Bioinformatics Software Engineering: Delivering Effective Applications

I sat down and read through it at a recent bioinformatics conference in Detroit where Wiley had an exhibit. It's applicable for people who just learned how to code and have not had any formal software development training. In my experience, this type of scenario happens a lot: an amateur buys something such as Visual Basic and suddenly he or she is writing code. Someone in the office hears about it and things begin to explode. Suddenly, there is a ton of poorly tested, poorly engineered code, but the amateur is seen as an incredible genious because they can fix the mistakes they made - mistakes that probably should have never happened. So if you have someone in your office who got their hands on a compiler for the first time, you might want to read this to find out that there is more to programming than just writing code. I thought the text was well written for both managers and novice coders. However, if you're an experienced developer (ie you have a four year degree in CS or are familiar with concepts of software testing, requirements gathering etc)you won't find any great insights in this one that makes it worth the price. It's basic software engineering information for software developers getting started. As far as my comment on price, I'll add one more thing. If software development is completely new to you, this is a good start. After all, if it saves you from making some of those horrible mistakes I alluded to or opens your eyes so that it encourages you to take a formal course in software engineering and testing, then this is even more justification to encourage your boss to buy this text for you. Again, this is a bit of a mixed bag for a review, and I'm a bit prejudiced about appropriate text books...again, maybe the easy read will encourage some beginners not to take the "cowboy" approach to software development. Get this book as a start...and then get some books with much more depth in critical subject areas such as those by Shari Pfleeger, Len Bass and Paul Jorgensen. Part of me says give it two stars, part of me says give it five stars. It really depends on your background. Just don't expect this book to make you an expert in bioinformatics...it's basic software engineering with bioinformatics as the backround subject.