REALbasic is a programming language in the best Macintosh tradition: visual, intuitive, and easy to learn. It allows you to create interfaces in minutes and entire, compiled applications without having to learn a complicated language; the strong object orientation makes it very easy even for beginners to develop, maintain, and alter projects. Best of all, an REALbasic 3, a single button click generates your project as a Mac OS 8/9 application, a Mac OS X native ("Carbon") application, or a Windows executable. No other application framework lets you compile for users on so many platforms so quickly and easily. REALbasic: The Definitive Guide not only gives you a firm grasp of the program's essential concepts, but also tells you things you won't learn from the official documentation alone. If you've never programmed before, the book offers both a primer in REALbasic and an intuitive approach to the concepts of programming itself, as you quickly reach the ability to program every aspect of REALbasic. You start out drawing the interface much as you would do in a drawing program: by selecting buttons, menus, dialog boxes, and the like from a tools menu. Then you use the code editor to fill in the code that tells these pieces what to do. The widely hailed first edition of REALbasic: The Definitive Guide has been completely rewritten to encompass reader suggestions and the many improvements of REALbasic 3--like its ability to compile and run under OS X. The book is divided into three sections:

• Fundamentals: a detailed summary of the language that quickly shows you how to think about programming and accomplish your goals in less time

• User Interface: how to create a complete application using the rich classes and pre-defined tools that make life so much easier for the REALbasic programmer.

• Reaching Out: Internet communications, databases, multimedia, game programming and more!

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 30 Ratings

RealBasic -- but dated - 2005-09-06
Reviewer Rating:
This is the best reference for REALBasic version 3, as of September 2005. However, you should be aware that REALBasic was at version 5.5.5 as of June, 2005, and REALBasic 2005 was released August of 2005.

Also, REALBasic started out on Macintosh platforms. It has now been ported to Windows -- but that's fairly recent, too. Thus, this book covers mostly Macintosh or generic applications.

O'Reilly seems to have dropped support for this book, too. This means there won't be another revision. However, if you can find it used, and you still want to use REALBasic on Windows, buy it. It's that good, and still useful.

A Potentially Outstanding Computer Book That Is Flawed By It's Style - 2008-01-06
Reviewer Rating:
Matt Neuburg is a genius. This is both a blessing and a curse for those who want to learn REALbasic. In his love for REALbasic, and his desire to teach it all and be exhaustive, as well as write a book that he himself would like to read, he takes a certain course: he covers terrain that is both flat, smooth and quick to run over, and terrain that is deep, craggy, convoluted and only for the determined traveler. There is no warning when you might suddenly encounter the unforgiving steep canyon or sheer wall.

At one time I decided to try and learn REALbasic, and it sounded from the introduction to the book and his biography that he could give me the deep grounding in theory that I wanted, and that his style and personality would be a good match for mine (I was a philosophy major; he taught classics). Well, I got bogged down in Chapter Three in both of my attempts to get through the book. Among the thickets of Classes and Instances, I lost interest.

I found myself reading sentences over and over again, trying to grasp what he was saying. Perhaps he is someone that gets a thrill from the extreme cleverness of the design of REALbasic, but it is not always clear what the utility of these mental convolutions is. He reminds me of some of my philosophy professors, getting off on their own brilliance and love of the subject but forgetting what it's like to be someone else listening, and so they lose their audience. It's like a mild form of autism. In the long run I suppose we are lucky to have a teacher like Neuburg, despite his flaws, for it is rare to find such a combination of raw enthusiasm, old-fashioned scholarly depth, and knowledge in a writer of computer books.

Unfortunately he doesn't always explain in common sense terms what something is and why we should be interested in it. Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes the explanation comes later: he is too strict about what is relevant to the current technical topic. I'm not sure this achieves anything except make it harder than it has to be. Is he trying to be "pure" to his subject matter? I don't think there is anything wrong with catering to an audience in a computer book.

In summary, this book has more in common with a reference bible than a beginners tutorial, though it isn't really a reference book per se. I'm only half-joking when I say it's more like a philosophy book for super-nerds. He is telling you not only the basics, but also abruptly dives into the story behind the scenes, the "ultimate truths" as it were, of REALbasic. These explanations can go on for quite some time - whether you want to hear it or not. This is an generalization of course, but it may help you get a feel for the flavor of his approach and style.

I would recommend this book in combination with a faster-paced book that is more of a tutorial.

Sadly, The Best Book On REALbasic Programming - 2005-12-21
Reviewer Rating:
Computer books tend to be outdated rather quickly, sometimes before hitting the shelves. Programming books tend to have a longer shelf life.

When REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition was released over four years ago in 2001, it was current and truly the definitive book on REALbasic. It still is, though that isn't the praise you might think.

The folks at REALsoftware are constantly improving the language and the Definitive Guide was outdated by 2003. Today it is about as relevant as a definitive guide to home theater telling you to use a 21" TV, Quadraphonic stereo with 8 Track tape and turntable and a Sony Betamax.

Today's REALbasic generates programs that work on Windows, Linux and Mac OS9, OS X and soon OS X/86. The technologies incorporate XML, XST, DOM, SOAP and more. The only reference to ANY of these in this book is that you can save your source code as XML and edit it with a standard text editor.

All this said, Mr. Neuburg's REALbasic: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition is still the best and most recommended book for REALbasic which shows you how much of a market there is for new, good books for this great language.

Real Basic: The Definitive Guide - 2009-11-07
Reviewer Rating:
Although a good book, I found it to be way out of date. So far in fact that some of the basic code statements and controls are no longer referenced by the same name. It is specifically written for the MAC, but as you know Real Basic is the same for MAC, Windows and Linux. But this book has a specific MAC flavor. It wasn't much use to me.

Definitive for REALbasic 3 but not for REALbasic 2006 - 2006-01-24
Reviewer Rating:
In its day was the best REALbasic book around. Sure, it was a little bit of a hard read, but it was still the best. But not anymore. Let's hope O'reilly decides to publish a 3rd edition.

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