Books

Book Review: NodeJS The Right Way

Mar 11, 2014

I started reading NodeJS the Right Way with the aim of getting a better understanding of the pro’s and con’s of NodeJS versus frameworks like Rails and Go – especially from a web development perspective. I have limited experience with Node, but I have never used it in a production system so I was really approaching it from a newbie perspective.

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Book Review: Crafting Rails 4 Applications

Feb 6, 2014

One of my goals for 2014 is to read more programming books. Since I am starting work on a Rails 4 application, Crafting Rails 4 Applications seemed like a good fit since it’s aimed at experienced Rails developers.

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Book Review: It Will Be Exhilarating

Jul 3, 2013

Simply put, ‘It Will Be Exhilirating’ is the story of how Dan ‘The Russians Used a Pencil’ Provost and Thomas Gerhardt launched Studio Neat. Studio Neat has to date created two products: the Glif – a stand/tripod mount for the iPhone – and the Cosmonaut – an iPad stylus designed to feel like a whiteboard marker.

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Book Review: The Phoenix Project

Apr 16, 2013

TLDR Version: The Phoenix Project is a great novel that describes the impact that DevOps practices can have on a failing IT system. The writing is excellent and the storyline is intruiging.

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Book Review: User Stories Applied

May 15, 2012

TLDR Version: User Stories Applied is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the ideas behind user stories. The book has very good examples and guidelines on writing better user stories and integrating them into your development process.

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Book Review: Programming Ruby

Jan 27, 2012

Programming RubyTLDR Version: This book is incredibly well researched and covers pretty much everything in the Ruby world. While it does have a very good introductory section I think the main benefit to this book is as a reference guide.

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Book Review: The Rails 3 Way

Jan 18, 2012

TLDR Version: This is quite possibly the best programming book I have ever read. It’s packed with examples, covers an enormous amount of Rails feature in great detail while also serving as an excellent reference guide for everyday programming. Bought it, read it, love it.

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Book Review: A Book Apart

Jan 3, 2012

A Book Apart is a series of 6 books aimed at ‘people who make websites’. These books are all relatively short (about 100 pages) and easy to read. At the time of writing they have a holiday special going – 30% off if you buy the whole series.

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Book Review: The Mythical Man-Month

Dec 28, 2011

As part of my employment at ThoughtWorks I am afforded a book allowance. This prompted me to look around and figure out which books I really should have read by now. One name which came up quite a few times and which has often been mentioned to me is The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering.

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