This week, we're delighted to have Paul Duvall and Andy Glover helping to answer questions about their new book Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk.
They will hang out in the Agile and Other Processes forum.
The promotion starts Tuesday, August 28th 2007 and will end on Friday, August 31st 2007.
We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy provided by the publisher, Addison-Wesley.
Please see the book promotions page to ensure your best chances at winning!
Jeanne reviewed Regular Expression Pocket Reference by Tony Stubblebine and gave it a 7 out of 10 horseshoes.
Regular Expression -- Pocket Reference is just as high in quality as it's big brother ("Mastering Regular Expressions.") ... If you are learning about regular expressions or only going to buy one regular expressions book, I recommend [it]. If you are knowledgeable about regular expressions and just need a review or reference, this book does the job nicely.
You can read the full review and discuss it here.
[Bunkhouse] Review of "Continuous Integration" by Paul Duvall, Steve Matyas and Andrew Glover
Jeanne reviewed Continuous Integration by Paul Duvall, Steve Matyas and Andrew Glover and gave it a whopping 10 out of 10 horseshoes.
This is an excellent book and the website adds to it! [It] reinforced the book nicely because it was like a guru explaining his experiences. It also goes into much more detail than the book has room for on each topic. ... Each chapter ends with questions to get you thinking about CI in YOUR process.
You can read the full review and discuss it here.
[Big Moose Saloon] Discussion on "If the Singleton pattern is bad, how does Factory help?"
The Singleton pattern has acquired a bad reputation, but is a Factory -sometimes suggested as a replacement- any better? Ranchers ponder this question, as well as what other solutions are possible, and how that is related to Dependency Injection in this thread in the OO, Patterns, UML and Refactoring forum.
One of the most-requested features for the discussion forums has been a better email notification system, particularly the ability to have those for all topics -not just the ones you have started yourself- and the ability to turn them on some time after the initial post.
As of today, the Saloon has Topic Watches. At the bottom of each post you'll see a button called "Watch Topic". Clicking it will cause that topic to be watched for you, meaning you'll get an email to the address you entered into your Saloon profile.
You will then be shown your personal Topic Watch page. It lists all topics you are watching, has links to them, lets you turn email notification on or off, and delete them. The page is also accessible directly through the "My Watches" link at the top any Saloon page. If you turn off email notification for a topic, the watch becomes more like a bookmark.
There's also a little icon for posting a topic to the social bookmarking site del.icio.us. If you haven't used del.icio.us so far, by all means, check it out - it's the 21st century version of browser bookmarks.
More information is available in this thread.
A member finds himself in a position where XP techniques are introduced, but management continually pushes too many tasks into each iteration. Ranchers discuss what's to be done, and whether basic agile techniques have been misapplied in this thread in the Agile And Other Processes forum.
A member needs to process an existing Excel file and extract styling information like bold and italics from a cell. The javadocs aren't much help, but a solution is found and discussed in this thread in the Open Source Projects forum. A follow-up thread discusses how to create styles.
[Bunkhouse] Review of "Implementing the IBM Rational Unified Process and Solutions" by Joshua Barnes
Jeanne reviewed Implementing the IBM Rational Unified Process and Solutions by Joshua Barnes and gave it 7 out of 10 horseshoes.
The book walks through what to expect at different phases of implementing RUP. ... There are examples of common mistakes and things to watch out for. ... The audience is managers and executives. ... It just felt more like a whitepaper to me than what I'm used to seeing in a book.
You can read the full review and discuss it here.
[Bunkhouse] Review of "Ajax Construction Kit: Building Plug-and-Play Ajax Applications" by Michael Morrison
Katrina reviewed Ajax Construction Kit: Building Plug-and-Play Ajax Applications by Michael Morrison and gave it 7 out of 10 horseshoes.
This book will help the uninitiated realize just how many slick tricks can be accomplished with Ajax. ... The Ajax Construction Kit promises to hand you working Ajax goodies. It delivers on this promise! ... [It] does not set out to teach you how to program.
You can read the full review and discuss it here.