Tag: analysis patterns

Ten books that shaped me as a software developer – Part I (Books 0 to 4)

I was asked what books shaped me as a software developer the most. Here is my answer, or the first part of it.

Last week, I’ve done a question and answers event with students when the question came up what the most influential books were that I have read as a software developer. I couldn’t answer the question right away but promised to compile the list with short descriptions of the book’s influence. And here it is – my list of books that left a big mark in my day-to-day work. Others have done the list of books thing before me, and most lists contain the same books over and over again. I take it as an indicator that my list isn’t too far off.

Prologue

Before I start the list, I want to say a few things. The list isn’t ordered or ranked. I describe the effects of each book from my current standpoint, sometimes 20 years after the fact. I read a lot more good, interesting and inspiring books in the last 20 years and they all added to my work personality. But with all the books on my list, I felt enlightened and vibrant with new ideas. They didn’t just inspire me, they elevated my thinking. And because of this criteria of immediate improvement, one book is missing from the list. It’s the first “serious” software development book I’ve ever read in 1998: “Design Patterns“. The book was just too much for me (and my study group peers) to handle such early in our careers. We were in our first year of study and had a lot of other battles to fight. I crossed it from my reading list and moved on. Years later, I re-read it and saw so much insight I plainly missed the first time, but gathered elsewhere since. If you want to read this classic, don’t hesitate! If you “only” want to know about design patterns, there’s a better book for that: “Head First Design Patterns“.

The Pragmatic Programmer

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41BKx1AxQWL._SX396_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgMore by chance, my co-founder stumbled upon “The Pragmatic Programmer” in 1999 and devoured it. Then he gave the book to me and it shattered me to my core. I thought I was a decent software developer and here are Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt and talk about things I didn’t even knew existed. A healthy dose of Dunning-Kruger effect is crucial in everybody’s upbringing, but this book ended my overestimation once and for all and gave my studies a focus and direction I wouldn’t have thought to be possible before. I own my whole career to this book, at least in terms of work ethics. I cannot fathom how my professional life would have played out otherwise.

Refactoring

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51K-M5hR8qL._SX392_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Also in 1999, Martin Fowler wrote his instant classic “Refactoring“. We bought this book at the first chance we got and raced through the pages. I was a Java developer back then and with most of the examples being in Java, the book needed no explanation nor translation. It was directly applicable knowledge that gave me years of experience virtually for free. This book is a must-read even 20 years later, and has just recently had the second edition announced, this time with code examples in JavaScript. I thought it was a joke first, but I guess it makes sense.

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51EgCCLOWxL._SX376_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgIn 2004, Michael Feathers wrote a book that contains his 20+ years of experience with software development and named it “Working Effectively With Legacy Code“. Well, joke’s on you – I don’t write legacy code, my code is perfect. That wasn’t my attitude since 1999 (see list entry #1) and I took this book everywhere. It’s a heavy one, but I read it in the tram, right before the movie starts in cinema, during breakfast, lunch and dinner and virtually any other circumstance. I realized that reading this book will gain me experience a lot faster than actually writing code, so I just stopped for a few weeks. This book answered a lot of mysteries in the form of “is there really no better way to do this?” for me. And it introduced the concept of code seams for me that permeates my work ever since. I can clearly remember the day when I looked at my existing code again and saw the seams for the first time. It was truly eye-opening for me.

Analysis Patterns

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41uNHkTq8NL._SX378_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgMartin Fowler was a very productive author in the late nineties. I’ve read most of his books from this period, if maybe with a few years delay. “Analysis Patterns” from 1996 arrived in my bookshelf in the early 2000’s and was my wake-up call to seeing models instead of actualities. I’ve given this book to many peers, but haven’t received the reactions that I had with this book: Being taught a language (with a graphical notation) that can express actual problems in terms of an overarching solution. Since then, I’ve seen the same solutions applied in many different forms, with many different names and a lot of different special requirements. But they all derive from the same model. This effect was promised by the “Design Patterns” book, but for me, delivered by “Analysis Patterns”. Even Martin Fowler admits that the book is showing its age, but for me, its timeless.

Peopleware

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51MlUgcSICL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpgSince the late 80’s, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister wrote one book after the other. Each book describes a common business-oriented problem and at least one working solution for it. And yet, the very same problems still persist in the business world. It’s as if nobody reads books. “Peopleware” was written in 1987, 30 years ago, and discovered by me and my peers in the late 1990’s. We talked about this book a lot, as it described a (business) world where we didn’t want to work in. We wanted to do better. In a way, this book was a spark to found our own company and don’t repeat the mistakes that seemed to be prevalent in our industry. If you’ve ever shaken your head about “the management”, do yourself a favor and read this book. It will pinpoint the precise problem you’ve felt and give you the words to describe it. And if you’ve read “Peopleware”, liked it and want more, there is good news: There is a whole series waiting for you (not just Vienna).

Epilogue to Part I

These are the first five books from my list, with the last entry being more of a catch-all for a whole series. Remember that this isn’t a generic “go and read these books if you want to call yourself a professional software developer” list. I’m not gatekeeping and it would be useless to even try to do so. These books helped me further my career in the last 20 years, they won’t necessarily help you for the next 20 years. Good books are published every year, you just have to read them.

