Recenzje
Na tej stronie zamieszczamy recenzje napisane przez członków grupy. Ponieważ są one tworzone dla wydawców spoza Polski, przygotowano je w języku angielskim.
Growing Software: Proven Strategies for Managing Software EngineersAutor: Louis Testa |
|
 As you all probably know results matter. If you are a development manager in a small, growing company, you will be judged by the work and results of your development team. Your team must deliver quality software on time on budget and that software will have to please your customers. At first this book seems to be like other management books but one thing makes it really different. Growing Software is written for managers working in small companies. In fact it is about managing software engineers in a small firm. Luis Testa shows many interesting aspects of working in small environments as oppossed to corporate ones. In small companies development managers have more influence on processes and workflows and as a result in a product definition. In small companies approaches must be systematic, simple and relatively straighforward. This book is about how to start and avoid common pitfals. I work as a software architect managing software development team in a small company. For me this book is a nice, well written guide. It is an advice offer about how to succeed when faced with diverse challenges. It is about managing techniques, professional ethics and building relationships with other company’s sections like Marketing or Sales. It also helps to understand and care about relations with other managers, CEO and team members. As I said earlier there are many good books about managing engineering teams and processes of these teams but this book’s greatest value is focusing on how things work in small companies that want to succeed. I definetely recommend this book especially if you manage an engineering team in a small company. |
|
97 Things Every Software Architect Should KnowAutorzy: Richard Monson-Haefel and others |
|
 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know is a book about things which are obvious and every software architect should know, remember and employ. The problem is that most things you can find inside the book are easily forgotten, underestimated and usually not implemented during day-to-day work. The book consists of 97 short essays. Each of them deals with a vital problem software architects often have to face. Although there are great number of brilliant stories in the book I especially like the one titled: You’re Negotiating More Often Than You Think, which is about a project sponsor wanting to cut down expenses. Does it sound familiar to you? Do you know what to do when it happens? The book is a collective work which makes it even more valuable. Every day in the morning I start my work reading 1-3 essays to keep good practices in my memory and not forget management pitfalls lying in wait for me round the corner. I believe it helps me to become a better software architect. This book is a great and rare opportunity to learn from real experts in the field. |
|
The Art of Agile DevelopmentAutorzy: James Shore, Shane Warden |
|
 The Art of Agile Development written by James Shore and Shane Warden is about managing a successful eXtreme Programming (XP) team. It reveals many possible ways of leading an agile team through a software project. The book is full of examples, explanations, tips and good practices. Great deal of issues covered in this book would make it hard to read but the authors made a tremendous work organizing the book’s contents. There are cross-links between chapters and topics which help to find solutions to problems. Each topic has uniform structure consisting of subtopics, questions, results, contraindications, alternatives and further reading which helps a lot in finding answers and making decisions during an agile project. I was astonished how much information can be packed on only 400 pages. That is amazing. Parts I and II of this book contain author’s approach to XP. Part I helps to get started with eXtreme Programming and Part II provides detailed guidance for each of XP’s practices. Part III is full of ideas that can help to understand XP and agile development more deeply. I have read this book because I had heard that it is worth reading. I work as a software architect and project manager and I found this book very valuable. It is especially useful for anyone who is, will be or wants to be part of an agile team. This also includes programmers, domain experts, testers, project and product managers, designers and business analysts. It may also be handy for aware customers. If you have anything in common with agile development you should read this book. |
|
Adobe AIR 1.5 CookbookAutorzy: David Tucker, Marco Casario, Koen De Weggheleire, Rich Tretola |
|
 As we know Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook includes recipes from David Tucker, Rich Tretola, Marco Casario and Koen De Weggheleire. This book is forintermediate developers who already have a good working knowledge of the Flex tool and ActionScript or JavaScript. Definetely this book helps us to solve many problems because the whole book is full of very useful examples. And now quick summary of what I have found in this book. Chapters 1, 2, 16, 17 show us how we can make air app in different developing environments (Flex Builder, Flash, Html and JS) and covers most environmental setup tips. Chapter 16 and 17 are about creating app updates (AIR Update Framework), using install badges and whole information needed to distribute air application. The rest chapters (3-15) explore AIR app - many useful examples of: windows in app, html content, file system, database, network monitoring framework and much more. The book also contains information that author gives us a bonus online chapter with steps of creating four different mashups applications with adobe air utilizing the solutions found in this book. In conclusion.. I have waited for this book since the announcement.. and now I can say that it was worth waiting. This book is great. It shows the power of AIR! |
