Author Reply to Book Review: The Da Vinci Invetions Book
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
A few days ago I raised some issues concerning Matthias new book “Advanced NXT: The Da Vinci Inventions Book” in my book review. I asked Matthias for comments on these issues, and I hereby attach his comments exactly as I got them:
“Guy, thanks for your review of the book and the overall good rating. I agree with you that the usage of parts that are not contained in the NXT kit may prove as some initial obstacle to readers of the book who do not possess other LEGO material than the kit. Yet, with some
creativeness, most of these parts might be replaced by NXT kit ones (for instance, the kit’s turntable can be used instead of the old-style turntable you mention for the Revolving Bridge). As stated in the book, there’s a particular book-related page on my own web site
at http://mynxt.matthiaspaulscholz.eu/book/index.html, where people can find media related to the book. Amongst other things, for each model there’s a list of parts used that are not contained in the NXT kit, alongside to links in which sets to find them (almost anyone
stems from the NXT’s predecessor, the RIS 2.0 MINDSTORMS kit) - following an idea of your’s. 
This page(s) will also make for your wish of providing videos and detailed pictures for the models to help buyers of the book in managing the more difficult building steps (so stay tuned for material to be presented there in the next days and weeks). After all, I have
hoped to help out already in the book with rather detailed instructions, in particular on the more complicated parts of the construction process. Well, the models are rather advanced in the end.
As for the graphical quality of the building instructions: there’s always a trade-off between resolution in detail and size of the book. And one’s always only as good as the tools that are available (sadly, LDD 2.2 was not available then and it still has some drawbacks that
would have made it useless for the models in the book anyway). However, I don’t think the instructions are that bad (they have been created with LDraw) - I still consider them rather fine and useful for the builder. I should be pretty surprised if people would not be able
to build the models in the book just because the instructions are not comprehensible enough. If that is the case (and any reader is encouraged to tell me so then), I will be the first to provide help on my web site.
Last but not least, I consider the detailed discussion of the five presently most important programming environments that run run on the brick an asset of the book. I know of no other publication presently available that provides such a detailed way to compare these languages and IDEs with real examples and decide on their usefulness for one’s
own needs and preferences in terms of NXT programming as the book at hand does. If a reader consider them intimidating then, it helped him to make a decision after all that this kind of language is not his cup of tea, dosn’t it?. Of course one could have provided the code on a web site only and leave it out of the book - but in my opinion, that appeals to the
content of almost any book: you can always move it from a book to a web site - but what would have been the use of the book at all then?
Sorry for having made so much words, and thanks again for your review and having given me the opportunity to make some remarks,
Matthias Paul Scholz (proud member of nxtasy.org for a long time already)”
Thanks, Matthias for your comments and for making the extra material available for the readers!
Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org
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