Anders Norås' blog

Book review: “Better, Faster, Lighter Java”

First of all, don’t let the title scare you. This book isn’t really about Java, it’s about simplicity and when it comes to simplicity language is not an issue. J2EE development has become cumbersome as programming frameworks and specifications have bloated over time. The .NET community has lessons to learn for these problems to avoid similar pitfalls and improve the way we develop software.

The gospel is well-known, the authors speak warmly of agility and they lay out five basic principles that will make your projects simpler and hence more agile.
In the first principle is something you’ve heard hundreds of times, “Keep it Simple”. I believe this is an important point because it is far from simple to keep things simple. Tate and Gehtlands message is to avoid complexity by all means possible, not to be afraid of refactoring and to setup a safty net based on common tools such as NUnit.
The second principle is “Do One Thing, and Do It Well”. This is about understanding the problem you’re trying to solve.
The third principle “Strive for Transparency”. If I have to pick a favorite, this is it. The principle core message is to keep the business model simple and maintainable. The book shows how to separate generic services from the domain model and keep it clutter free.
The fourth principle is the classic “You Are What You Eat” which means that every tool, library or similar you use becomes a part of your project and your way of writing code.
The final principle is “Allow for Extension”. Here the authors show techniques for loosening up your architectures and enabling unplanned future changes.

This is not a book where most of the pages are filled with source code. There are some code examples and all of these are easily accessible to developers with some C# experience.
In addition to that, all of the frameworks used throughout the book have been ported to the .NET platform. These include Strus.NET, NHibernate, Spring.NET amongst others.

The Microsoft platform is not immune to the bloat the Java community tries to tackle. After all, .NET itself was motivated by the ever growing complexities of Windows DNA development. If you’re unconscious about bloating frameworks and applications you will get stuck. This book shows lays out five simple principles for avoiding bloat without sacrificing efficiency and still being able to develop high-performance applications that address complex business problems.
This is one of the best .NET books published this year and it is highly recommended!