The Software Development Book

Author : Mark Watson
Publication Date : March 13, 2007
Free License : Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Version 3.0 United States License

Excerpt from the Preface:

In today's economy, the savvy software developer asked herself "how can I earn money for my company", not "what technology toys do I want to play with today". There must be a reasonable balance between a focus on technology and a focus on business processes and problem solving.

Although this book is about Software Development, it is also about working in the IT field, dealing with competition from very low cost knowledge workers in countries with very low cost of livings, etc. Increasingly, "just coding in Java" is not enough: this book is based on my own experiences in moving "up the food chain" by both developing skills as a software architect and developing a passion for niche technologies (small market but little competition) like artificial intelligence.

This book is a hybrid, combining new ideas for a lightweight approach to using UML for design and discussing in cookbook fashion design recipes for a few problems that modern developers face.

The goal of this book is to encourage the reader to step back and reevaluate how they design and write software systems. The great computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra, who died recently, once said "Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes." That is not simply a glib remark! Talk to successful software designers and developers and they will probably tell you that they do their best work in design and problem solving away from their computer, often taking a walk with colleagues or sitting outside with a pad of paper.

So, the reader is expected to think about the entire software design and implementation process in the first part of this book and reevaluate how they do their work. The second part of the book contains case studies for six design problems.

Intended Audience:

This book is for (mostly) Java software developers who worry about the economy and their careers and want to proactively do something about their fears by improving the way they design and write software.

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