I will use his book Javascript 1.5 by example as an example of his lack of attention to detail.
Chapter 3, "JavaScript in action", consists of describing objects, methods and properties and 3 examples of methods, alert(), confirm() and prompt (). Yes it is all over.
His definitions of
item is: simply put, an object is a thing, something. Just as things in the real world are objects (cars, dogs, dollar bills and so on), are considered things in the computer world as objects, too.
[2 lame paragraphs jumped]
Practices are things like object can do. In the real world have object methods. Cars move, dogs bark, dollar buying and so on. Alert () is a method of the window object, so the object can warn the user with a message box ...[useless additional paragraph]
Features: all items have properties. Cars have wheels and the dogs have fur. Things that the browser has Javascript, name, and version.
His methods example code:
=== END of CHAPTER 3 ===
My review.
"Simply an object is a thing, something." leaves the reader with nothing. An object not declared. If you don't know what an item is, you would now be able to answer the question, what is an object?
He did not explain what a method is, especially his "real world" approach such as "dollar buying". I think people do not buy dollars. If I had to explain the dollar as one object: the dollar has no methods and properties: dollars. value, dollar. $ date, serialNumber.
It his sample code??? This is terrible. Blind leading the blind.
Message for example, alert(), confirm() and prompt () is exactly the same except the passed value [text phrase].
Alert is OK
confirm and prompt is used to retrieve user input.
confirm, user clicks from a selection of buttons.
quick pick what the user types in the shortcut text field.
What is missing is the setting of a variable value. Confirm() and prompt () is never stand alone. There is always a variable assignment.
each choice = confirm ("which do you choose?");
var name = prompt ("What is your name?", "Please enter your name here.");
==================
In his technical blog that he claims often inaccurate "facts" or Miss detail.
Recent examples:
[Silvermont] provides three times more performance for five times less power than the current generation Atom nucleus.
This is how I say it correctly: it is expected that an Atom is running at maximum clock speed will exceed Z2560 by about 300%.
An Atom that runs at a lower clock rate, makes a performance level equal to Z2560, will use 500% less power.
What Adrian Kingsley-Hughes said 3 X performance and 5 X less power and there should be a or 3 X performance or 5 X less power.
In the post similar to this one "best Android tablets"
When listing the processor of the tablets had some processors is stated as:
1.4 GHz Exynos quad core processor
NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor
Dual-Core Processor ARM Cortex A15
My take on the detail. When you compare these tablets processors equal cannot be compared with the above lack of detail. This is SoC chips, which have a GPU as well.
Dual-Core Processor ARM Cortex A15 should:
Samsung Exynos 5250, dual-core 1.70 GHz Cortex A15 CPU and a quad-core Mali GPU T604
NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor should:
NVIDIA Tegra 3, a 1.3 GHz Cortex-A9 quad-core processor
and a twelve-core 416 MHz Nvidia GeForce ULP GPUS
1.4 GHz Exynos quad core processor should:
Samsung Exynos 4412, 1.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 and Mali-400MP GPU
I also would have included benchmarks.
The devil is in the details.
