Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software

Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software is written by Patrick Cauldwell Intended audience for this book is experienced developers/architects/Tech Managers. But this is a must read book for all developers/process owners. Author has divided the whole books in three parts: 1. Test Drivern Development and Continous Integration 2. Process for Testing/Source Control & Code Analyss 3. Code Construction (Dependecies, Tracing, Error Handling) I liked Cauldwell explanation on Buy/Build, Using Open Source Application and creating unit/integration tests, source control, analysis tools and tracing capabilities and found it very useful for developers and Managers also who wants to setup software development process for their group. In first section, this book talks about some of the philosophy behind test-driven development, continuous integration, and the main buy vs build decision, not so much how to do TDD or continuous integration. In Second Section, it is all about the processes. Starting with how you know when have you completed some tasks, how to properly do testing, how to use source control and how to use and understand static code analysis. The third section concentrated on how to actually put code together. Author talks about how to develop using interfaces and how to find and limit dependencies. Section three also covers the model-view-presenter pattern of application development, and some good guidance on how to use tracing and how to do error handling. Authour is very concise and to the point but whereever required, he is going a bit into details. Authur is .Net developer, so he has given examples on using .Net technologies but along with it he discussed lots of open source and alternative commercial tools for other development platforms. Author combined process, tools and people, to make a better product. You will find lots of tips in this book, e.g., – Adding a slight delay in you continuous build process to prevent a couple of atomic checkins by one developer all triggering a new build – Setting your acceptable level of code coverage that will trigger a build fail to just below your current level, instead of some ridiculously high level that will result in build failures for weeks to come This book covers all the main concepts for setting up a professional development environment. Most of the practices it talks about are main practices in agile software development.