other than a very basic "pay to enter" so-called rental door).

If you're wanting to learn the basics and need some code to see how it's done then his approach is decent, but if you want some really good scripts that are practical and useful unless you want to drive a car around and await the masses to tip you million of Lindens, then you're going to be hard-pressed with his book.

As an aside though, if you go to his website he offers a PDF version of the book for download for $10 - and it's DRM free so you can print and copy stuff directly from it.

- Funk

given the titles I wouldn't expect anything fantastic as far as completed scripts, the focus seems to be as the first listed title suggests, 'introduction to lsl'... just like you won't find much in the way of advanced programs in any other teaching books. the point isn't to do the work for you, but rather get you to understand how it's done, so that you can do it yourself.

for example the various wikis do this on the level of individual functions, but don't always do a great job of stitching those functions together, or even explaining which function is best suited to which type of use (examples in the rotation or position family's which offer options like llGetRot, llGetRootRotation, llGetLocalRot, and llGetPrimitiveParams... all have their individual best uses, even though they all preform the duplicate function of getting a rotation.)

a book (or tutorial) that looks at function families together, describing their optimal uses and synergies with other function families is a step above the wiki's and is definitely more beginner friendly... but certainly not a place to include complete and advanced scripts.

PS more than once I've considered writing a tutorial describing basic communications, the say family, listens, dialogs, and link messages, since they are all key to writing larger more interactive scripts... somehow I always end up too busy. kudos to the people that turn these things out.

I wouldn't bother. The book is OK but relies heavily on scripts taken from the Wiki's and this forum. There is nothing you will find in it that isn't already open source and no additional information or instructions that you would not find here in the forums.

The one advantage it does have is that it would be useful in an educational setting as a learning and teaching resource (the only reason I bought it).

If your posting here just use the search function instead and post your questions when needed.