“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.

The Rational Unified Process is a powerful tool for improving software development — but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Today’s development organizations need to extend RUP to cover the entire IT lifecycle, including the cross-project and enterprise issues it largely ignores. The Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) does precisely that, enabling you to deliver systems that meet all the needs of today’s businesses. Now, EUP’s creator and architects present the definitive introduction to EUP, and demonstrate how to use it in your environment.The Enterprise Unified Process
systematically identifies the business and technical problems that RUP fails to address, and shows how EUP fills those gaps. Using actual examples and case studies, the authors introduce processes and disciplines for producing new software, implementing strategic reuse, “sunsetting” obsolete code and systems, managing software portfolios,
and much more. Their independent, “tool agnostic” coverage will be indispensable no matter which RUP products or platforms you’ve invested in.

If you’ve asked someone the secret to writing efficient, well-written software, the answer that you’ve probably gotten is “learn assembly language programming.” By learning assembly language programming, you learn how the machine really operates and that knowledge will help you write better high-level language code. A dirty little secret assembly language programmers rarely admit to, however, is that what you really need to learn is machine organization, not assembly language programming. Write Great Code Vol I, the first in a series from assembly language expert Randall Hyde, dives right into machine organization without the extra overhead of learning assembly language programming at the same time. And since Write Great Code Vol I concentrates on the machine organization, not assembly language, the reader will learn in greater depth those subjects that are language-independent and of concern to a high level language programmer. Write Great Code Vol I will help programmers make wiser choices with respect to programming statements and data types when writing software, no matter which language they use.

Eclipse is more than a state-of-the-art IDE: its Rich Client Platform (RCP) plug-ins form an outstanding foundation for any desktop application, from chat applications to enterprise software front-ends. In Eclipse Rich Client Platform, two leaders of the Eclipse RCP project show exactly how to leverage Eclipse for rapid, efficient, ross-platform desktop development.

In addition to explaining the power of Eclipse as a desktop application development platform, the authors walk step-by-step through developing a fully featured, branded
RCP application. They introduce a wide range of techniques, including developing pluggable and dynamically extensible systems, using third-party code libraries, and packaging applications for diverse environments. You’ll build, refine, and refactor a complete prototype; customize the user interface; add Help and Update features; and build, brand, and ship the finished software.

• For every Java developer, regardless of previous Eclipse experience
• Thoroughly covers Eclipse 3.1’s new RCP features and its extensive new
  tools for designing, coding, and packaging RCP applications
• Presents techniques for branding and customizing the look and feel of RCP applications
• Shows how to overcome the challenges and “rough edges” of RCP development
• Discusses the similarities and differences between RCP and conventional plug-in development
• Includes an overview of OSGi, the base execution framework for Eclipse