“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – uh, Dr. Seuss

 
Technical

 Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin
The title of this book is almost a misnomer, as, if you’ve read other books in the Agile genre such as those surrounding XP, Scrum, etc, you might expect this book to be a simple manifesto regarding agile methods and practices as applied to software teams. Not so! This book is quite possibly the best treatment of the craft of software design that I’ve ever read. Aside from making it’s case for agile practices, it spells out clear principles for good design, delineates practical uses for important patterns, provides an in depth discussion of code metrics and how to analyze and apply them, and all while weaving in exhaustive case studies that show how design of good code evolves. This book is a MUST have.

 The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
An affluence of good stuff here. Despite the broad range of topics and writing styles, I think I only found myself bored or uninterested by one article out of 29. I was particularly fascinated by the writings on the topic of social software by Clay Shirky. Anybody doing social or collaborative software should read what he has to say. In addition, I enjoyed the writings of the always excellent Eric Sink and Paul Graham as well as articles by lean/agile gurus Mary Poppendieck and Ron Jeffries. All in all, a terrific collection. I’m looking forward to volume II.

Applying Uml and Patterns by Craig Larman
The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams
Head First Design Patterns by Freeman and Freeman

Non-Fiction (non-technical)

 Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
I’ve always been somewhat of a contrarianist, and as such, I love odd facts or patterns that fly in the face of conventional logic. This book was right up my alley. From implying such blaspheme as that legalizing abortion resulted in a decrease in crime rates to pointing out that more children die in swimming pools than from firearm accidents (despite many parents being more concerned about the latter than the former) – I was savoring this book from beginning to end.

Purple Cow by Seth Godin
The E Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber

Fiction

If you liked The Da Vinci Code, then you’ll likely enjoy these next 3…

 Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
Some have argued that this book is Brown’s best. I’m not sure I’d go that far. While I enjoyed it and recommend it, I found it to be overly sensational in parts, and never found the story quite as accessible as The Da Vinci Code. But still a page turner nonetheless.

 The Rule of Four by Caldwell and Thomason
Now this book was quite excellent. I’ve heard it described as A Separate Peace meets The Da Vinci Code, and I would wholeheartedly agree. Caldwell and Thomason do an excellent job of crafting compelling characters in addition to an original and engaging story line that emerges from a bizarre renaissance text that seems to contain a previously undiscovered code.

 The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
An interesting piece of fiction that tells its tale with such real-life characters as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The story centers on a group of literary figures in the Boston area including the aforementioned as they attempt to translate the works of Dante from Italian to English – a feat which these characters did in fact join together to accomplish in real life. This fictional account takes a twist, however, as a series of murders occur in the Boston area that directly correlate to Dante’s descriptions of certain punishments in Hell. Pearl does a nice job bringing the reader to this period in Boston’s history as well as bringing a passion to the study of Dante that reminded me that I need to go back and re-read these works.

 The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
Of the books I’ve read recently, this is the book I would most like to see made into a movie. The concept is fascinating as it tells the story of a man whose physical appearance ages in reverse. As a toddler in age, he has the facial features of an old man, and then as he grows into old age, his form gradually becomes younger and younger until he appears to be a small child - though he is actually near the age of 70! This causes a bizarre series of events that leads to him intersecting with the love of his life in three far different periods of his life without her recognizing him from each time before.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K Rowling
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

Weird



Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Both of these books are pretty much the same. Weird. They are each memoirs of the respective author’s dysfunctional life. In each case, after about 100 pages, it was like, ‘I get it, your childhood was messed up. Really, really, messed up.’ If you enjoy reading as an author pretends to make light of really bizarre and tragic childhood experiences (like finding his mom in a sexual situation with his minister’s wife), then by all means pick up one of these books. Otherwise, steer clear.

Currently Reading

 A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking


 Code Complete 2nd Edition by Steve McConnell

On Deck

 Professional ASP.NET 2.0 by Hanselman, et.al (that’s all you need to know)

 Mila 18 by Leon Uris (this one’s for you, Conner)

* Hat tip to Darrell Norton for pointing me to the thumbs up/down icons here.

In my last post, I queried the readers of this blog as to your preferences regarding the formatting of the simple if statement. I pontificated on my preference for the one-line format for compactness, while the predilection of those that commented roundly favored the standard four-line format, with the primary reasons – as summed up succinctly by Scott – that it “[s]cans much easier without ambiguity.”

This got me thinking about other “one liners” - some based on trivial formatting and some based on language constructs -  and whether people felt the same way towards them. Here are some examples:

The getter/setter:

Is this ok?