|
AdvancED Flex 3Autorzy: Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari |
|
 AdvancED Flex 3 By Elad Elrom, Jack Herrington, Joshua Mostafa, Shashank Tiwari is a very special book dedicated to Flex and AIR developers. Unlike most other Flex and AIR books available on market nowadays this book covers more advanced topics which are of great importance for rich internet applications developers upgrading professional skills from moderate to advance level. I think this book is not ideal. There are things inside I do not like (e.g. no uniform source code convention) or I agree only to some extend. I am a Flex developer and RIA architect working on software projects. My own experience tells me that multi-tier internet applications can be very complex. It is also very important to develop and deliver the applications on budget and on time which means developers should write clean, working code in an efficient way. This book can help to understand some important architectural and development topics. Do you know how to successfully leverage architectural and design patterns in your applications? Can you construct advanced and usable components using MXML or ActionScript 3.0? Do you know how to optimize your code to get superior Flash Player performance? What about integrating your application with client- and server-side technologies like Java and PHP? Can your application communicate and interact with JavaScript and HTML? Do you know how to work with Web 2.0 APIs? Can you visualize OLAP data using Flex Charting? If not you should consider buying this book. I did and I do not regret it. |
|
The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash DevelopmentAutorzy: Chris Allen, Wade Arnold, Aral Balkan, Nicolas Cannasse, John Grden, Moses Gunesch, Marc Hughes, R. Jon MacDonald, Andy Zupko |
|
 As you probably know, the open source Flash community is mainly gathered around the osflash.org website. The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development is a collection of some of the best open source projects that run the whole gamut of the open sourced Flash world. It reveals a lot of detail on how these projects can be integrated into a consistent open source SWF workflow. It is amazing how many things can be done using open source tools. In the next paragraph there is a quick summary of what I have found in the book. Chapter 1 (written by Aral Balkan) introduces the world of open source Flash. In chapter 2, Marc Hughes presents a brief introduction to some of the open source tools that are available. Many of them are presented in the book. Chapter 3 (Marc Hughes) covers installing and setting the open source tools necessary for Flash development. Chapter 4 (Marc Hughes) is about working with designers and other people using the open source workflow which was configured in chapter 3. In chapter 5 (Marc Hughes) you can find a nice introduction to testing and debugging ActionScript 2 and 3 projects using AsUnit, FlexUnit and Xray. First two provide a framework for unit testing. Xray provides a mechanism for logging and runtime inspection of SWF files. Chapter 6 (Marc Hughes) is devoted to embeding Flash-based applications in HTML pages as well as following best practices for organizing and deploying web content. In chapter 7, Wade Arnold explores AMFPHP, an open source gateway for easily connecting a Flash player-based application to PHP. While reading chapter 8 (R.Jon MacDonald) we learn about SWX, the native data format for the Flash Platform which is of great importance especially for Flash Lite developers. In chapter 9, Nicolas Cannasse talks about haXe, a high-level programming language for web development. In chapter 10, Moses Gunesch talks about Fuse and GoASAP, two open source ActionScript (2.0 and 3.0) libraries for coding animations. Chapter 11 is all about Papervision3D. Andy Zupko shows there how to configure and use this great open source ActionScript 3D environment. Chapters 12 and 13 are devoted to Red5 (Chris Allen, John Grden), an open source Java-based server which supports audio and video streaming. As you can see there is a lof of versatile stuff inside this book. This book is awesome. It opens to the reader amazing world of the open source Flash treasures. It shows how to prepare and use a powerfull, useful and personalized Flash-based programming environment for free. It gives also a great opportunity to start being a part of the open source Flash community and maybe to start contributing. If you use commercial tools like Adobe Flash you can also benefit from this book by learning about internals and variety of solutions available for aware developers. I have learnt about many interesting open source tools I now use alongside commercial ones. One such a tool is ant. Another is FlexUnit to name just a few. I cannot live without them now. To sum it up, I have waited for such a book for a long time and now, when it is available, it is definitely worth buing and reading. |
|
Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIRAutorzy: John Crosby, David Hassoun, Chris Korhonen |
|
 Creating mashups with Adobe Flex and Air book perfectly fits nowadays internet reality. It presents process of developing mashups, applications based on many different external data resources. With external services like google maps, flickr or youtube there is possibility to achieve great functionality in very easy way. Developing that functionality from the ground would take a lot of time and money. Book contains many practical examples of use APIs in mashup applications. It include interesting comparison of web and desktop technologies witch can help to choose the one that is best for particular project. You will also find many additional information about Adobe Flex and AIR like debugging or performance profiling. If you want to create most powerful web and desktop applications this book is for you. |
|
Learning ActionScript 3.0 - The Non-Programmer’s Guide to ActionScript 3.0Autorzy: Rich Shupe, Zevan Rosser |
