The Thoughtworks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation

by Roy Singham, Jeff Bay, Martin Fowler, et al.

Book Overview

ThoughtWorks is a well-known global consulting firm; ThoughtWorkers are leaders in areas of design, architecture, SOA, testing, and agile methodologies. This collection of essays brings together... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193435614X
• ISBN13: 9781934356142
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
• Length: 223 Pages
• Weight: 5.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.5" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Great stuff

This book is packed with realworld knowledge and experience, written by people who have more than earned their title of expert. It covers many aspects of the software development world and adresses issues that you have most likely run into at some point, or are about to run into. Being able read how the experts deal with these things is very interesting indeed, it can either give you new ideas to better handle the issues, or it can be a confidence boost to see that the experts do things the same way as you. For me, the part about the Iteration Manager and the performance testing were particularly interesting because I've had quite a few problems with this in the past. Keep it up Thoughtworks!

Enjoyable & Thoughtful Read

One nice thing about collections of short pieces is that you can work your way through them in any order and only read ones that look interesting without worrying about missing crucial information. That's how I read this book, and I enjoyed most of the selections I read. I thought that the one on OO coding was great as it had good concrete exercises to help folks go down that road. Recommended.

A good way to reflect on your profession, with a minor caveat...

I feel that every techie should take a step back once in a while and reflect on their profession. The ThoughtWorks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation by ThoughtWorks, Inc. is one of those books that helps lead you down that path. While there are some good reads in here, the "level of resonance" will likely depend on your language of choice and development methodology... Contents: Solving the Business Software "Last Mile" by Rog Singham and Michael Robinson One Lair and Twenty Ruby DSLs by Martin Fowler The Lush Landscape of Languages by Rebecca J. Parsons Polyglot Programming by Neal Ford Object Calistentics by Jeff Bay What Is an Iteration Manager Anyway? by Tiffany Lentz Project Vital Signs by Stelios Pantazopoulos Consumer-Driven Contracts: A Service Evolution Pattern by Ian Robinson Domain Annotations by Erik Doernenburg Refactoring Ant Build Files by Julian Simpson Single-Click Software Release by Dave Farley Agile vs. Waterfall Testing for Enterprise Web Apps by Kristan Vingrys Pragmatic Performance Testing by James Bull Based on the type of work that ThoughtWorks does and their development methodology, you'll understand and relate a lot more to the material if you're into things like agile development, Ruby, Ant, and other various open source software offerings. Granted, the argument could be made that *everyone* should be using those things, but the reality is that there are plenty of developers who don't or can't for various reasons. But once you get past that point, there's plenty of material here that should get you to think a bit... Lush Languages does a great job in turning the Java vs Ruby argument into one where you're considering multiple language options based on the problem domain. Polyglot Programming is also very insightful, as it addresses the use of multiple languages within a single project so that you can get the best of all possible worlds. If they are all running under the same JVM, there's few reasons not to take advantage of the various strengths. I also enjoyed the Object Calisthenics entry, as the exercises force you to rethink program design without resorting to techniques that can get out of control very quickly. Many of the other chapters are a bit more focused on topics that might or might not work for you if you're not already using that software/approach. You can always dig out one or two items that are not specific to the tool (as in development tool programming should fall under the same level of control and planning as production code), but you have to work a bit harder to get there. If you're into the particular tools outlined here, by all means get the book and read it. If you're not at that spot for whatever reason, it's still worth reading. Just be prepared to work a little harder and/or realize that some of the chapters just won't do much for you.

Terrific compilation of works to help you deliver better software

This is a terrific book loaded up with 13 short, concise, golden essays from ThoughtWorks leaders like Martin Fowler, Neal Ford, etc. Each topic covers something pretty vital for those of us who care about being somewhere near the top of our chosen craft. Topics include solving the "last mile" problem between development and release, Ruby DSLs, polyglot programming, single-click deployment, and a bunch of other great reads. Each article is extremely well-written and useful, but I found a subset of the book particularly compelling. Unfortunately, I only heard parts of Neal Ford's "Polyglot Programming" at his keynote at CodeMash 2008. I was thrilled to get to read his article in this book on how to leverage different languages on the same platform to solve different problems. Jeff Bay's piece "Object Calisthenics" strongly reminded me of the glorious work The Practice of Programming from Kernigan and Pike in its emphasis on clean, simple, clear code. I'm all fired up to refresh my coding practices with Bay's exercise using nine points for pushing yourself into writing better object oriented code. "Refactoring Ant Build Files" from Julian Simpson, along with Hatcher's Java Development with Ant, should be mandatory reading for anyone dealing with build files -- regardless of what build environment you're using. Other big winners for me were the testing articles by Kristan Vingrys and James Bull, Dave Farley's work on one-click release, and Stelios Pantazopoulos's article on project vital signs. Of course, the remaining articles are also winners, it's just that these six or so really struck home with me. Overall it's a fantastic work and I'm really glad I've got it on my bookshelf!