Clouds to Code [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Jesse Liberty (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
While there are plenty of books on software-engineering case studies, most are big on theory and short on real-world detail. Despite its vague title, Jesse Liberty's Clouds to Code is anything but hazy. The author writes with real candor about his experiences with two large projects--one failed and one successful.

The book's most interesting description is of the demise of Ziff-Davis's Interchange, a never-released online subscription service. (It was a victim, the author says, of too much funding, too many players, too many meetings, and ultimately, the rise of the Web.) The author's proverbial two cents on management styles in software ("Keep teams small and let programmers program") is peppered with the clear vision of hindsight and experience and dispensed with a good deal of wisdom and humor.

The brunt of the book details how to design and implement an automated phone system (for calling thousands of users to disseminate weather warnings and other information) that was developed for a client company by the author's consulting firm. The author chronicles the entire project, from meetings about initial requirements, analysis, and design to implementation and deployment over a ten-month period. Instead of relying on fictitious projects, the guide provides excerpts from actual design documents at different points in the software engineering cycle, along with excellent commentary on key design decisions (such as what platform, what language, and what components to use). As it turns out, the automated phone system you have built uses Microsoft products throughout, such as NT, Internet Information Server (IIS), and SQL Server, as well as Visual C++ and Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) for the coding. All of this provides an exceptional real-world picture of the software design process in action, along with compromises and imperfections in the final "initial" release. Any software manager could benefit from this often engaging and candid text.

Product Description
PC developers are being called on to develop ever more complex systems, and in response the established tools for program design are now available on PC. "Clouds" is the colloquial name for the object diagrams that are central to UML. This book is a complete walk-through of the transition from design to development for programmers. .

Product Details

• Hardcover: 393 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information Inc.; 1st edition (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861000952
• ISBN-13: 978-1861000958
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,567,033 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, November 10, 1997

By	[e-mail] (Champaign, Illinois) - See all my reviews

Chapter 1 alone is worth the purchase price. The rest of the book is the case study itself, which I consider to be icing on the cake. Jesse Liberty recounts the challenges of a real project for a real customer. I enjoyed reading about the way they tackled decisions, the order in which they did things, and the mistakes they made.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not really worth it in the end, July 18, 2000

By	Daniel Moth (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book tries to cover so much ground so it is destined not to succeed in all areas. The technologies it covers are indeed all Microsoft focused/centred and the case study described serves as a vehicle for examining obstacles and how the author's team overcame them. However, the solutions given are not anything out of the ordinary and no new ground is broken - it is all common sense really or a case of back to basics. The reason I rate this with 3 stars (besides the luck of a 2.5 stars option) is because the first chapters have some basics on project management that are not described in the usual boring style found in other books/courses. The advice on e.g. how to prioritise deliverables or on planning a project is very straightforward, easy to follow and to the point. This is a very practical book but quite what audience it aims to satify remains unknown.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Small but valuable case study, September 26, 2001

By	Wim Ahlers (The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

A real life case study of a real project. What is interesting about this book is that all aspects from requirement assessment up till deployment of one specific project are bundled in one book.

It is very rare that you can find a real life project completely documented in one book. This by itself makes the book valuable. The only criticism I can give is that this is a fairly small-scale project (one customer, one location). The author does reflect on this subject and does consider scalability. However, I fear that the reader gets a false impression that this project can be easily scaled up. In this respect I disagree with the impression the writer gives. Nevertheless, a brave attempt and valuable book.

By the way, some others critics have some tough criticism. To me most of them are biased. His choice of an 'all Microsoft solution' might not be yours but it is a solution! IT is not science, there is no single right way of doing things.
I am biased too, that is, I would have chosen a different architecture, design, tools, and implementation model. But that is not the point!