Or do you strictly adhere to this:

 Quick aside…Eric Gunnerson has an interesting discussion going about whether code like either of the above should be used in general.

The tertiary:

Do you sprinkle these in occasionally or religiously avoid these beasts?

Closures (new):

Will you use these time/space-savers in C# 2.0?

Or better yet, using lambda expressions in C# 3.0?

I, personally, have much love for these, but I could see arguments as to scan-ability and/or ambiguity. So, if you have just cause as to why I should not be married to them, speak now, or forever hold your peace…

Yesterday, a new guy where I work IMs me to tell me that he doesn't like a particular coding convention that I use frequently. Actually, I think the text of the IM went something like this (paraphrasing):

him: me no likey that thingy you are doinng with if (afds) {asdfa} - ech. messy. blarjh
me: messy? how so?
him: i don''t know. just is.

That's some solid reasoning there, eh. Well, since he couldn't make a reasoned argument, I thought I'd throw it to the peanut gallery and let you make it for him if you'd like.

The convention in question is my use of a single line for if statements with short, 1 method call type statements.

Here's an actual code sample:

  1 private void LoginButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) 
  2 { 
  3     if ( this.Page.IsValid ) { this.Authenticate(); } 
  4 } 

What do you think? Messy? Do you prefer this instead?

  1 private void LoginButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) 
  2 { 
  3     if ( this.Page.IsValid ) 
  4         this.Authenticate(); 
  5 } 

Or is this ‘teh only way’?

  1 private void LoginButton_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) 
  2 { 
  3     if ( this.Page.IsValid ) 
  4     {  
  5         this.Authenticate();  
  6     } 
  7 } 

Personally, I like the compactness of the single line, and I refuse to code an if statement with no braces, but on the whole, I think the only important thing is that individuals on a development team respect whatever conventions are decided upon. Nevertheless, I enjoy hearing why some prefer one way over another – especially if you can make a thoughtful case. Convince me.

Again, reasoned arguments only. “Messy – bleh” won’t cut it.

-- Atlas will be built using a transparent development model.  Our plan with Atlas is to eschew the traditional two-betas and then RTM model that we often use with big projects at Microsoft, and instead move to a model where we ship very often (at least once every month and often more frequently then that), get feedback as early as possible, share our ideas out in the open (even when they are not 100% baked), and above all use the broader developer community to make sure we build the right technology.

Clemens rails about technology overload with .NET (via larkware).

Meanwhile…

David Heinemeier Hansson discusses the success of Ruby on Rails and it’s minimalistic approach (via Scoble).

I read these back-to-back today, and I thought the juxtaposition was interesting. While Microsoft has been busy adding so many features to the .NET platform that no single developer can possibly know it all, ruby on rails has achieved success simply by focusing on a core set of functionality that helps real developers create the scaffolding to build clean applications quickly.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not bashing Microsoft, as I think they are doing what is necessary to meet the needs of a large and diverse set of developers and technology problems, and I love the .NET framework. I also know that the comparison is sort of apples to oranges, but I think the success of rails among many hardcore developers highlights something that may be missing from the VS.NET toolsets - or perhaps just misdirected with the mindset of drag-and-drop database connections and passing around datasets.

I think it highlights that perhaps more effort should be spent around creating rails-like scaffolding (read frameworks that are pattern-oriented and sensible) in targeted areas like web applications, but also around web services, windows apps, etc so that developers don’t have to be experts in every area to create “quick-and-clean” applications, but, yet, the experts feel comfortable with the scaffolding being used as well. That’s the draw of rails to me….that it creates a framework that is simple, object-oriented, and pattern-based (MVC) – but clean, meaning I don’t look underneath the covers and go, ‘blech’. I don’t want to write all the yucky code every time, but I want to know that it’s being done right.

I do think the patterns and practices group is doing some great work already to help cut down on the riff-raff with the Enterprise Library blocks (although they certainly don’t seem to believe in the rails idea of “convention over configuration”, heh) and especially with their work on the GAT. I’m interested to see how these converge either through the direction of the p&p group or others (maybe myself -why not?). I see no reason why these couldn’t be used in conjunction to create a scaffolding framework every bit as powerful, clean, and easy to use as ruby on rails, but with a .NET twist.

For those of us that aren’t Photoshop gurus (or just don’t have that kind of cash)…

I was recently upgrading my blog to the latest version of dasBlog and doing some touch-up and I found this great online RSS button generator that will let you enter options about the text and colors and then generate the button on the fly for you. See screencap below (or see the feed links on the left side of my blog homepage):

Link: http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm 

Enjoy!