I’m looking forward to share the second part of my list in the next blog post of this series. Stay tuned!

Recap of the Schneide Dev Brunch 2014-12-14

If you couldn’t attend the Schneide Dev Brunch at 14nd of December 2014, here is a summary of the main topics.

brunch64-borderedIn mid-december, we held another Schneide Dev Brunch, a regular brunch on a sunday, only that all attendees want to talk about software development and various other topics. If you bring a software-related topic along with your food, everyone has something to share. The brunch was well-attended and we didn’t even think about using the roof garden (cold and rainy). There were lots of topics and chatter. As always, this recapitulation tries to highlight the main topics of the brunch, but cannot reiterate everything that was spoken. If you were there, you probably find this list inconclusive:

International brunch

We tried to establish a video conference with a guest from San Francisco and had tried the technical implementation beforehands. But we didn’t succeed, mostly because of a sudden christmas party on the USA side. So we can’t really say if the brunch character is preserved even if you join us in the middle of the (local) night.

How much inheritance do you use?

One question was how inheritance is used in the initial development of systems. Is it a pre-planned design feature or something that helps to resolve difficult programming situations in an ad-hoc manner? How deep are the inheritance levels?
The main response was that inheritance is seldom used upfront. The initial implementations are mostly free of class hierarchies. Inheritance is often used after the fact to extract abstractions (or generalizations) from the code. The hierarchies mostly grow “upwards” from the concrete level to abstract superclasses.
Another use case of inheritance is the handling of special cases with further specialization through subclasses. The initial class is modified just enough to enable proper insertion of the new code in its own subclass.
A third use case of inheritance, upfront this time, was proposed in regard of the domain model. Behavioural typing is a common motivation for the usage of inheritance in the model, as contrasted to the technical usage of inheritance to solve non-domain problems. In the domain level, inheritance resembling a “behaves-like” relation can be the most powerful expression of actual connections between types.

Book review “Analysis patterns”

The discussion about inheritance led to questions about domain models and their expression through formal notation. An example about accounts resulted in a short review of the book “Analysis Patterns”, written by Martin Fowler in 1999. The book introduces its own notation for models to be able to express the interrelations without being dragged down into the implementation level. UML isn’t suited as it’s a notation from the technical domain. Overall, the book seems to be mostly overlooked and under-appreciated. It contains a lot of valueable wisdom in the area of domain analysis, an activity that has to be done upfront of any larger project. This “upfront activity” characteristics might have led to it being ignored in most agile processes. The book is a perfect companion to Eric Evan’s “Domain-Driven Design”.

Book review “Agile!”

Another book review of this brunch was a deep review of Bertrand Meyer’s book “Agile! The Good, the Hype and the Ugly”. The book is the written opinion of Mr. Meyer in regard of all current agile processes and very polarizing as such – he does state his points clearly. But it’s also a very well-researched assessment of nearly all aspects of agile software development. You might want to argue with certain conclusions, but you’ll have to admit that Mr. Meyer knows what he’s talking about and got his facts right (even if his temper shines through sometimes). This book is the perfect companion to all the major agile books you’ve read. It serves as a counter-balance to the dogmatic views that sometimes come across. And it serves as a (albeit personal) rating of all agile practices, a gold mine for every project manager out there. the book itself is rather short with some reiterations (you’ll get the major points, even if you skip some pages) and written in an informal tone, so it’s an easy read as long as you’re neutral towards the topic.
When we reviewed the rating of agile practices on a big whiteboard, ranging from ugly to brilliant, it didn’t took long until discussions started. If nothing else, this book will help you review your practices and beliefs.

Embedded Agile on the rise

The next topic was related to agile software development, too. In the large field of embedded software development, adoption of agile practices lagged behind substantially. This has many reasons, of which we discussed a few, but the more interesting trend was that this changes. While there is still a considerable lack of literature for embedded software overall, the number of publications advocating modifications to the agile processes to fit the intricacies of embedded software development is steadily increasing.
A similar trend can be observed in the user experience community (think: user interface designers), termed “lean UX“.

Mobile game presentation

A long-awaited highlight of this brunch was the presentation of a mobile platforms game under development by one attendee. It’s a cool-looking Jump-and-Run game in the tradition of Super Mario, with lots of gimmicks and innovative effects. The best part of the presentation was the gameplay, controlled by the developer from behind the device, upside down and with live commentary. The game is developed in a platform-agnostic manner using several frameworks and suitable coding habits. Right now, it’s in its final phase of development and will be released soon. I don’t want to spoil too much beforehands and invite Martin (the author) to insert a comment below with links leading to more information.

A change in the Dev Brunch mechanics

The last topic on our agenda was a short review of the Dev Brunch series in the last years. In 2013, we introduced the extra “workshop events” that were adapted to the “game nights” in 2014. We want to return to more serious topics in 2015 and revive the workshops. Attendees (and future ones) are invited to make suggestions which workshop they would like to see. The Dev Brunch itself will be formalized further by introducing a steady pace of bi-monthly dates.

Epilogue

As usual, the Dev Brunch contained a lot more chatter and talk than listed here. The number of attendees makes for an unique experience every time. We are looking forward to the next Dev Brunch at the Softwareschneiderei. And as always, we are open for guests and future regulars. Just drop us a notice and we’ll invite you over next time.