Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#

Agile practices and design patterns written in a clear, concise way. Granted there are a handful of mistakes throughout the book, and the occasional awkward reference to a pattern that won't be covered for another 5 chapters, but they're easy to spot. The information is presented just right - a little background info, succinct descriptions, and simplified code examples. Outstanding.

I have purchased and read alot of books on software design and development over the years and I cannot think of a single one of them that I would rate higher than this one.

This book is amazingly great from start to finish. All the basics of good agile development are covered clearly and sensibly in the first section: what agile is, how to go about it, why testing and planning are so critical, and where refactoring fits in all of this. Design and general patters are hit in the second section, again in a clear, concise, and sensible fashion -- and with common sense thrown in. The final two sections cover a real-world case study implementation of a payroll system. Here the rubber meets the asphalt: walking through use cases, building transactions based on smartly-chosen patterns, discussion of what patterns make sense where and why, implementation, packaging, and evolution. I found myself shaking my head in wonder as I read this book and stumbled across one nugget of gold after another. Some bits of goodness pop out in the middle of nowhere simply because the authors are so well-versed in their domain that they're letting fly wisdom even when discussing other topics. An example of this is in the XP pairing session episode where some discussion of increment operator side effects is tossed in the middle of another discussion stream. You read that section once and pass over it, only to do a head check, bounce back and re-read it while nodding your head and saying "Yeah, that's absolutely right and I might not have caught that otherwise." Another bit of greatness is the chapter on UML. The authors are emphatic about keeping UML tightly in check and using it only in specific cases where it makes clear sense. Mountains of UML diagrams are not the answer; the authors show where a few concise diagrams make perfect sense. More goodness can be found throughout the book in the gems relating to any number of design issues such as a small example of a problem the authors put forth to students of their various design/patterns courses: build a coffee maker. The authors go through the most common result they see and show the specific problem areas of that solution -- and then show a solution that is amazing in its simplicity, elegance, and maintainability. This book is a critical read for folks at any level of experience. I'm going to do my best to make sure it gets on the required reading list for developers at my company.

Robert Martin is one of the smartest people I've ever talked with, and he is one of the best technical writers I've ever read. This book is *the* most comprehensive and most valuable introduction and guide to Agile programming, with a full discussion of Agile principles, the "fourteen practices of eXtreme programming," full discussion of "spiking, splitting, velocity, iteration, test-driven development, refactoring, pair programming, five types of UML diagrams," and how to use all of this in real world .NET development. There is no doubt in my mind that this book will make you a better programmer, will challenge you, will teach you, will take you beyond what you already know, and will entertain you along the way. Robert is as good as it gets. This book is required reading. Do not hesitate.

This book really covers two topics: Agile management methods and development practices used by agile team. Section I, the description of the Agile methology is brief. This is obviously the intent of the author and agile is meant to be documenation-light. This section only consists of 100 pages. It's a quick read giving you everything you need to know to implement the Agile methodology in your team. Section II, is titled "Agile Design". These chapters are high-level design principles with low-level examples and a thorough treatment of UML. This should have been split into two sections. This first, would be most useful for a beginner/intermediate developer to take their skills to the next level. The second part, is required reading/knowledge for any developer who needs to work with a team or who needs to plan a complex application. Section III is presented as a case study. Under the guise of a desiging a payroll system, the authors present the most popular design patterns. This section depends on the previous sections and is a great example of the thought process of agile developers. The book is well written and easy to read for intermediate to advanced developers. Beginning developers would stuggle with some sections. However, all levels would beneift from reading this book.