January 2008 Reviews
January 31, 2008
Learning Ruby
Learning Ruby is exactly what the title says. This book offers a great ‘introduction’ to Ruby as a fun, powerful language. Now I would say that as a Ruby user, I’m not quite advanced but not really a beginner. I would have to say that this book is definitely catered to someone very new to the Ruby world. The book’s author, Michael Fitzgerald, uses a very easy to read style of writing that, to me, made this read far easier than a normal technical book. He uses this same easy to follow/read style in Ruby Pocket Reference and Learning XSLT as well.
January 19, 2008
The Best of Make
- Subtitle: 75 Projects from the pages of MAKE
- Authors: Anthology
- ISBN 10: 0-596-51428-X
- ISBN 13:9780596514280
- Reviewer: Lee DeForest
Rather than being a 370 page book one would read cover-to-cover, this is a book to scan chapter after chapter, project after project. As the title suggests, this is a compilation of home buildable technological projects… some electronic, some mechanical, some whimsical… but all intriguing.
January 07, 2008
The Art of Agile Development
- Authors: James Shore & Shane Warden
- ISBN 10: 0-596-52767-5
- ISBN 13: 9780596527679
- Reviewer: Raymond T. Hightower
The Art of Agile Development offers clear explanations of agile and extreme programming (XP) practices. At the same time, this book feels like it’s written out of order. Throughout the book, terms are used with the promise to define them later on. The reading experience is similar to a traffic jam: start, stop, start, stop. The authors are kind enough to provide page references in most cases, so the reader doesn’t have to refer to the index at each “defined later” moment. Perhaps paper is the wrong medium for this material. A hypertext version would be more reader-friendly.