Reviews
Reviews of books recently read.
Seriosuly people....Design Patterns is something that needs to be lived through....or something that is close enough to be lived through. I read the GoF book , design patterns in C# and was still kinda lost with relating them to real-life situations...and the hope to use them at work kinda started to fade....until I bumped into "Head first design patterns" ... and all I have to say is "WOOOW", the concepts are pretty clear and the examples they use to relate the concepts are real-life...which made is even easier to relate to other similar situtations. And whats more important is being able to explain it to someone else who has no idea abt patterns.
I guess that the root of all this WOOW is the way the book is presented......lots of images....text style...more like doodling over a concept.....which is lacking in the other books on patterns.
I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to get along with patterns and use them in real-life.
When you press the brakes of a car...you dont get a little dialog box that pops up and says " Stop Now? (Yes/No)"...or do you?
Aren't we really happy that everything is not really based on windows (as yet).
When i picked up this book (well...got it as an Xmas present), I expected it to be more from a graphical perspective. But it was not to be. The small size of the book and its author certainly persuaded me to go ahead and read the book...and seriously...it was worth my time. To summarize:
- Not always really sensible to write a windows based program which completely contradicts the way Microsoft places controls on the form.
- While designing web-programs, try minimizing frequent trips to the server...(some apps do it even now ... damn). Use applets dude.
- Know thy user......damn......Joel presents so many examples of how stuff should not be made.
- While designing UI's for users, creativity should take the back-seat and "common-sense and intuition" takes the drivers seat.
- Users are duh....really..so...design for duh people.
- And for the myths vs facts (my favs)
- Flash sucks and kills the web-page ... Joel says YES....so do I
- Frames are stupid and are misleading ... I agree ...and so does Joel.
- And I disagree with one thing....Color coding does not really help. I am tempted to say that color coding is a matter of user-preference....(considering that you are not too color-bling)...and it certainly helps to have color coding for stuff you use on a daily basis. Maybe...its for the overly-organized folks...but still....if someone is trying to use a computer for something other than games,movies or programming, he/she is using it for organizing stuff...period.
Overall...an excellent read....
My rating for the book.....Four on Five.
First things first.....keep this book near your development machine.
When I started reading this book, I honestly felt that this book was telling me what I already knew. Well, partly coz I learnt some cool stuff about the IDE when I joined my job. As I read further, I was impressed with what the IDE provided and generally we as programmers/developers tend to ignore...even to look at it. While this book states that it covers the VS.NET IDE's from 2002 all the way to 2005, one-third of the book covers 2005...And the remaining book tells that this is there is 2003 but is better in 2005. The sad part about the book is that since 2005 is not yet released,and the non-MSDN subscribers don't use the 2005 IDE, the user may want to hang on to this book till the IDE comes out.
Having read the "Debugging Windows applications with VS.NET - By John Robbins" at school, I feel that the "debugging section" in this book is for novices.
Overall...this book deserves a 3 on 5.
And to answer the good-ol' question of would I buy this book....I would say "maybe - depending on my current expertise with the VS.NET 2003 IDE" ....but for someone who want to improve his/her productivity with the IDE...this book is worth its salt.
In a nut-shell, this is a OMG book. I intentionally read this book over a considerable amount of time.....1 week....of vacation time to be precise....and seriously this is worth every minute of your time.
I took this book from my boss for something to read on during my vacation....and am determined to get a copy of this book for myself. There is literally nothing that I would not agree with the author(s). What could be more awesome....reading this book after reading "Coder to Developer". While the previous book told me what tools to use to code....this book tells me the "How" to code well.
The best part about this book is that it is written from a typical adament programmer's point of view...a programmer's mindset. While the author does not say with his foot down "use this..." or "dont use this"....there is no bias on a particular technology or a particular style of development. This is soo generic...that you can use it to any technology that you are using at your workplace.
This book is a must read and a must have for anybody who is even remotely connected to writing code in any form....mayit be casual web-page development for fun, or some serious enterprise-level development.
As for the rating....this book deserves a 6 on 5....it is that exceptional.
The sequel to "The Tao of programming"....proved to be more of the read a line .. think about it for the next day or so type. It had awesome words of wisdom...it tells you stuff like....there is something called "ultimate" in programming too and to reach there...you should have a,b,c.
Overall...the author starts off good...but starts racing towards the end...more in a hurry to complete the book. The funny part is that when the author tries to race towards the end, he shoots of awesome quotes...that are really worth to remember while using them in everyday life.
Rating : 3(Three) on 5(Five)
Got this book from amazon.com. Found it interesting....it is so small that i read it start to finish just before sleeping.
The Good:
Pretty straightforward....nicely explained principles with simpl examples
The Bad:
Falls short of completion. Too small a book.
Food for thought:
This book..however small it really is...should be read more than once to understand the deeper essence the author is trying to convey to you. If u just hover through it...you will certainly find it a "READ ONCE" material.
This book is undoubtedly a classic. One of the neatly ordered book I have read in a while. It presents to a novice planner on becoming more productive. However, if you are a novice who has just stepped into the world of programming...then maybe this is not the right time for you to read this book. Maybe after 2 years, once you are comfortable in makind informed sensible decisions, this book becomes a MUST READ.
Any manager, senior developer or anybody who leads a bunch of programmers...yes...a MUST READ.
As much as this book advises on what to do and what not to do for XP....towards the end, it gets a bit too cautious. The author tends to playing it safe by telling that XP is not for everyone. Though, I admit to the fact that he is not trying to say anywhere that XP is THE WAY...but he does not reinforce that XP is a nice way very often.
The book contains many words of wisdom...and as you read through it gives you the opportunity to review yourself as a programmer. The book describes programmer attitudes and smart people working in a team following XP. While the author tells what a good programmer practicing XP should do, he also points out to the plain facts...as to what programmers in the initial stages of XP do...
Though not directly related to code, the author describes a few practices while developing code, that can be followed even when one is not coding "XP-STYLE"
This book is certainly a classic....but as a word of caution...do not read the whole book if you have just begun to program. The wait is really worth the philosophy the book preaches.