Overview
Software Expert Kent Beck Presents a Catalog of Patterns Infinitely Useful for Everyday Programming
Great code doesn’t just function: it clearly and consistently communicates your intentions, allowing other programmers to understand your code, rely on it, and modify it with confidence. But great code doesn’t just happen. It is the outcome of hundreds of small but critical decisions programmers make every single day. Now, legendary software innovator Kent Beck—known worldwide for creating Extreme Programming and pioneering software patterns and test-driven development—focuses on these critical decisions, unearthing powerful “implementation patterns” for writing programs that are simpler, clearer, better organized, and more cost effective.
Beck collects 77 patterns for handling everyday programming tasks and writing more readable code. This new collection of patterns addresses many aspects of development, including class, state, behavior, method, collections, frameworks, and more. He uses diagrams, stories, examples, and essays to engage the reader as he illuminates the patterns. You’ll find proven solutions for handling everything from naming variables to checking exceptions.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
When you write software, you're not just interacting with operating systems and hardware: You're conversing with everyone who'll ever maintain or extend your code. Programmers who know how to communicate their intentions can create software that's far more successful throughout its entire lifecycle. Whether you realize it or not, you're constantly making decisions that impact how well your code communicates: all day long, sometimes even every minute. Kent Beck's Implementation Patterns will help you make those decisions far more effectively.Beck has identified no less than 77 new patterns for making sure other humans know exactly what you're after: patterns for creating classes and methods, managing state, controlling program flow, even working with collections and frameworks.
For instance: What's the best way to communicate instance-specific behavior related to a class? When should you declare local variables? How do you clearly express your program's main flow of control, as well as less-frequently-used "exceptional flows"? How do you compose methods that are easier to understand, and when is it appropriate to override or overload methods? How can you take advantage of frameworks without locking yourself in more than necessary?
As you'd expect from the widely admired Kent Beck (Extreme Programming), each pattern is explained clearly and thoughtfully. You'll find plenty of Java examples, too: nothing too fancy for its own good, all of it extremely accessible to virtually any Java programmer.
Any professional writer will tell you that you don't really understand a topic until you try to explain it in writing. Even if, somehow, nobody ever sees your code, Beck's patterns will help you gain a far deeper understanding of what you're trying to accomplish -- so you can write better code from day one. Bill Camarda, from the February 2008 Read Only