Book Reviews on Beckshome.com: Thomas Beck's Blog

Making It Big In Software - The Book Review

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve included below my Amazon.com review of the book “Making It Big In Software: Get the Job, Work the Org, Become Great”. I diligently read this book from cover to cover and just couldn’t seem to like it. It became pretty monotonous after a while to go through what felt like a very academic handling of what could have been a very interesting topic. This is in stark contrast to the other book I’m reading now, “Delivering Happiness” by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, which is a pragmatic blow-by-blow tale of how someone actually made it big by leveraging technology. My review:

Book Review: Ultra-Fast ASP.NET

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I picked up this gem of a book when it first came out in eBook format during the PDC. I sent it over to my Kindle and got through the entire book during session downtimes. I planned on being the first to post a review of this book on Amazon but I’ve sat it out too long and will now be the fifth review.

The first four reviewers did a pretty respectable job of providing and overview of Mr. Kiessig’s qualifications and the book content and have all awarded the book the entirely deserved 5 start rating. Rather than pile on more information about Rick Kiessig or what’s in the book, I’m going to tell you why, as a person who has spent a good amount of time looking at .NET application performance, I recommend this book to every person I work with as mandatory reading:

Facebook Me!

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Facebook has long been for me one of the last unexplored realms of social networking. Finally, when trying to convince new recruits to join me in using Twitter, I realized that so many of my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues were hooked on Facebook, I stood little chance of winning them over to Twitter without a deeper understanding of where Facebook fits in the social networking mix. I turned to the book “Facebook Me!” by Dave Awl to provide a solid background in how Facebook might work best for me and to help me understand how to integrate Facebook with the rest of the Web 2.0 applications I use. My review of this book from Amazon.com can be found below.

The Twitter Book

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Since jumping back on the blogging bandwagon, I’ve been looking to get more familiar with the top social networking sites. I’ve had some experiences with most of the major players except Twitter, which I never did manage to get into. I decided to give Twitter a fair chance and see if it worked for me. In order to do this, I felt some basic background / guidance was necessary before jumping in heads-first. Turns out that The Twitter Book from Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein was really all that I needed. My Amazon review follows:

Release-It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A review long overdue for a Jolt Award winner and one of the best architecture books on my bookshelf, Release-It!

I’ve recommended this book to many colleagues of mine and haven’t heard a disappointing review to date. I’ve heard the terms ‘pessimistic’ and ‘realistic’ used with equal frequency to describe this book. Having just completed my second reading, I can affirm that these terms are both representative take-aways. Nygard openly admits to being more than a bit paranoid about the way he approaches enterprise application architecture. Although this may seem alarming to many new to the IT field, those of us who have been around for a while recognize this as a necessary, at times life saving, defense mechanism.

Wordpress for Business Bloggers

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

After more than a year-long hiatus, this entry marks my return to blogging. One of the things I decided to do to get myself back into the spirit of blogging was to change my blogging engine. I made the move from the .NET-based DasBlog to the more mainstream WordPress platform. I will be providing more information about the migration process (specifically, WordPress on IIS 7), helpful tools and tutorials, and useful WordPress plugins in an upcoming blog post.

REST Web Services - Seminal Tome for the Web Services Generation

Wed, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Every IT generation has its seminal tome that transcends time and connects the dots in a way that no book had before it. For the object oriented generation in the 1980s, it was the Gang of Four (GoF) book. For the application architecture generation in the 1990s, it was Fowler’s book on patterns (PoEAA). “RESTful Web Services” will be, in my opinion, that book for the 2000s Web services generation.

Founders at Work

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t like to do book reviews back-to-back but Founders at Work has kept me pretty busy reading (and not writing) over the last couple of weeks. The book definitely deserves a five star rating and at $13 for the e-book version, it really is a great deal. My review follows…

This is an absolute must read if you’re job, your passion, or both (if you’re lucky) has anything to do with creating technical innovation. “Founders at Work” is a wonderfully meander through the stories of successful company founders – across several decades. Far from focusing on just those who made it big during the first dot-com boom or those who are profiting from Web 2.0, Jessica also includes some of the true pioneers in the field. She recognizes that, not only do these industry veterans have valuable stories to convey but, since many of them are helping to steer companies and venture capital funds to this day, their advice is quite topical and current.

