Software development

Software Estimation - Demystifying the Black Art is another masterpiece by Steve McConnell. I introduced in last june book Code Complete 2 by same author - it is suggested reading for developers. Software Estimation, as title sais, tells about how to estimate software projects. Estimating is not easy thing to do if you want to achieve good estimates.

Death march projects are standard in software development and they are usually the most complex ones to handle. It seems to me that this is more like question how to handle the chaos and how to survive it with as less losses as prossible. There are some signals of dangers I would like to share with you.

Another great book to read is Implementation Patterns from famous Kent Beck. I found this book to be good addition to Code Complete 2. Code Complete is mostly about readable and manageable code. Implementation Patterns is about code itself - how we are writing classes, methods, loops and other code constructions everyday and what kind of patterns can be drawn out from there. (more…)

I was asked through this blog how to become a good developers. I think this is the question that many beginners want to ask. For every question there are throusands of answers. Okay, there are many answers like these but these ones are mine. :)

Building up a good business library is art. Because every bad decision made early will eat project's time later. Bad decisions will also waste many time of developers who have to use this library in their work. One of the most common mistakes made is mixing DAL functionality to business objects. At first it may seems like a good idea - why not have a smart objects? - but as project goes this solution causes more and more problems. And, be warned, each next problem is worst than previous.

I will continue my little serie about anti-patterns of decisions and activities that may screw up projects and make developers (and why not also others) life hell. Now let's look at silver bullet anti-pattern. It is about using unknown tools and technologies in the place where one shouldn't never do that.

I am sure you have all read this book and this book needs no further introduction - Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans! I readed this book couple of months ago and now I am trying to apply good ideas I got from this book. Instead of writing usual introduction I tell you a little bit about my experiences when applying ideas represented in this book.