Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development

This is a very good book specially for those that are interested in learning about design patterns and applying them in your own codes.

EMERGENT DESIGN: THE EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT is for college-level libraries strong in software engineering, and discusses the foundations of systems development, helping developers work with the flow of ideas inherent in emergent design principles. From tips on how to produce more professional software designs to testing designs throughout the process and learning when to stop, EMERGENT DESIGN is a fine choice for software engineers who would streamline their efforts to produce quality designs early in the process. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

As the cover implies, this book is the basis of a revolution. It is a tour of everything required to become a professional software developer. I believe this book to be distinguished from other technical books in the way that great works of fiction are different from genre books. It defines a category rather than just being a part of one. It is a call to arms for all of us who consider ourselves professionals to band together into a true profession. Simultaneously, it is a tour of all those things that we as a proto-profession have identified as important and valuable. Practices, patterns, principles, disciplines, tools... Bain shows how all of these things work together. He goes one step further, though: he shows how they can coalesce into the basis for our occupation's transcendence into a profession. If you have not been introduced to these concepts - if you work in a heavily waterfall environment with brittle code and death-marches at the end of long release cycles - this book is your way out. Read it. The most you will have lost is the time it takes you to read a three hundred page book and you have everything to gain. Emergent Design will show you that there is a better way. A way to make software that gets easier to maintain over time, not the other way around. If you are familiar with these concepts, as I believed myself to be, then you will enjoy seeing everything come together in one book. You will probably gain some valuable insights along the way. I certainly did. You will also find that it is powerful recommended reading for those around you. Scott Bain's writing is clear, concise, friendly, funny... oh yeah: and very persuasive. Having read this book will give you and those whom you coach, teach, or work-with a common frame of reference; even more-so than Design Patterns. I truly believe that this book is going to be at the center of a series of discussions, debates, and decisions which will ultimately lead to the formalization of software development as a real profession. It would be easy to characterize your choice as "buy it or don't buy it" but that would not be accurate. The real choice before you is this one: You can either be an informed participant in the formation of our profession or you can just be governed by it. I trust you to do the math from there.

This book is a gold mine of wisdom. This book contains a ton of wisdom that has come out of the software engineering field over the years. It brings together a lot of software development best practices that can be found in other resources and puts them together under the umbrella of Emergent Design. He covers patterns, principles, processes, and practices by presenting the best of each that has been proven to work again and again. The common sense communicated out of this book is priceless. The author has a presentation that touches on a lot of the content found in the book. It can be viewed by Googling for "EmergentDesign_12_11_2007". Forward thinking is something that I find lacking in a lot of the environments I am exposed too, especially development environments. This book nails how to do forward thinking when it comes to software design and development. You will end up making your solutions more valuable with each change, instead of degrading them with each change if you follow the advice in this book. If you do development, this is a must read. I would advise all team leads to get rid of anyone who has not read this book by the end of the year.

Bain's book is a graceful read. At least compared to some texts on "heavy" methodologies like CMMI. He addresses the professional programmer. At some level, there is an introspective feel to parts of it. Can the profession be more professional, in reducing bugs and bad coding practices? More pertinently, can you do this? In expanding on the possible answers, he takes us on a recap of decades of progress in programming. One big innovation was the rise of object oriented programming, compared to earlier procedural efforts. Hence C++, Java and other OO languages. Another key idea to remember is that of patterns. Even if you can't remember all the patterns he discusses, at least being aware that such exist is a good step forward in your abilities. There is also lots of advice about littler details. Like having names for classes, methods and variables that are as descriptive as possible. Doesn't matter what language you're using. You should always strive here, so that the code is as self documenting as possible. Though Bain is careful not to go to the extreme of suggesting that no comments are possible. Another key note is that automated unit testing is a great thing. Sure, it takes time to run the unit tests. The payoff in code maintenance makes it all worthwhile. Much, if not all of what is written has appeared in other texts. But Bain provides an easy to read and unified treatment. Well suited for a junior programmer.