I ordered 3 books on Friday from Amazon and two of them showed up on my doorstep today (Monday). Geez that is fast. They are older books, so maybe the books have been sitting around for awhile and the shop owners didn't want me to change my mind before they shipped them :)
One of the books is Agile Software Development Principles Patterns and Practices by Robert C. Martin. The book is laid out into very small, easily digestible chapters which I really love. I have already read through the first 4 chapters:
- Agile Practices
- Overview of Extreme Programming
- Planning
- Testing (Test-Driven Development)
Chapter 1, Agile Practices, doesn't really tell you anything more than the Agile Manifesto, which is essentially a set of values and principles by which to conduct agile projects.
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.“
Yep, same stuff we already know, but I suppose all Agile books should start out this way. For a complete list of values and principles on Agile Software Development, you can learn more here.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are essentially just a quick introduction to Extreme Programming, Planning (which is mainly about iterative development), and Test-Driven Development. This is all great “stuff,” and techniques I use daily on my projects. Personally, I think Applying UML and Patterns by Craig Larman does a better job of introducing these topics, so I would buy it instead if you don't have it and are looking for a good book on Agile Software Development and Object-Oriented Programming. It is laid out for classroom instruction and flows very nicely indeed.
However, as I page through other sections of the book in anticipation of what it has to offer, I can see it has some nuggets to offer in terms of Agile Design. Over the next couple of weeks I will try to bring you those nuggets as best I can so we can all learn from the book.
Read Agile Software Development - Refactoring and Pair Programming - Chapters 5 and 6