Practical Development Environments

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 328 pages
• Published by: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; Ist Ed edition September 23, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0596007965
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0596007966
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Description
This book doesn't tell you how to write faster code, or how to write code with fewer memory leaks, or even how to debug code at all. What it does tell you is how to build your product in better ways, how to keep track of the code that you write, and how to track the bugs in your code. Plus some more things you'll wish you had known before starting a project.

Practical Development Environments is a guide, a collection of advice about real development environments for small to medium-sized projects and groups. Each of the chapters considers a different kind of tool - tools for tracking versions of files, build tools, testing tools, bug-tracking tools, tools for creating documentation, and tools for creating packaged releases. Each chapter discusses what you should look for in that kind of tool and what to avoid, and also describes some good ideas, terrible ideas, and annoying experiences for each area. Specific instances of each type of tool are described in enough detail so that you can decide which ones you want to investigate further.

Developers want to write code, not maintain makefiles. Writers want to write content instead of manage templates. IT provides machines, but doesn't have time to maintain all the different tools. Managers want the product to move smoothly from development to release, and are interested in tools to help this happen more often. Whether as a full-time position or just because they are helpful, all projects have toolsmiths: making choices about tools, installing them, and then maintaining the tools that everyone else depends upon. This book is especially for everyone who ends up being a toolsmith for his or her group.

About The Author
Matthew Doar has been a professional toolsmith and software developer for over ten years at a number of different companies. He wrote this book because he was frustrated with the lack of books about how to create good software development environments. He also wrote JDiff, an open source tool for comparing the APIs of different versions of large Java projects. He has a Ph.D. in computer networking from the University of Cambridge.

Reader Reviews
This is an important work that should be required reading for the following individuals: 1. Software Engineering students 2. Build/Release engineers 3. All new software engineers starting off When I started my professional software career, I wish that I had a book like this that I could have read before I ever wrote a line of code. When an engineer is starting off, they are fresh out of school with a whole bunch of theory floating in their head and a myriad of projects they have just worked on, but this does not deal with how software is actually MADE in the real world. No matter how well you understand the difference between a reference and a pointer, in order to be a successful software engineer you still need to know how software actually gets built by a team of people and that's what makes 'Practical Development Environments' by Matthew Doar so great and so USEFUL. This book isn't about how to code, rather how code gets out the door. Sure you might be able to create some classes, methods, and know how to interact with them, but have you ever really thought about how code is managed? How it gets tested? How many engineers work on the same piece of code without stumbling on each others toes? The author does just that in this book, as he examines the intricacies of what source control is and some of the most popular SCM solutions are out there. The author discusses how important testing is and the tools that can be used to track, modify, and fix bugs quickly and efficiently. Mr. Doar talks about the maintenance cycle of how code is hotfixed after releases are made, and the scripts and documentation that goes along with said releases and upgrades. Writing code is not just about opening up a C++ project and making a few classes and doing some unit testing. Writing good code is a PROCESS in itself, and it's important that all engineers present and future understand what goes into getting a product out the door. I honestly wish that I had something like this back when I was in school, it would have prepared me better for everything that I learned later and possibly would have helped avoid some of the potholes that I encountered along the way. This is an important work and I found it very useful, if for nothing else than stressing how many aspects there are to getting software out beyond writing it and selling it. ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED