Learning Cocoa with Objective-C: Developing for the Mac and iOS App Stores Book Review

This book is a nice concise no nonsense introduction to Objective-C. This book is different than most of the Objective-C books I have read in that it uses Cocoa and Cocoa Touch to teach the language. The books starts out covering the developer programs, Xcode, Object-Oriented Programming with Objective C, and the Foundation library. It then has a chapter on the contents of iOS and OS X applications and how they are each packaged. This is a must read chapter for those coming from a Windows background. The book continues to cover a ton of topics. I have listed the chapters included in the book below to show you the topics covered. 1. Cocoa Development Tools 2. Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C 3. Foundation 4. Applications on OS X and iOS 5. Graphical User Interfaces 6. Blocks and Operation Quotes 7. Drawing Graphics in Views 8. Audio and Video 9. Model Objects and Data Storage 10. Cocoa Bindings 11. Table Views and Collection Views 12. Document-Based Applications 13. Networking 14. Working with the Real World 15. Event Kit 16. Instruments and the Debugger 17. Sharing and Notifications 18. Nonstandard Apps 19. Working with Text 20. iCloud You may be wondering what the heck Operation Quotes are that are covered in chapter 6. That should have been Operation Queues. One of the main things I like about this book is that the topics are short and also very informative. There are not 10 samples and scenarios to show you the ins and outs of the topic at hand, the author just provides an example and a short explanation which is enough. This style of covering topics does require that you be an experienced programmer. An experienced programmer coming from the Java or .NET world should do fine with this style of teaching. The short chapters make the book a very easy cover to cover read. The pace at which topics change is nice. The short chapters also makes this book an ideal reference for learning a lot about a topic in a short amount of time. I would recommend reading the first 6 chapters in order, but then after that the chapters stand alone. The code is organized into one workspace which makes it very easy to use. It also works as is and is very usable. Over all I highly recommend this book to any experienced developer coming from the Java or .NET world. If you have no programming experience you may want to spend some time learning C first.

Learning Cocoa with Objective-C: Developing for the Mac and iOS App Stores

Essential C# 5.0 Book Review

If you are looking to get into .NET development, this book is a great place to start. This book will teach you all you need to know about C# development. It will provide C# beginners with a complete foundation on which to build other .NET skills like WPF, Windows 8 App Store, XAML, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, etc. The book does not cover the libraries to implement these technologies, but that is a good thing. You should have a solid understand of C# before moving on to them. I have read a lot of C# books that include coverage of the base class libraries, WPF, Windows Forms, and ASP.NET as the second half of the book. I have never bothered with those parts of the book unless I was simply looking for an introduction to a new technology. They are never covered in-depth enough to do them justice. By leaving them out of this book, the authors were able to provide deeper coverage of the C# 5.0 language. The book covers a ton of topics. I have listed the chapters below to give you an idea of the topics covered. 1. Introducing C# 2. Data Types 3. Operators and Control Flow 4. Methods and Parameters 5. Classes 6. Inheritance 7. Interfaces 8. Value Types 9. Well-Formed Types 10. Exception Handling 11. Generics 12. Delegates and Lambda Expressions 13. Events 14. Collection Interfaces with Standard Query Operators 15. LINQ with Query Expressions 16. Building Custom Collections 17. Reflection, Attributes, and Dynamic Programming 18. Multithreading 19. Thread Synchronization 20. Platform Interoperability and Unsafe Code 21. The Common Language Infrastructure A. Downloading and Installing the C# Compiler and CLI Platform B. Tic-Tac-Toe Source Code Listing C. Interfacing with Mutithreading Patterns Prior to the TPL and C# 5.0 D. Timers Prior to the Async/Await Pattern of C# 5.0 Index Index of 5.0 Topics Index of 4.0 Topics Index of 3.0 Topics One of the coolest things about this book is the 4 indexes. Not only is there a really nice complete index, the authors have also provided an index for .NET 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 topics to make it easier to find version specific topics. Each chapter starts with a mind map that provides an at-a-glance view of the topics covered in the chapter. These give you a really nice view of what to expect from the chapter. Each chapter is packed with sidebar coding guidelines containing dos, don'ts, considerations, and things to avoid for the topic at hand. The authors also have included sections titled Beginner Topics and Advanced Topics. These are nice because it helps those just getting started to identify advanced topics that they can skip when just starting out, and it shows advanced readers what they can skip when delving into a topic. They have also include something pretty cool they call Language Contrast sidebars. They identify key differences between C# and other languages. The languages include C++, Java, and Visual Basic .NET. Although the things I mentioned above add tremendous value to the book, the best the about the book is the author's writing styles. Both of them write in a way that makes the book interesting and easy to read. The flow of topics are very logical making the book easy to read cover to cover, but it is also a great reference. The indexes I have mentioned above really help make this fast and easy to use reference. The only ding I will give this book is the download for the sample code is not complete. Mark (one of the authors) says on his site you can email him to request individual samples. I had emailed him asking where the download was because I couldn't find it the second time I looked for it, and got back a response that he is travelling until February. I was looking for the download because I noticed samples missing and wanted to see if there was a more complete version available. There are projects for the samples that are missing, but they are just empty. The author's should take the time to fix this. Either delete the empty projects, or complete them. They should also include a read me file explaining the missing samples are intentionally missing. The missing source code does not take any value away from the book. They are complete in the book and are small. It was just a bit confusing. Over all I highly recommend this book to all levels of C# developers. I will definitely be keeping this book by my side. For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013

