Updates
Latest Tweet
What's New?
Check out for latest innovation, a computer based training video collection
Like this Page
Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software Review by Robert Pratte
Should be required reading for junior programmers
This is a book that, while probably beneficial to all coders, seems particularly useful to junior programmers and technical managers. If you are a more experienced developer and/or don't develop using .NET, then you will find yourself skimming about a third of the book. Before you decide that a automatically disregarding a large portion of a book's contents qualifies that book as not worthwhile, I would point out that the other two-thirds of the contents make up for any "deficiencies." The important thing that this book does is provide a list of sorts of all of the areas that are important for a high-quality developer (or manager) to bear in mind.
Gunderloy walks through the development process, from planning to delivery, discussing many of the ideas and processes that one learns by working on a high-quality software development team. Many of the code snippets or details concerning tools are MS, if not .NET, specific. However, a junior programmer will likely learn a number of things by reading these sections - even if they do not develop .NET applications. More experienced programmers may even discover some useful notions as they peruse these sections. The key here is that Gunderloy is covering the span of the software development process instead of addressing a single area in depth. Thus, where the reader may have a number of areas of expertise, he or she stands a good chance of shoring up weaknesses in those regions between areas of expertise.
As this book is a relatively quick read and covers a wide area in less than 300 pages, it goes without saying that none of the areas discussed are covered in great depth. However, after reading it, one is more likely to be able to effectively investigate weak areas. Gunderloy does provide some useful starting places to begin these explorations.