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Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think

Max Pool — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:37:47 +0000

I originally read Steve Krug’s classic on a 4 hour flight to Chicago, and ever since has been sitting on my bookshelf begging for a review. And trust me, if there is any book that deserves to be put on a pedestal – it is Don’t Make Me Think.

Many years ago when I read the first edition of this book, I remember absorbing every “forehead smacking” point as I turned each and every page. However, probably the largest reason for falling in love with this book is because the author took the time to apply his knowledge to the book which resulted in a “fun to use” book. Each page was not about dry information, but instead had great design, layout, and perfectly written to support the points which Krug was trying to make. In a sense, he “ate is own dogfood”

This book is not provide blue prints for good design, nor does it dive deep into technology (although it does mention CSS). The reason I love this book is because it gets to the core of usability: how users read pages, why they get frustrated, and things to avoid confusion. Good design is subjective, but usability starts to become objective when you realize how predictable people are!

Chapter List

Don’t make me think!
How we really use the Web
Billboard Design 101
Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
Omit ~~needless~~ words
Street signs and Breadcrumbs
The first step in recovery is admitting that the Home page is beyond your control
“The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends”
Usability testing on 10 cents a day
Usability as common courtesy
Accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, and you
Help! My boss wants me to ______.

The Good

Written so the concepts are easy to digest
Very fast read
Straight to the point
Funny (hilarious at times)
Beautifully laid out with supporting illustrations in all the correct places

The Bad

The focus of the usability studies all were web oriented, and I believe that most points where generic enough to be equally applied to desktop applications. As a result, I would have liked to see one more chapter giving attention to other mediums than the web.
Not a big fan of the old fashioned two-way mirror and video recording usability tests, so a small portion of Chapter 9 was a miss in my opinion. As I have indicated before, there are easier ways to get client feedback.

This book is an absolute must read for developers and stakeholders alike. Books such as About Face and The Design of Everyday Things will not give you the same information in such a fun and distilled manner. Regardless if this book is your first or tenth book you have read on design…make it your next.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

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Book Review: Continuous Integration

Max Pool — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:13:56 +0000

During the last squeezed reader awards, Burke Cox (CEO of Stelligent) was very kind and sent me a signed copy of Paul Duvall’s new book – Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.

I was really looking forward to this book for two reasons. First, the topic was right up my alley and was very excited to what I could learn. Second, I wondered – what the heck could you talk about at a books length on this subject?

Chapter List

Getting Started
Introducing Continuous Integration
Reducing Risks Using CI
Building Software at Every Change
Continuous Database Integration
Continuous Testing
Continuous Inspection
Continuous Deployment
Continuous Feedback
The Future of CI

The Good

Good book about explaining all the different aspects of the lifecycle that you can apply CI
Written to be easily digested much like Pragmatic Programmer series books
Introduced new ways for CI to be used socially

The Bad

Not brief enough which carried unnecessary conversation
The core messages became repetitive quickly
Book direction seemed to bounce around and never felt as if I was being lead through the application of CI in order of execution

Overall, my feelings about this book were mixed. First, I love the fact that someone finally took the initiative to write a book on this topic. On the other hand, books like Ship it! were much better at explaining this concept at the correct length – brief.

In short, all I can say is that this book has value but what you will get out of this book is completely dependent on your previous exposure to this topic. For me, I was slightly disappointed, but then again I have been doing CI for 5 years and am always very “socially aware” of software. Others who have never done CI in any fashion (technically or socially) found the book as a great new insight.

Some my find gold nuggets in it, others may find it old news, but at least give it a good thumb through and decide for yourself.

Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

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Book Review: Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow

Max Pool — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:25:44 +0000

Last winter, I decided to update my Java web skills from Struts to Spring. I enlisted in a workshop that was using the book Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow as it’s textbook.