|
 If you are someone who starts your adventure with actionscript or you are migrating from older version, like me, this is a perfect opportunity to learn AS 3.0. The authors give a very detailed description of this language. Starting from the basic programming like to be skipped if you are already familiar with it, you will quickly end up as an intermediate actionscript developer. The book explains the concepts of OOP in a very comprehensive language, and gives just the right amount of information. I strongly recommend this book to all of you! |
|
Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIRAutorzy: John Crosby, David Hassoun, Chris Korhonen |
|
| Creating Mashups with Adobe Flex and AIR is a book full of mashup examples. Mashups are applications that combine information from more than one source into a single application. Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR provide a solid platform that enables us, developers, to quickly and quite easily build mashup applications. You can embed Google, Flickr, Twitter, Amazon and more services into your code and the possibilities you have with mashups are endless. I have always been curious how to do things like that. How to get to know what to do to make use of existing third party services, APIs or RSSs in my applications. That is amazing but I have finally found the answer reading this excellent book. If you are curious how all those guys do that mashup things you should read this book, too. |
|
AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media XAutorzy: R Blank, Chris Charlton, Omar Gonzalez, Hasan Otuome |
|
 AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X is about how guys at Almer/Blank used Flex, along with other open source technologies, to help create a great application, the Rich Media Exchange (RMX). In this book you can extend your Flex knowledge and learn some of the techniques, code and planning that goes into building an advanaced Flex application. For me, as a Flex developer, this book is a mine full of precious tips and ideas which I can use in my daily routine. This book is different than most other Flex books. It starts where other books end. It is about things you may not find in Flex Help. This book describes the whole process of creating a sophisticated rich internet application (RIA) and this description is of great value for both less and more advanced developers. If you are a web developer it is a book you should be acquainted with. I definitely recommend this book. |
|
Adobe Flex 3: Training from the SourceAutorzy: Jeff Tapper, Michael Labriola, Matthew Boles, James Talbot |
|
 Adobe Flex 3: Training from the Source is an update to the extremely popular Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source. Authors of the book not only revised the earlier version of the book but also added a few chapters on features such modules, the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), and the advanced DataGrid component. If you are new to Flex 3, this book will guide you through the process of developing a complete application (an online grocery store) using Adobe Flex Builder 3. This book provides you with all the tools you need to get started. But be aware that to make the most of this book, you should at the very least understand basic web terminology. This book is written assuming that you are comfortable working with other programming languages such as Java, .Net, PHP or ColdFusion. This knowledge let you better understand many comparisons and analogies made to server-side web programming. If you are more advanced Flex developer you can still find this book compelling. You will especially like to focus on new Flex 3 topics which are discussed in this book. There are many places inside “old chapters” which were updated or extended to reflect changes and improvements available in Adobe Flex 3. I am a Flex Developer. Although I have read the Adobe Flex 2: Training from the Source book I have also read Adobe Flex 3 version of the book and I do not regret it. It has been worth spending my time on reading. I especially liked new parts on creating modular applications and profiling Flex applications. If you learn best by doing, this is the book you need. I definitely recommend this book. |
|
ActionScript 3.0 Design PatternsAutorzy: Willam Sanders & Chandima Cumaranatunge |
|
 If you want to build realy big apps in AS, you definitly make friends with design patterns. And thats why this book was created. It covers all of most helpful design patterns you would need in developing AS applications. Patterns are grouped, depending on their type, and this is very good move, cause we can very easy find pattern which we need. Groups used in book:1. Creational Patterns (Factory Method Pattern, Singleton Pattern)2. Structural Patterns (Decorator Pattern, Adapter Pattern, Coposite Pattern)3. Behavioral Patterns (Command Pattern, Observer Pattern, Template Metod Pattern, State Pattern, Strategy Pattern)4. Multiple Patterns (MVC Pattern, Symetric Proxy Pattern) All patterns are realy good described. This is not theorycrafting book, apart from theory, there are always one or two examples. For me the best thing is that you can go throught the book, read (and understand!) introduction of every pattern, maybe some examples, and when you will be developing this BIG_APP, and when you will find a place for one of the patterns, you can easily find it and include in your project. Of course book is not perfect - somethimes provided examples are too easy to fully show potential of pattern, and reader can misunderstand benefits of using it. Even so, this book is must have for people who don’t know design patterns, and want to develop realy good applications in ActionScript 3.0. |
|
ActionScript 3.0 CookbookAutorzy: Joey Lott, Darron Schall, Keith Peters |
|
