Books for Developers

Dr. Dobb's Journal March, 2005

By Douglas Reilly

Douglas is president of Access Microsystems and can be contacted at doug@ accessmicrosystems.com.

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Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
Mike Gunderloy
Sybex, 2004
352 pp., $29.99
ISBN 078214327X

Code Complete, Second Edition
Steve McConnell
Microsoft Press, 2004
960 pp., $49.99
ISBN 0735619670

Many books are available that cover specific technologies, such as ASP.NET and C#. Many fewer that address the development process are available. Fortunately, two recently released books address just this topic. Mike Gunderloy's Coder to Developer covers what is required to move a newly minted programmer from being merely a coder into a more complete developer. A complete developer is someone who knows not only the syntax of a programming language or two, but also can take that knowledge and create full-featured and reliable applications. Anyone who has been coding for a while recognizes that even if we thought that we were complete developers right out of school or after our first programming success, we had a lot to learn. Moreover, code we developed even five years ago often makes us cringe as we look at it with the benefit of the additional five years of learning. Coder to Developer helps speed you along in that journey.

Coder to Developer steps you through the process of developing software, starting with the often overlooked planning phase. Gunderloy also guides you through the use of source-code control and many other tools that are, at best, mentioned in passing during most formal training. It is the proper use of the appropriate tools that often separates a coder from a more complete developer.

Another topic that often is given less than complete coverage in most training settings is the need to track and handle bugs in our code. An especially important chapter of the book discusses the need and benefit of logging application activity. This is something I learned through lots of difficult experience with medical applications that ran 24/7, at hours I could not be present to observe. If all beginning developers take away from this book is the need to log significant system activities, it is worth the price of admission.

There are a couple of things you should know before you commit to Coder to Developer. First, this is a book that very much focuses on Visual Studio .NET. While much of the advice is appropriate for all developers, many of the specific examples and suggestions are for .NET programmers. In addition, some of the specific recommendations may change for Visual Studio 2005. Keeping in mind that we are likely more than a year away from general availability of a released version of Visual Studio 2005, Coder to Developer will continue to be a worthwhile purchase for .NET developers.

Code Complete, Second Edition, is the most recent edition of Steve McConnell's classic Code Complete, originally released in 1993. If you're familiar with the original, this edition is not a complete rewrite. Much of the first edition's content holds up very well, even all these years later. McConnell has, however, improved upon the first version in many ways. First, many of the "Hard Data" notes point to more recent studies and articles. The "Hard Data" notes were among portions of the original book that I quoted when dealing with management; folks who did not understand that increasing capital expenditures, providing better working conditions, and so on, would be worth the expense. I did not always succeed, but I had a better argument than just, "I think better conditions would help the staff program better."

I did not do a careful side-by-side comparison with the first edition. That said, there are two more chapters in the new edition, and some more recent topics, such as agile development, team programming, and refactoring are covered well. The chapters on naming classes, variables, constants, and so on, could have been combined to eliminate some duplication, but I can live with the amount of duplication present.

It is a little ironic that Code Complete from Microsoft Press would in fact be much more platform agnostic than Coder to Developer, published by Sybex. Code Complete is a book that you should have on your bookshelf. Examples are as often in Java as C++ or Visual Basic, and in most cases the specific language does not even matter. Since this was a new edition, I expected to see more examples using C#, and in that respect I was disappointed. In a few cases where the topic cried out for a C# example (for instance, the foreach loop), I did find the example in C#. Most of the Java or C++ examples will be useful for C# developers, but an understanding of C++ or Java will not hurt, since if an example uses the C++ namespace resolution operator, you will need to understand the C# equivalent.

Which of these books for developers should be on your bookshelf? That depends on your current situation. If you are a developer moving to .NET development and need specific guidance on tools and techniques, Coder to Developer won't disappoint you. The specific tools coverage Gunderloy provides is timely and unique. If you are a Java developer, or a developer in a number of languages and platforms, Code Complete will serve you well. The variety of example languages, as well as the numerous references, is a welcome addition to any developer's bookshelf.

DDJ

 

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