Essential C# 5.0 (4th Edition)

A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development Book Review

I must admit that before I began reading this book I truly thought it was going to be another twisted story of an attempt at agile that failed in everyone's eyes except for those that needed to say it was a success. That is what I am used to. It is kind of like when I am on a product reference call to CIO. The product is always great and the company who sold it is always wonderful. Why some people think the CIO is going to say they didn't do their due diligence when picking a vendor, and the product and company we are asking about sucks, is beyond me? They never do. The same is true of almost all the agile projects I have seen. They end over budget, buggy, and pretty much the same way most projects end that use any other process, but they are always deemed a success by those involved. I was ready to tell myself I was correct in my assumption when I got blasted on page 2 with the Agile Manifesto, but decided to give them to the end of the chapter. In the next section of the chapter they caught my attention with the last of a list of 6 topics which was their take on Agile/Lean Principles. Number 6 was practitioners should define agile/lean practices. I find myself saying the same thing all the time on a ton of different projects. When it comes to leading large complex agile projects, if you have not come up through the ranks being mentored on successful agile projects, and learning through experience, not books, you have no business defining process and leading the project. I have met very few people who agree with this line of thought and it impressed me that the authors did. That one line of thought pushed me to read chapter 2. Again I was pleasantly surprised with the authors discussing the need to engineer a solution. Not implement a process, but engineer a solution. By the end of this chapter the authors had done a great job summarizing where their teams use their resources now and assembled some excellent development objectives. Another thing the authors discussed was the capacity of their organization to absorb change. This is something that is almost always overlooked when bringing in new development processes, agile or not, this is something that needs to be looked at throughout the entire organization. This is usually just isolated to the development teams, but the new processes affect every department when they are implemented correctly. At the end of the chapter the authors list their achievements:   -2008 to present overall development costs reduced by 40%   -Number of programs under development increased by 140%   -Development costs per program down 78%   -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40%) I am sure these seem exaggerated, and that is what I believed until I read the next two chapters. Over the course of the next two chapters the authors fully won me over. They proceeded to outline implementing a Software Product Line using their own process language. I know from my own experience that when Software Product Line Engineering is done correctly it will always produce improvements like those listed above. The authors nail exactly what enables their ability to implement an iterative agile process, and that would be investing in the right architecture. Any sizable project that doesn't invest in the architecture and claims they are able to pull off the project in an agile way is full of crap, period. Product Line Engineering is the process that offers the highest level of agility over all other processes. It is tailorable for different levels of ceremony and is therefore able to run lighter than Scrum given the right team and right environment. One of the main benefits of Product Line Engineering is the ability to collect metrics and in Chapter 5 the authors identify how to take advantage of them the right way, which is not to manage by metrics, but to use the metrics to understand where to have conversations about what is not getting done. Chapter 5 also outlines their iterative process. The book continues to cover excellent process practices throughout the rest of the book, and they are applied to a real world project which drives home their value even more. Below are all the chapters included in the book. Chapter 1. Agile Principles versus Practices Chapter 2. Tuning Agile to Your Business Objectives Chapter 3. Aligning Architecture with Business Objectives Chapter 4. How to Establish a New Architecture Using Agile Concepts Chapter 5. The Real Secret to Success in Large-Scale Agile Chapter 6. Continuous Integration and Quality Systems Chapter 7. Taming the Planning Beast Chapter 8. Unique Challenges of Estimating Large Innovations Chapter 9. Our Take on Project Management for Large-Scale Agile Chapter 10. Organizational Approach: Managing to Disadvantages Chapter 11. Effective Agile Development Across U.S. and Indian Cultures Chapter 12. The Right Tools: Quantum Leaps in Productivity Chapter 13. Real-World Agile Results: HP FutureSmart Firmware Chapter 14. Change Management in Moving Toward Enterprise Agility Chapter 15. Differences in Our Perspective on Scaling Agile Chapter 16. Taking the First Step Unlike a lot of books I have read on implementing agile practices on large scale projects I believe the results of this project were reported accurately. I also believed the results were achieved with an iterative agile process. They are honest about the issues they ran into and they hammer on prototyping for architectural issues, which is definitely the way to go. The author's writing styles make the book an easy read and the story that is told along the way is a very interesting one. I did not get bored with even one page of this book. This book is a must read for any CIO, Enterprise Architect, Software Architect, Project Manager, or other IT roles in charge of or involved with large scale initiatives that they are hoping to pull off in an agile way. The book tells the story of how to achieve success based on a real world success, not a made up fictional case study.

