Head First Software Development
by Dan Pilone, Russ Miles
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Book Reviews of Head First Software Development
Book Review: This actually has material for both new and long-time developers...
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first looked at Head First Software Development by Dan Pilone and Russ Miles, I was thinking that it would be best targeted at people who had never formally written software before. It definitely fits that bill. But I can see a use for experienced developers who have never been exposed to agile development techniques. Either way, it's a very good book.
Contents:
Intro
Great Software Development: Pleasing Your Customer
Gathering Requirements: Knowing What The Customer Wants
Project Planning: Planning For Success
User Stories and Tasks: Getting To The Real Work
Good-Enough Design: Getting It Done With Great Design
Version Control: Defensive Development
Building Your Code: Insert Tab A Into Slot B...
Testing and Continuous Integration: Things Fall Apart
Test-Driven Development: Holding Your Code Accountable
Ending An Iteration: It's All Coming Together...
The Next Iteration: If It Ain't Broke... You Still Better Fix It
Bugs: Squashing Bugs Like A Pro
The Real World: Having A Process In Life
Appendix 1 - Leftovers: The Top 5 Things (We Didn't Cover)
Appendix 2 - Techniques and Principles: Tools For The Experienced Software Developer
The authors do a great job of covering the entire software development process, from getting requirements to debugging code. But instead of going back to the older and more traditional waterfall method of software development, they chose to expose the reader to the agile methodology. Personally, I think that's a great decision, as it gets across important techniques such as story cards, iterations, and test-driven development. Learning those skills as the primary way to build software goes a long way towards prepping the new developer for the marketplace.
But as I contemplated this approach, I realized that the content would work for more than just new software developers. There are still a large number of long-time developers who have been raised in the waterfall method. When you start talking about agile techniques, there's a hesitancy to try something so radically different than what they've always done. HF Software Development can serve as that "first exposure" to the agile methods for them. It's no secret that I love the Head First method of teaching, so I'm convinced that the style of writing would also be perfect for absorbing the new information.
It's not often that I find a book that can effectively address two audiences at entirely different ends of the spectrum. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's a Head First book that pulls it off. If you're a new software developer, this will get you started off on the right foot. And if you're an experienced (read: long-time) developer, don't be so quick to dismiss this...
Book Review: If you want to learn simple effective tehniques for software development, this is the book!
Summary: 5 Stars
Before begining my first professional program, I bought this book. At first, I was wondering how all those pictures and games exercises will help me to learn about software development. I told to myself, "I'm a in a profession that has books with "dummy" in their titles, and now books with middle school games... what's next? coloring books for developers?" After that though, I went straight to code and put this book right back into my bookshelf. While I was able to deliver the software on-time (with overtime), I experienced success but not with out frustrations. In retrospective, I think I did the right thing by not using this book at first because now I really appreciated what this book offers. I would recommend this to any developer for the following reasons: First, those pictures and middle school games that I just mention, some how they work pretty well if you want to learn something. While I put certain effort to learn from more traditional books, with the head first approach, I was able to learn software development techniques and principles with no effort whatsoever. Seconds, while this book is load with software development fundamentals, their main goal is help out the real-world working developer. With this book, I felt understood, I felt that they knew about my personal frustrations (and mistakes) that I encountered when I was developing my program. Finally,they also try to avoid getting into complex and formal software processes (SCRUM, XP, etc) by presenting pen and pencil techniques that keeps you focus on learning the fundamentals. I just finished reading this book, I feel that my developing powers have increased. Right now, I'm setting up my home CI server to begin my first real open source program. I just got head first design pattern and head first object oriented design and I hope to get the same fun that I got with this book!Book Review: Good for the new Team... but
Summary: 4 Stars
I looked through this book online using Amazon and some of the pages looked of interest to me as I am working with some new teams who have not used Agile before and there were parts of this books (mainly around user stories) which got my attention.
I have been developing for 25 years and have been managing Agile teams over the last 4 years, recently using Scrum as the framework of choice. I was looking for some further material to expand my knowledge base and having read Head First Design Patterns (highly recommended) I thought this book would fit my needs.
For me, I was dissapointed. I read this book basically cover-to-cover in about 3 hours and there were aspects which made me think, on the whole there was nothing new in this book and the topics it did cover it did not go into any real depth. For me, not a good use of my money.
However, as a book to get my team and future teams who are new to Agile, Test First, Continuous Integration, Version Control, Unit Testing, User Stories, etc, this book is great and I do recommend it.
The Head First series of books take the reader on a simple journey. Nothing complex or where there is something complex they de-complex it and in some ways dumb it down to a reasonably low common-denominator. This means just about anyone can read this book and should understand the concepts and principles in it. I plan to provide this to some non-technical BA's who I work with and other than the section on Unit Testing know that they will be able to read this, digest it, and understand the principles and then hopefully use them within our organisation.
Book Review: "The" Guide to Agile Development
Summary: 5 Stars
Stop hacking together bad code, stop insane cost overruns and missed schedules. This great book in the terrific "Head First" series tells you how, in easy to understand ways, to use Agile Methodologies so you can stop hacking and 'programming' and start doing real product development. Produce quality software that meets the customer's requirements and do it on time and on budget. What a concept!
I have used these methodologies for several years at two Fortune 100 companies and these have been the most productive and personally satisfying years of my 32 years in software engineering.
There are lots of very precise, dry and boring academic books on agile methodologies and they are fine for a university class room, but if you are a practitioner and need to come up to speed on agile and make it work in the real world, this is the book. If you are familiar at all with the "Head First" series you know what to expect. If you are new to the "Head First" concept, suspend disbelief, read, do the exercises, laugh at the cartoons and soon you will find these folks have found the right way to teach new things to geeks and nerds like us.
If you learn nothing more than Test Driven Development, the book will pay for itself in terms of your time.
If you develop software for a living, you need this book. Period.
Book Review: My first Head First book
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been eyeballing the Head First books for a while, specifically the Java and Object-Oriented Analysis & Design. I don't program in Java and I think I understand OOP very well. Because of this, the Head First structure looks to offer a bit less structure - so a good "read as you can" book.
I got this title in a raffle. I'm glad I did. It whetted my appetite for more Head First. Not so much for the content (Which I will review further down) but because it's almost like reading a comic book. Easy, entertaining and something my busy dizzy mind could readily grasp in small chunks. I will probably get another Head First book in the future. Probably more than one.
As for the content of this book, it was well laid out and for someone new to the concepts of formal software design, it was nice to see all the little pieces come together. I did have a hard time with the Java specific environment, but I guess it would be a much larger book if they covered other systems. The steps were clear, some of them a smidge corny, but most of them logical.
After having read this, I was inspired to put it to use. That's when it hit me. I can't see this working unless the entire development group reads the book - or they were all newbies. Well I can see it, just not in the places I've worked.