Ebook: Implementation Patterns

-Motivation-

The author is Kent Beck. That alone merits at least a thumb-through of any book. Beck's self-described premise of this book is that "good code matters." He goes on to state his goal of showing us how to communicate ideas better in code.

-Cons-

This book tackles a subject that is not quite as crucial as some others. Beck says, "This book fits somewhere between Design Patterns and a ... language manual." I agree with him, but need to slide a few more in there after Design Patterns, and before this one. It's almost like a coding standard on crack. This doesn't make it bad, but it's basically in the back of the line of books that a good software engineer should read and understand.

-Pros-

As with most patterns books, this one shines a light on things that experienced developers have done for years, but maybe without thinking about why. Sometimes just being forced to think about these habits is valuable, even if you may not agree with the author's conclusions. Beck does a good job of giving us technical bits (the actual patterns) with values and principles used to guide the decision making.

One example of a pattern is Parameter Object. Here beck describes the practice wrapping parameter lists in objects and passing the composite object instead. This is something we've all done at some point for a few possible reasons. Beck just brings the issue to the forefront to make us think about when exactly to do this.

An example of one of the principles Beck uses as a guide is Symmetry. He tells us, "Symmetry in code is where the same idea is expressed the same way everywhere it appears in code." This guides us from naming variables to, say, consistently applying patterns like Parameter Object when our method parameter lists get too long.

-Summary-

This is a good book. But if I liken my bookshelf to shelf of different grit of sandpaper, this is a very fine grit: you should only use this after you've completed the coarser stuff.