A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware

iOS 6 Programming Cookbook Book Review

This is a massive cookbook with tons of recipes. It covers a ton of material and it covers it in depth. Although this book is more of a reference than a cover to cover read, every time I use it to look something up I find myself getting sucked in and reading several chapters. The author starts off with a really cool chapter called The Basics. It covers a ton of basics. Everything from packaging iOS apps for distribution to Objective-C language basics to loading data from bundles to using NSNotificationCenter to broadcast events. The rest of the chapter's recipes topics are reflected in the titles of the chapters. I have listed them all below. 1. The Basics 2. Implementing Controllers and Views 3. Auto Layout and the Visual Format Language 4. Constructing and Using Table Views 5. Storyboards 6. Concurrency 7. Core Location and Maps 8. Implementing Gesture Recognizers 9. Networking, JSON, XML, and Twitter 10. Audio and Video 11. Address Book 12. Files and Folder Management 13. Camera and the Photo Library 14. Multitasking 15. Core Data 16. Dates, Calendars, and Events 17. Graphics and Animations 18. Core Motion 19. iCloud 20. Pass Kit Each chapter begins with a short introduction to the topic that will be covered by the recipes, and each recipe has a Problem, Solution, and Discussion section. Chapter 2 is my favorite chapter. It is 153 pages long and covers a ton of the controls and views in iOS 6. It is really nice to see a full example dedicated to each one of the controls. So far I have used this book to figure out how to deploy my application to testers using the iPhone Configuration Utility, add maps and getting directions to my application, make use of the NSURLConnection, get started with Core Data, get static Json data out of the application's bundle, and make use of the address book, camera, and photo library. The downloadable code is awesome. It is very well organized and is very usable. It all just runs, which is great. I have had a few books recently where that was not the case. This book will stay by my side until the next version of it becomes available. I am constantly reaching for it. Any serious iOS 6 developer owes it to themselves to pick up a copy of this book. For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013

iOS 6 Programming Cookbook