Customer Reviews

Google Guice: Agile Lightweight Dependency Injection Framework (FirstPress)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a thin book that was churned out quickly, like all in the Firstpress series. There are some errors, and the topic isn't covered in great depth. On the other hand, it's the only book out there strictly devoted to Guice. So if you really want to learn Guice quickly, this book will help.

On the other hand, the much-improved (and much-different) Guice 2.0 is currently in beta. As is Spring 3.0, which has a far richer feature set (some might call it absurdly large) than Guice; the two aren't exclusive, but if you use Spring, you should ask whether you really need to add Guice. And an upcoming book, Dependency Injection in Action (which you can buy an early eBook of through Manning's MEAP program) covers Guice more thoroughly. So if you do get this book, it might not be useful for very long.

[Edit: Guice 2.0 has now been released. I'd avoid this book and learn the new version instead.]

This book has the potential for being useful, but it contains numerous errors, typos, incorrect references, etc. In addition, the explanations are not helpful unless you already know Guice or Spring. So, if you're coming to Guice without having worked with DI framework before, this book will serve only to confuse you further.

Perhaps the final edition of this book will improve, but this version is very weak.

I was new to DI when I was reading this book and it successfully managed to make even bigger mess in my head. Guice itself is good but online resources seemed much more understandable for me. And other thing that really made me angry about this book - I needed to setup quite complex set of jars (stuff like struts) just to be able to follow the book's code.

Author somehow failed to explain Guice in nice and simple examples.

This book is simply not adequate to its subject. If you have no better resources, avoid Guice.

I am hopeful that Guice itself is useful, but this book leaves that question unanswered.

(DI) Dependancy Injection is critical to doing test driven development there are many DI frameworks but none are as simple to use, lightweight and as type safe as guice. The author does a very good job helping you get started using guice and even shows some advanced features of guice. If your into test driven development you owe it to yourself to check out how guice can make your life easier.

Google Guice is both the name of agile code, and an agile book. Just as agile development emphasizes light-weight processes and elevates YAGNI to a chant, Vanbrabant's style is quick, to the point, and covers all the important bits first and formost, only giving enough about non-essentials to alert you to them.

Already in my Spring-dominated office I have had a manager and another developer, both conservative in their technologies, pick up the book, read it, and come back to me sold on trying out Guice in a project. Guice is that good; so is the book.