Good for learning to develop better software

I'll point out small bits of comments of this book.

For example, the author misses the usefullness of virtual machines, encouraging readers to buy cheap pcs to test their software projects. Having Virtual PC or VMWare for free, it is a much cheaper solution.

Another "warning" comes from the lists of tools, maybe too much in my opinion. A developer can unfocus from the most important point: coding and thinking correctly. At least, the author notices that they should be used with caution.

Overall, gives very good advices and practices for developing, bot lonely and in small groups. It gives good tips about managing projects too.

There are chapters about source code control, testing, visual studio tooltips, code analysing and generation, bug tracking, logging... even automation techniques and tools (continuous integration software included!). Great for newcomers to this critical components. The documentation chapter is very good too, mentioning even developer diaries and postmortems.

Some of the tools mentioned are outdated, and some tools like Resharper, Virtual PC or Reflector are missing, so their chapters seem uncomplete, but software development is a very fast-evolving world so it's logic.

I recommend it to anyone who just have developed with Visual Studio "standard applications" and wants to learn more professional tools and techniques oriented to the development lifecycle.

Other Reviews

• Good for learning to develop better software
• Computer Science graduates please read
• Should be required reading for junior programmers
• vital skills for a developer
• A shallow list of development tools without much added value