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Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software 1st Edition

by Mike Gunderloy (Author), Sybex (Author)
3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 27 ratings
See all formats and editions
"Two thumbs up"
—Gregory V. Wilson, Dr. Dobbs Journal (October 2004)

No one can disparage the ability to write good code. At its highest levels, it is an art.

But no one can confuse writing good code with developing good software. The difference—in terms of challenges, skills, and compensation—is immense.

Coder to Developer helps you excel at the many non-coding tasks entailed, from start to finish, in just about any successful development project. What's more, it equips you with the mindset and self-assurance required to pull it all together, so that you see every piece of your work as part of a coherent process. Inside, you'll find plenty of technical guidance on such topics as:

  • Choosing and using a source code control system
  • Code generation tools--when and why
  • Preventing bugs with unit testing
  • Tracking, fixing, and learning from bugs
  • Application activity logging
  • Streamlining and systematizing the build process
  • Traditional installations and alternative approaches

To pull all of this together, the author has provided the source code for Download Tracker, a tool for organizing your collection of downloaded code, that's used for examples throughout this book. The code is provided in various states of completion, reflecting every stage of development, so that you can dig deep into the actual process of building software. But you'll also develop "softer" skills, in areas such as team management, open source collaboration, user and developer documentation, and intellectual property protection. If you want to become someone who can deliver not just good code but also a good product, this book is the place to start. If you must build successful software projects, it's essential reading.

Previous slide of product details
  1. ISBN-10
    078214327X
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0782143270
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Sybex
  5. Publication date
    April 9, 2004
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.5 x 0.68 x 9.02 inches
  8. Print length
    352 pages
  9. See all details
Next slide of product details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Two thumbs up"
—Gregory V. Wilson, Dr. Dobbs Journal (October 2004)

No one can disparage the ability to write good code. At its highest levels, it is an art.

But no one can confuse writing good code with developing good software. The difference—in terms of challenges, skills, and compensation—is immense.

Coder to Developer helps you excel at the many non-coding tasks entailed, from start to finish, in just about any successful development project. What's more, it equips you with the mindset and self-assurance required to pull it all together, so that you see every piece of your work as part of a coherent process. Inside, you'll find plenty of technical guidance on such topics as:

  • Choosing and using a source code control system
  • Code generation tools—when and why
  • Preventing bugs with unit testing
  • Tracking, fixing, and learning from bugs
  • Application activity logging
  • Streamlining and systematizing the build process
  • Traditional installations and alternative approaches
To pull all of this together, the author has provided the source code for Download Tracker, a tool for organizing your collection of downloaded code, that's used for examples throughout this book. The code is provided in various states of completion, reflecting every stage of development, so that you can dig deep into the actual process of building software. But you’ll also develop “softer” skills, in areas such as team management, open source collaboration, user and developer documentation, and intellectual property protection. If you want to become someone who can deliver not just good code but also a good product, this book is the place to start. If you must build successful software projects, it’s essential reading.

About the Author

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Lark Group, Inc., an independent software consulting firm in eastern Washington. He has worked with Microsoft data access and web technologies for more than a decade. He is the author of ADO and ADO. NET Programming, and co-author of .NET Programming 10-Minute Solutions, Mastering Visual C# .NET, .NET E- Commerce Programming, and the best- selling Access 2002 Developer's Handbook series, all from Sybex.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sybex; 1st edition (April 9, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 078214327X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0782143270
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.68 x 9.02 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 27 ratings

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Mike Gunderloy

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Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
27 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Tom Forsythe
3.0 out of 5 stars Dated and basic
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2010
Verified Purchase
Coder to Developer is about the basics of being a software developer. The book focuses on going over concepts like source control, creating a build process, and bug tracking. There are also many pages that cover tools for Visual Studio .NET 2003. This is unfortunate since this information is now out of date and no longer adds any value. I didn't derive much value from it, but I feel it could have been useful for me if I had read it right after college or if I had never worked for a large software shop.

