Jason Menard's Weblog - Reviews category

Review - Release It!

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 02:44:00 GMT

Many of the texts on software engineering discuss following some methodology to produce an ideal design. Working developers quickly learn that the ideal is rarely reality and things happen once we release software out into the wild. Michael Nygard's "Release It!" picks up where these other books leave off.

Nygard talks about all the things that can and will go wrong in the finely crafted software we were sure was ready for production. A full two-thirds of the book is focused on capacity and stability issues including patterns and anti-patterns for both. The remainder of the book deals with general design issues as well as maintaining health and status in an operational system. "Release It!" provides many first hand accounts to illustrate his points, beginning with the Exception that grounded an airline, and these stories serve as excellent motivators. It's better to learn from the mistakes of others, and I really appreciated the detail Nygard went into addressing some of these horror stories.

The Pragmatic Programmers have a few "must read" books and "Release It!" is another one. After reading it and heeding its advice, you'll feel a bit better knowing that your software is better prepared for the rigors of production.

Review - Rails for Java Developers

Sun, 20 May 2007 03:55:00 GMT

In "Rails for Java Developers", Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland provide an introduction to Ruby and the Rails web application framework aimed at the Java developer more familiar with frameworks such as Struts and Hibernate. There's a lot of buzz in the Java community surrounding Ruby and Ruby on Rails so this title is quite timely.

Halloway and Gehtland provide a tutorial to learning Ruby and Rails by examining similarities with Java. The tutorial progresses by providing examples in both Ruby and Java using popular Java frameworks. The introduction of Ruby and Rails concepts by juxtaposing them with similar concepts implemented in Java is comforting for the developer who may feel a little intimidated by the differences between the languages. Working through the book, the Java developer will learn the basics about creating and deploying Ruby on Rails applications, picking up an exciting new language along the way.

The first three chapters introduce the Ruby programming language. This is the best Java-centric Ruby introduction that I've seen and it's something I wish I had available to me when I was first learning the language. The rest of the material covers the basics of Rails applications as well as web services and security issues. I found the chapters on testing and automating the development process to be particularly good.

The approach this book takes may not be suitable for everyone. After a certain point, I found that the constant juxtaposition of the Java way of accomplishing a task with the Ruby on Rails way of accomplishing a task wore a bit thin. I found myself just trying to skip past the Java bits to get on with the Ruby. Still, I found the book to be quite good overall. If you are an experienced Java developer seeking a gentle introduction to Ruby on Rails, you can't do better than "Rails for Java Developers".

Review - Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:59:00 GMT

When I first heard that the Pragmatic Programmers were putting out a book on Ruby oriented towards testers, I thought to myself that I knew a few testers who might be able to benefit. I was a bit surprised when I received the book and the focus changed from that of testing to something a bit more generic. And after flipping through it I was afraid this would be just yet another book teaching Ruby.

Despite my initial misgivings, as I read through the book its value became apparent. This is not a book aimed at teaching people who are interested in developing complex systems in Ruby; this title is aimed squarely at using Ruby for scripting. "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" is a task-oriented tutorial that will help the reader quickly become productive writing useful scripts. The examples throughout the book are truly indicative of the types of problems that scripts are written to solve, and the book doesn't waste much time on fluff or things that are otherwise not likely to be of interest to the scripter.

While "Everyday Scripting with Ruby" isn't much of a reference manual, it does work pretty well as a tutorial. Readers will typically get the most value from the book by reading it cover-to-cover and following along by getting the examples working on their own computers. Many of the chapters finish with problems for the reader to try out on their own, with the solutions to the problems being detailed in the back of the book. Through reading the text, trying the examples, and further exploration of the material through tackling the end-of-chapter problems, the reader will come away confidant that they can use Ruby to successfully write scripts to solve their problems. You can't ask for much more than that.

Review - Practices of an Agile Developer

Wed, 10 May 2006 04:23:15 GMT

Agility remains a popular buzzword in the industry. Methodologies, tools, and even programming languages have had the adjective applied to them. But what does it mean to be an "agile developer"? How do we know if we're "agile"? Should I expect the ladies to saunter over at parties and say, "I couldn't help noticing that you're agile, how about coming back to my place"? To answer these questions, a good place to start would be to read Practices of an Agile Developer.

This book, which could have easily been titled Forty-five Habits of Highly Agile People, starts out by defining agility and what it means for something to be agile. It then proceeds to layout forty-five agile practices grouped into seven areas: Beginning Agility, Feeding Agility, Delivering What Users Want, Agile Feedback, Agile Coding, Agile Debugging, and Agile Collaboration. Your companions on your journey are a demon whose taunts remind you of how not to do things, and a guardian angel eager to steer you onto the path of righteous agility. Each practice is well motivated and adequately described. Additionally, each has sections letting you know what it should feel like if you are following the practice correctly, and how to strike a balance to keep from going overboard or not far enough when following a particular practice.

While the focus of this book is agility, the practices described really lend themselves well to all developers, even the agility impaired. Practices such as "Question until you understand" and "Write cohesive code", to name only a couple, are just plain old good advice for anyone who writes code. So even if you don't aspire to reach the summits of agility, you can look at this book as a self-help book for developers. Read it, soak in some of the good sense it offers, and be better for it.

Review - Best of Ruby Quiz

Wed, 10 May 2006 04:19:27 GMT

Picking up the basics of a new programming language such as Ruby can be enjoyable, but if you can't apply what you've learned quickly that knowledge may be fleeting. Best of Ruby Quiz can help out. Best of Ruby Quiz contains twenty-five fun programming challenges ("quizzes") that are excellent for exercising your new Ruby chops. The quizzes vary in difficulty and each includes in-depth discussions covering multiple solutions. More importantly, the quizzes really are fun!

The quizzes in Best of Ruby Quiz are excerpted from the author's web site "Ruby Quiz" so while you could certainly save yourself a few bucks and just visit the site, the book is a much more polished product. Also, I believe that the immediacy of the book with its superior layout really enhances the learning experience when compared to the web site.

This book makes a great companion to the Pickaxe and the two books form an effective one-two punch for learning Ruby. So go ahead and sit down with a copy of this book, fire up the code editor of your choice, pick a quiz and start coding. Not only will you learn a thing or two about Ruby, you'll have a good time doing it.