Windows Power Tools

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Windows Power Tools is a collection of brief tutorials and overviews of freeware and open source .NET development tools. What kind of rating you might give this book depends largely upon what type of background that you’re coming from. If you’re the kind who has stuck religiously to the Microsoft Press series of books and acknowledge only the old testament, than this book will be either an epiphany (5 stars) or outright blasphemy (1 star). If continuous integration, test-driven development, and object relational mapping (new testament type stuff) are terms that you are fairly conversant with, then this book will probably land somewhere in the 2-4 star range.

Getting Real - Revisited

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

In a previous posting, I reviewed the 37signals book Getting Real and encouraged folks to pick up a copy. The good news is that the full text for this book has recently been released online. You can find the HTML version of the book here. You no longer have any excuse not to read it.

Programming Atlas

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Programming Atlas, by Christopher Wentz, has not yet officially been released but I’ve had the chance to read it and keep up with progress through the O’Reilly Rough Cuts program. With its last update happening over a month ago, I anticipate that its now press ready and that a review of the book would be appropriate at this time.

Even though Atlas has not yet been officially released, this book is already a late comer to the market. It’s been beaten to market by a variety of AJAX texts that included some coverage of Atlas and at least one dedicated Atlas book from Apress. With all the press around Ajax and the huge Microsoft ASP.NET programmers market, putting out a book in the Atlas category is an opportunity that won’t be ignored by the major publishing houses. After trying out Atlas for a while during its Community Technology Preview (CTP) release and seeing the fairly extensive documentation and examples released by both Microsoft and the community, I tend to think that it’s an opportunity that they might best have chosen to ignore just the same.

Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

When I purchased this book almost 3 weeks ago, I was surprised to find that it had been on the shelves for 3 months already. Books that unify advanced architectural concepts such as Domain-Driven Design and design patterns are few and far between. This is especially true in the .NET world since many of the source materials originated in the Java realm.

Nilsson does a rather unique job of puling together some of the best domain-driven, object-oriented patterns and approaches and explain them using .NET-specific examples. The pros and cons, as I see them, are taken from my Amazon.com review and reprinted below:

Getting Real - The Book

Sun, 09 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I stumbled onto the book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application while canceling my Backpack service with 37signals. True to the advice they give in the book, 37signals made canceling their service very easy – one of many valuable nuggets of advice offered in the book.

Getting Real describes the practices, both software development and beyond, used by 37signals, a small company that despite their excellent, easy-to-use applications is perhaps still best known as the innovators and driving force behind the Rails framework. Given the tie to the Rails creators, it is not surprising to learn that this book espouses an Agile approach to software development. What differentiates this book from other Agile texts is that it blends both Agile software development practices with, dare I say it, pragmatic guidance from 37signals and other industry notables on the business of creating, releasing and managing Web applications in the Web 2.0 world. This includes advice on staffing and the organization (borrowing from Peopleware), application design (using a user story / UI approach as opposed to a user story / domain object approach), pricing and signup, promotion strategy, support and post-implementation activities.

Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I got through the entire book Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion over the weekend. You can read my Amazon.com review on the book’s page. Overall, the book follows in the footsteps of the other guides in the Pragmatic Programmers series in that it is written to be easily understandable and provides to be a relatively light read

Although the first several chapters are relatively elementary, the material gets a bit better as the book progresses. Towards the back of the book, there is coverage on organizing Subversion projects and directory structures, handling common libraries, and dealing with vendor libraries and source code. To me, it was this material that justified the cost of the book. If you’re interested, I’d personally recommend getting the book directly from the Pragmatic Programmers website (no offence, Amazon). These guys are very good about providing updated versions of their books as they become available. They are usually free of charge or at reduced rates. A great bargain as long as you don’t mind reading PDFs.