 Cookbook describes many subjects related to ActionScript. Book has very interesting form with chapters in not accidentally order. It starts with basics of programming, and then other topics which will give you the complex knowledge about ActionScript. Author is not getting into routine. In the table of contents you’ll find specific tasks. Similar, when you trying to pass a practical exam. In one sentence the whole task. Which can have a different length and are divided in to a Problem, Solution, Discussion and See Also. The main advantage of this book is their form. Tasks can be very standard for example Using Mathematical Operators and less standard like Simulating Dice. Cookbook is not ordinary textbook to ActionScript 3.0 but it is a collection of typical and not typical solutions which can be found using this programming language. It would be useful to know the task’s level of difficulty especially for beginner users. Sometimes we do not want to get knowledge about for example XML but only we try to solve the problem in a few minutes and this book exactly enables to do this. Cookbook presents wonderful balance between form and contents. The chapter Web Services and Flash Remoting is worth mentioning. This book can be recommended to people who have to solve specific tasks. |
|
Essential ActionScript 3.0Autor: Colin Moock |
|
 Colin Moock’s book entitled “Essential ActionScript 3.0″ pretend to be one of the most important positions in ActionScript developer library. It contains a lot of informations from core concept of object oriented programing to details about garbage collection or topics connected with optimalization of ActionScript code. Many additional annotations provide unique ActionScript knowledge. The book is divided into three parts. First part contains most basic and most important information about object oriented programming and syntax of Actionscript 3.0. This section is useful especially for beginners. You can find a lot of well described samples. Thanks to many information about internal mechanisms working in Flash, sections can by very useful for advanced programers. Second Part of the book covers a lot of interestig information related to visual part of ActionScript application. It shows how to build GUI and let it play with user gestures. You can learn about tools to build rich and interactive interface in the best and the most flexible way. Third part contain applied ActionScript topics. It should be very interesting for person who want to find out how to create content in Flash authoring environment and bring it to life with code written in ActionScript. This section covers basic Flex MXML concept also. Summing up this book contains most important concepts of ActionScript language. Nowadays, when internet becoming more and more, interactive, useful and eye-candy this book will help you understand how to build amazing content using one of most powerful environment dedicated to internet solutions. |
|
Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 DevelopersAutor: Marco Casario |
|
 ‘Flex Solutions: Essential Techniques for Flex 2 and 3 Developers’ by Marco Casario is a must have book. Why? Many simple, objective code snippets from which one can build many useful Flex applications. The simplicity of code examples can be also easily extended in real projects. The book is devided into problem oriented parts: Flex Basics, Using Components, Working with Data, Validating and Formatting Data, Managing Complex Data, Working with Remote Data, Compiling and Deploying Flex Applications, Designing and Programming the Look and Feel of Flex Applications, Flex Security and more. Each chapter consists of number of problems which are completely solved. Marco, as it can be read in About the Author note, has been passionate about Informatics since he was a child. I have realized that fact during reading the Flex Solutions book. I have used code examples from the book in my Flex projects and doing so let me save time on looking for solutions in other sources. If you want to learn more about Flex, this book is for you. If you look for a book with quick-fire solutions to common problems and best practice techniques, this book is for you. If you want to improve your Flex skills for Rich Internet Application development, this book is for you. And if you do not know Flex but want to learn what can be done with it and how, just guess: this book is also for you. I like very much problem solving approach in learning and therefore I recommend this book. |
|
Essential ActionScript 3.0Autor: Colin Moock |
|
| The “Essential ActionScript 3.0″ book is addressed to everybody who wants to known new possibilities of ActionScript 3. This book helps you migrate without problems from version 2 to 3 and extends your knowledge. Many small and simple examples illustrate and introduce theoretical problems in a simple way. It is written in a simple language without technical gibber. In my opinion every Flash developer should read this book minimum two times. |
|
Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe FlexAutorzy: Chafic Kazoun, Joey Lott |
|
 ‘Programming Flex 2: The comprehensive guide to creating rich media applications with Adobe Flex’ is a great book for more advanced Flex developers. This book covers many important topics like working with UI components, advanced component concepts, working with media and data, client and remote data communication just to name the few. The authors, Chafic Kazoun and Joey Lott, are very experienced long-time Flash developers. They are well known in the Flash community, and are among the elite of the Flash development world. Chafic and Joey has been using Flex for a long time and it can be noticed by reader during reading this book which is full of practical leads. This book is intended for anyone looking to learn more about Flex 2. The authors recognize that the audience for this book represents a very diverse group of people with many different backgrounds. In my opinion this book is a great resource but not for the beginners. Lots of original ActionScript and MXML code examples help reader to look deeper inside Flex 2 internals. I definitely recommend this book! |
|
Ostatnie Komentarze