Book Club Update February 2008

As promised I finished “About Face” sometime around the turn of the month. In desperation I grabbed “The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas soon thereafter and fortunately so; that very evening my commute home (and my commute the following morning to work) was delayed when my bus broke down on the expressway. I’ll spare you the Chicagoan sentiment for the Chicago Transit Authority. Also as foretold I’ve been reading this book in parallel with a fiction work in the StarCraft universe, alternating daily. I’ve already finished both Gabriel Mesta’s “Shadow of the Xel’Naga” and Christie Golden “StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga: Firstborn”.

On “Pragmatic”:

This will not go down as one of my all time favorite books. It’s shredded wheat; the advice is mostly sound but it just hasn’t taken my attention and run way with it the way previous books have. I’m about two-thirds of the way through it. I agree with a lot of what it says but I’m neither dragging my feet nor racing to its end. The book comes from an older and broader experience than the Microsoft .NET sphere and shows strong ties to the Java/*nix community. It has though made me realize some of the severe limitations in some of the text editors I use and caused me to rethink how I view duplication. It makes a real good case for not just avoiding code duplication but (where possible) duplication of knowledge – so DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) includes documentation and database schemas, etc.

On “Xel’Naga”:

What? You didn’t think I was going to read a book and not talk about it just because it’s not technical did you? It’s an ok first stab at a StarCraft book. The author understandably falls into the habit (particularly in the early chapters) of making declarations about the SC races and characters just for the sake of saying “Hey, this is StarCraft!” For a true fan they’re adorably transparent but clearly intended to benefit SC laypersons. This might also be an artifact of the main character being from a backwater planet far removed from the events of the game and requiring a lot of exposition. The plot is ok. The good thing about it is it sets up for Firstborn pretty well.

On “Firstborn”:

OMG – Finally a book about the Protoss – technically the main character of the book is a Terran male and it takes place entirely in Terran Dominion space but delves pretty deeply into Protoss history by way of this Terran’s … forced psychic symbiote – a Protoss “Preserver” that holds the collective memory of her entire race. This book is definitely better written (IMHO) than Xel’Naga in that it really draws you into the SC universe without making obvious its attempts to do so – but that may just be because the main characters aren’t as naïve about the military and the three races as in “Xel’Naga”.

What’s next?

Since I will be finishing “The Pragmatic Programmer” soon I’m still on the lookout for a quality WPF book. Also I’ve already started “StarCraft: The Dark Templar Saga – Shadow Hunters”. More on that as it comes. Until next time happy reading!

February 21, 2008 · Anthony D. Green · No Comments
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