Contents tagged with book

• JavaScript The Good Parts Reviewed

  Nov 12 2012 11:13 AM

  Comments

  Finished up Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts this week.  It definitely helped me improve my understanding of JavaScript, which I’ve been using since it was new, but always like a C programmer, and only recently like a JavaScript programmer.  I really appreciated Crockford’s honest, no-holds-barred analysis of JavaScript’s design and language choices.  It had me chuckling more than once.  I also appreciated that the book, at only 150 pages including the index, is devoid of fluff.  There’s just enough repetition between chapters to ensure certain points are made and made well. The book makes frequent use of railroad diagrams, which I’ve seen before but … more

• The Art of Unit Testing Reviewed

  Oct 1 2012 2:47 PM

  Comments

  I recently finished reading Roy Osherove’s The Art of Unit Testing.  I was kind of splitting my time reading it and Growing Object Oriented Software Guided by Tests, which I just recently reviewed as well.  One nice thing about this book is that it comes with an eBook once you register it with Manning. Overall, I think this is a great book on unit testing.  Roy is certainly well-qualified to write on this topic, and he does an excellent job of describing how to get started with unit testing, how to get the necessary tools, and how to write your first test.  As the book proceeds, he goes into more detail on how to break dependencies and use mock objects, how to organize … more

• Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided By Tests Book Review

  Sep 12 2012 11:55 PM

  Comments

  I finished this book a while back and just haven’t had a chance to write about it until now.    Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests is a bit of a mouthful of a title, but it does describe the subject matter of the book pretty well.  I noted a few points of interest as I read the book, as I tend to do, that I’d like to share here along with my overall thoughts. I’ve read quite a few books on unit testing and writing quality software, so many of the concepts here were not necessarily new to me.  However, I do find that it’s valuable to see such topics presented from a variety of viewpoints, and since I also present and teach these subjects, I’m always … more

• Personal Kanban Book Review

  Mar 9 2012 9:29 AM

  Comments

  Not long ago, while preparing my Kanban Fundamentals video training class for Pluralsight, I read Personal Kanban, by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry.  If you’re new to the concept of kanban, this book is a good place to get started (along with my course, which is about 90 minutes long, and shorter if you speed it up).  I read the kindle edition of Personal Kanban, even though I don’t own a Kindle.  It allowed me to read it at my PC, on my iPad, and on my Windows Phone, depending on where I found the time.  Whether you pick up the book for $10 electronically or $25 on paper, it’s very reasonably priced and is a fairly quick read at just 216 pages (paper). What’s To … more