Having context of Spring (and IoC/DI in general), Ruby on Rails MVC, and .NET web development; as I looked through the book, it seemed as Spring MVC would be a breeze. As a Java newb, I completely underestimated how quickly this book went into depth. I was instantly lost in a world of XML situps and Controllers.

In short, this book is for you if you:

Are a veteran Java web developer
Already use Spring for IoC
Love XML configuration files (or are masochistic)

This book is not terribly long (350 pages) but is an awful lot for even veteran level developers to digest.

Chapter List

Introduction
Spring Fundamentals
Spring MVC Application Architecture
Jump into Spring MVC
The Processing Pipeline
The Controller Menagerie
The View Layer
Supported View Types
Validation
Testing Spring MVC Applications
Introduction to Spring Web Flow
Advanced Spring Web Flow

The Good

Majority of the chapters easy to read – No surprises Apress book
Good introduction to the different types of Controllers
Expert book, so doesn’t waste your time explaining IoC, DI, and Spring

The Bad

Assumes you know IoC, DI, and Spring when developing web applications
Needed a better high level introduction – felt left behind until after reading the first 6 chapters
Some examples didn’t work
I have XML books with less XML in them
Should have named for clarity – Intro to Spring MVC for Java Web Experts

Even though the authors state that just because the title says “Expert” you don’t need to be an expert to read the book. Although this is true, I do feel the target audience were readers that already knew Spring and IoC along with the pitfalls of building web applications using JSP, EJB, and Struts.

This book is an overall good read, but I only recommend it to veteran Java web developers who are looking for a no-fluff just-stuff primer to Spring MVC. Putting this one smack in the middle at a solid 3.

Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow

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Book Review: Practices of an Agile Developer

Max Pool — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:01:05 +0000

Long story short, Practices of an Agile Developer is a book I would easily classify in the ranks of Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer.

First up, what a great pairing of authors – Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt. Instantly, I knew I was in for a treat.

This book starts out by devoting a chapter to what it means to be ‘agile’. Additionally, it adds references and descriptions to the Agile developers toolkit such as unit testing, continuous integration, source control and the Agile Manifesto.

After you quickly zoom through the first chapter, the book continues by outlining 45 great practices that developers can practice everyday. Using the concept of a devil and an angel, the book shows you how the non-agile developer (devil) works and how they should work (angel). For example:

Item 10: Let Customers Make Decisions

Developers are creative and intelligent and know the most about the application. Therefor, developers should be making all the critical decisions. Anytime the business people butt in, they just make a mess of things; they don’t understand logic the way we do.

Let your customers decide. Developers, managers, or business analysts shouldn’t make business-critical decisions. Present details to business owners in a language they can understand, and let them make the decision.

The biggest reason I loved this book was because most of the practices were social engineering improvements instead of software engineering improvements. There was a lot of techniques on improving communication rather than software constructs for building a better mousetrap.

Chapter List

Agile Software Development
Beginning Agility
Feeding Agility
Delivering What Users Want
Agile Feedback
Agile Coding
Agile Debugging
Agile Collaboration
Epilogue: Moving to Agility

The Good

45 very solid and applicable tips for efficient developers
Easy and quick read (just like all Pragmatic Programmer series)
Each tip has a “What It Feels Like” section in case you haven’t experienced it before
Simple section layout adds to the easy reading

The Bad

The buzzword agile is overused and should be replaced with disciplined, great, master, or responsible
The simple section layout gets a little old and repetitive
Should have been renamed – 45 Habits of Highly Effective Developers

This book is an absolute must read for both developers and managers of all levels. Not since Code Complete have I been so excited to read a tech book cover to cover in one day. If you want to ensure that you and your team is performing optimal pick up this book today!

Practices of an Agile Developer

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Book Review: Agile Retrospectives

Max Pool — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:04:53 +0000

Perfectly fitting with the style of the Pragmatic Programmer series, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great is a book for helping teams run effective and fun retrospectives.

Whether you call them postmortem, postpartum, or retrospective meetings; these meetings can help your team iteratively move forward by looking back.