If you consider yourself more of a software developer already, I recommend reading The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master instead. Despite being written four years earlier, that book is written in a much more timeless manner by focusing on concepts and ignoring the tools of the day.
2 people found this helpful
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-JB
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Excellent and Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2005
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You may think your 5-year college degree or 10 years of coding experience make you an enterprise software developer. It does not. Instead studying how to construct re-usable, affordably maintainable and efficient code for an organization does. Read this book if you are a .Net devleoper. Then, read Code Complete. You will be well on your way to understanding what I mean. Truly great developers interview and get paid well because of their dedication to writing good code. One produces the other.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile Topics, Out of Date Tools
Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2011
Some topics in this book are timeless, the tools discussed are not. This book is so far out of date now that I cannot recommend it.

The author covers project planning and setup from spec to code storage in chapters one to three. Chapters four and five cover some good practices with .NET code. Chapters six through eight; .NET tools. Chapters nine and ten; bug tracking in .NET. Chapter 11 is how to work with people. Chapters 12 and 14 documentation and licensing. Chapter 13 and 15 build and deployment of .NET projects.

At the time of it's writing this book would have been great for a developer who was fresh out of college and starting a .NET job. I often found myself thinking, "Yep, I do that because learned the hard way". I also found myself skipping sections when author mentioned a specific tool.

I wish I could give this book a good review. Had I read this when it came out I would have given it five stars. Now it's worth at most a skim of the good chapters.
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Steven Ketcham
4.0 out of 5 stars Quality read
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2005
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I am surprised at the number of people that complained about the .Net specific material. I have read many books using JAVA and other languages that translated well to my current development efforts. It's how the tools are used not what the tools are.

This book is a great introductory text into general programming techniques: take advantage of your IDE, use tools that complement your IDE, use test driven development, map out a project, team development, track your time, etc.

