The first 4 (Head First Design Patterns, User Stories Applied, Design Patterns and Refactoring) I have finished reading and can highly recommend, the last 4 (xUnit Test Patterns, Test-Driven Development, Code Complete and Implementation Patterns) I am currently reading.
…for everyone but me. I must have pissed lot of people off yesterday. I wasn’t included in anything today despite being the project’s senior programmer/analyst. The day just seemed to drag on…
and just like that, the old site is back, resurrected from the ashes of daphne. some parts of the site still need some tweaking, and hopefully i’ll do that over the next few weeks. if you come across any broken links or error messages, drop a note in the comments of this post. thanks!
so, what have i been doing for the last 13-14 months? enjoying being a father mainly. my daughter emma was born april 6, 2006. there is nothing quite like the look on her face when you come home from a long day at work. just cheers you right up.
we also moved last october to a townhome, not far from where our terrace home condo was. it’s nice to have a little backyard, even if it is the size of a postage stamp!
Amazon.ca is awesome! My orders always seem to come a week earlier than the estimate. I order on Thursday afternoon and it is sitting in my mailbox waiting for me when I get home on Monday.
My first read will be “Freakonomics” which has been on the New York Times best-seller list (non-fiction) for 44 weeks. I’m one chapter in and already it’s an interesting read.
Next will be “The Mythical Man-Month”, the classic book on the human aspect of software engineering. It was first published over 30 years ago now.
Finally I will finish up reading my very own copy of “The Art of Project Management” which I had mentioned in an earlier post.
I thought that I would give y’all the heads up on a few good books I’ve been reading of late.
“The Broker” by John Grisham: A little bit different from most of his other books in that this one is almost a spy story, rather than a legal/political one. Though the main character is an ex-lawyer, so I guess it’s not that different. But I found it gripping. I couldn’t put it down and finished from cover to cover in a few days.
“God’s Debris” by Scott Adams (of “Dilbert” fame): Adams describes it as a “thought experiment”. I found it to be a really interesting read, and polished it off in a few days as well. This one is available free online.
“The Art of Project Management” by Scott Berkun: This one is, of course, non-fiction. Written by an ex-Microsoftee it’s definitely written from a IT project management point of view, but the author is quick to note that much of the advice applies to managing other types of projects. I found it well written and easy to read with lots of useful advice.
“.Net Gotchas” by Venkat Subramaniam: Pretty heavy technical reading. If you really want to become a .Net guru it a good read. You really need to be able to focus on the text when you read it and you should have a fairly good knowledge of the .Net framework to get the most from this book.