After reading the first few chapters of this book in Barnes and Noble, I committed to buying this book under the pretense it would speak more generally about why teams should hold retrospectives and how to incorporate needed changes back into the process. Upon further reading, this is not at all what this book is about. This book is about providing concrete activities to get your team communicating.

Activities are included for gathering data, insights, and next iteration/project goals. For example, at Sundog we have used a permutation of the Mad, Sad, Glad activity. The activity is simple, draw on a white board three areas labeled Mad, Sad, Glad. You are given (at minimum) 5 post-it notes and are required to fill them out with things that made you…well mad, sad, or glad. When everyone is finished filling out their post-it notes, in round-robin fashion, post-it notes are placed on the appropriate area. Each note is allowed a maximum of 5 minutes of discussion.

If Mad, Sad, Glad seems to simple to be effective, just answer the question – Have I ever been in a meeting where only one person speaks? If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky. Many retrospectives are not effective as they are hijacked by individuals who tend to be heavily opinionated (primarily negatively charged as well). Simple activities outlined in Agile Retrospectives allows for equal participation and distributed opinions.

Chapter List

Helping Your Team Inspect and Adapt
A Retrospective Custom-Fit to Your Team
Leading Retrospectives
Activities to Set the Stage
Activities to Generate Insights
Activities to Decide What to Do
Activities to Close the Retrospectives
Releases and Project Retrospectives
Make It So

The Good

Teaches methods for managing group dynamics
Full of activities to increase communication
New ideas for generating insights
Easy to read in quick bite-size sprints

The Bad

Includes activities for post-retrospective goal setting, but neglects to give ideas for achieving/enforcing them
Very thin on outlining why we have retrospectives (40 pages)
A few activities are better suited for elementary children than adults
Should have been renamed – The Ultimate Retrospective Activity Handbook

Every team can find this book a great resource as it is chalked full of new ideas for keeping your retrospectives fresh and on topic. If you are still not convinced, the authors did a recorded Google TechTalk which can give you a good feel for the book.

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

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Book Review: Effective C#

Max Pool — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:47:20 +0000

Although not his first book on C#, Bill Wagner really became noticed in the .NET community after writing Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#.

First off, this is not a C# reference guide. Instead, this is a collection of concrete arguments for using particular C# structures over their counterparts.

The greatest thing I appreciated is that Wagner shows cold, hard evidence for every tip. The cornerstone throughout the book is showing what occurs at compile time in C# and IL examples, and then continuing to explain what occurs at run-time. As an example, Item 11: Prefer foreach loops goes into great depth why the foreach loop is the more effiecient than do, while, and most hand-written for loops.

Perhaps the biggest performance tip I personally received came right away, Item 3: Prefer the is and as operators to casting. Which way would you rather write it?

object o = Factory.CreateInstance();
//Version 1:
MyType t = o as MyType;

if (t != null)
    return t.MyValue;

//Version 2:
if (o is MyType)
    return (o as MyType).MyValue;

//Version 3:
try
{
    MyType t = (MyType) o;

    if (t != null)
        return t.MyValue;
}
catch (Exception)
{
    //report a cast exception
}

Chapter List

C# Language Elements
.NET Resource Management
Expressing Designs with C#
Creating Binary Components
Working with the Framework
Miscellaneous

The Good

Quick & easy read
Solid rationale for every tip
Basic concepts still applicable after .NET 3.0
C# veterans and newbies can all learn something from this book

The Bad

Large number of typos
A few items are debatable (i.e. Item 41: Prefer DataSets to Custom Structures)
Does not encompass C# 2.0 or above
Last chapter titled Miscellaneous was weak. Should have been called 44 Ways To Improve Your C# + 6 Other Tips

I highly recommend this book as I learned a number of great tips that I still use today. It is a fun and quick read that anyone wanting to improve their C# will enjoy. With or without typos, I would give it a 4.

Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#

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