Almost all the subjects deal with programmer professionalism. Subjects that we take for granted that no one really writes about and most programming texts do not delve into: leverage your tools, look for resources beyond the accepted tool set. Will this make you a top notch programmer? No, but it's like having a break room conversation with a programmer ace and realizing that what you do could be a lot easier.
3 people found this helpful
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Jonathan Hendry
3.0 out of 5 stars Best for .NET-using novices
Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2004
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I really didn't get much out of the book. The .NET-specific content, of which there is plenty, wasn't useful or interesting for me, because I work on Java and Macintosh software.
If you're not a novice programmer, I'd strongly suggest looking over the text before purchasing.
It would, I think, be useful for a novice programmer, or someone fresh out of school who's been working on class assignments, rather than real-world projects.
The author is focused on individual or small-team development, but I would have liked to have seen quite a bit more on design and development processes.
9 people found this helpful
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Jack D. Herrington
5.0 out of 5 stars Great source of ideas, techniques and technologies
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2004
Coder to Developer is one of the best technical books I have read in years. Like The Pragmatic Programmer and Software Craftsmanship before it, this book teaches how to be better engineer in the areas outside of strict coding. Yes it teaches a little about specific coding practices, but the intent of the book is to cover the breadth of skills required of a true developer. Skills like project management, architecture, engineering process, source code control, and relating to the customer. These are the types of career skills than will move you from a coder cog to an invaluable developer.
Mike finds the right depth in the book, not too deep into the technical details, nor so abstract as to be an architectural tome for the ages. When it comes to coding the book is primarily focused on C# on the .NET platform, but you should let that dissuade you. He covers a wide variety of techniques and technologies and the book is valuable for anyone involved in the engineering side of the software industry.
The book follows the rough timeline of application development, from nailing down the feature set in the first chapter to delivering the product in the last chapter. The book is fairly brief (roughly 300 pages). Chapter by chapter:
Chapter one covers planning out your project. It covers gathering requirements and how to decide on a development methodology for the project. It gives a decent overview of all of the popular development methodologies and pointers as to where to learn more. It also covers some software that you probably didn't know was out there but that can help you as you nailing down the feature set.
Chapter two covers architecture and gives a nice overview of both the UML and Patterns side of the business, and the more fast and loose XP development process.
Chapter three covers source code control and it's one of the best chapters in the book. When I got through chapter three I knew already that the book was worth the purchase price. This chapter covers in a very concise manner the best practices of source code control and the products that are available on the market.
Chapter four is a brief introduction to sane coding practices; using tools like assertions and exceptions, and how to comment code effectively.
Chapter five gives a high level, but insightful, summary of the unit testing, system testing, and the technique and benefits of test driven development. This is one of the best chapters.
Chapter six covers the IDE and how to make the best use of it. This is a fairly Microsoft specific chapter, but you can learn some tricks that are applicable to other development environments.
Chapter seven covers a topic which is often ignored, the skill of digging into code at the system level and finding your way around. This one is definitely .NET specific, and it was a little too low level for me. Your mileage may vary.
Chapter eight covers code generation, a topic near and dear to me. It's a very practical chapter introduction and should save .NET developers a lot of time.
Chapter nine is about bug tracking and fixing. As with the rest of the chapter this is a concise introduction to the topic that gives you a feeling for the benefits of bug tracking, which should be obvious, and advice about tools and process. Once again I have never seen a book that provides a good argument with the brevity of Mike's writing style. Code Complete, for example, covers this stuff, but it's thick and impenetrable. This book gets right to the core of the topic and presents it in a very accessible way.
Chapter ten covers logging, which can be overdone. Again pragmatic and practical advice. But this chapter is fairly .NET specific.
Chapter eleven is about the dynamics of small teams. He introduces Instant Messaging, Wikis, and group ware. A nice introduction, but a bit brief.
Chapter twelve is about both end-user and code documentation and the tools to develop it quickly.
Chapter thirteen covers the build process. The tools are fairly .NET specific (nant), but the process and the methodology are appropriate to any production software development shop. Another nice chapter with content you will be hard pressed to find in such a concise form anywhere else.
Chapter fourteen is about licensing. This is important for open source developers. It has a nice comparison of the popular open source licenses and makes sense of all of the legal gobbledygook.
Chapter fifteen is about installers and application delivery. It's primarily for .NET desktop application developers.
There is an old story about a developer that is walking out of a tech show empty-handed, he says to the security guard that he 'Stole a fortune'. The security guard, puzzled, asks, 'But you have nothing.' The developer responds that he now has new ideas! This is that kind of book. It's full of ideas for the software process, ideas about how to code, and ideas about tools you can use.
If you are an engineer who is passionate about his craft, this is an important book for you to read. But you probably know that already.
26 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Dr.
5.0 out of 5 stars Ideal for single developers and small businesses
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 18, 2004
Verified Purchase
As a single developer, I wish I had read this book 2 years ago.
In a simple, no-nonsense style, it guides you through the essentials of planning, managing, deploying and selling your software. I develop asp.net websites and have found this book extremely useful to follow "good practice" in my development process.
I does not advocate expensive software and spells out in detail the pros and cons of the various software solutions it mentions (eg. for source control, bug tracking, build management etc).
The author writes from personal experience and is obviously aware of the issues faced by lone developers or small development teams on a tight budget. The book gave me a good grounding in best practices, something which other programming books assume that every developer already knows.
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_empi_
2.0 out of 5 stars very .NET centric
Reviewed in Germany on September 22, 2004
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This book offers a short overview over modern development 'non-coding' activities. Nothing more, nothing less. If you're somewhat up to date on the state of the art in software engineering, you are not going to enjoy this book.
There are several chapters that especially deal with Visual Studio .NET, how to pump up the IDE, which add-ins to get... complete with prices, this is information that will be out of date in less than a year.
Only somebody who comes straight from college and has only had some small introduction to coding or someone who hasn't been programming for >10 years AND is stuck on the .NET platform _might_ benefit from it.
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Leftyx
2.0 out of 5 stars Waste of money
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2015
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Waste of money.
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