Bookreview: Head First–Design Patterns

Info:

• 688 pages
• published October 2004
• ISBN: 978-0596007126
• Authors: Eric T. Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates & Kathy Sierra
• Available here

Looking for a refresh of my knowledge about design patterns, I decided to purchase this book due to its high recommendations.
The book covers the following design patterns in a very big detail ( using the Java language to show code examples ).

• Strategy pattern
• Observer pattern
• Decorator pattern
• Factory pattern
• Singleton pattern
• Command pattern
• Adapter and Facade pattern
• Template pattern
• Iterator and Composite pattern
• State pattern
• Proxy pattern
• Compound patterns
• Extra overview of less common patterns

This book is just perfect for beginners, but for people with already some knowledge or more, this book start to be a drag pretty soon. The examples and examplecontexts are so simple and everyone of them is explained in more then one way. This leads to a very repetitive reading. I had real troubles keeping my attention to reading through all of it. To be honest I only read the first 6 or 7 chapters, all the other once I “overviewed”, just looking through the definition parts and code examples.
Talking about code examples, as a .NET enthusiast, the Java wasn’t that hard to understand.
Ableit, I would recommend this as a very good introduction into the GoF (Gang of Four) book. That is still on my list, but I’m pretty sure that I would be able to devour that book way easier now.

Bookreview: The Agile Samurai–How agile master deliver great software

Info:

• 280 pages
• published 15-09-2010
• ISBN: 978-93435-658-6
• Author: Jonathan Rasmusson
• Available here

After flying through this book, which implies it is a very pleasant reading, I have found a very broad basis to start developing in an agile way. I’m sure that after you have read this book you will come to the same conclusion. Even I you are an experienced agile developer, there are some really good pointers, tips & tricks in the book. All supported by amusing pictures.

The book is also boiled down into a story of “The master samurai” and “The apprentice”, at the end of each chapter they kind of review what you saw in that chapter and provoke some questions about it and a more practical insight into the matter.

The book walks the whole end-to-end process of developing in an agile way. Starting up by gathering requirements, analyze them, creating an iteration plan, monitoring that plan, execution styles and delivering production ready software. As a small bonus, the book goes scratches the surface of a few concepts that are very common in development.

• Unit testing: creating an armor for yourself that your code works
• TDD: Test driven development, creating the tests first relying on the validation of your user stories, prove they fail and then create the code to make them pass the tests and of course Refactor the code afterwards.
• Refactoring as a good continuous practice 
• Continuous integration concepts

Albeit, this a must have book for your collection, I’m putting it up on my front row.

Regards,
Kyor