Book Review: Coder to Developer

I bought Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software with vouchers I was given for my birthday – i.e. it’s bought-and-paid-for and this review reflects that..

I first discovered this book via Joel Spolsky’s post about his foreword for it. Based on his recommendation, and the reviews on Amazon I decided to buy it.

The author does a good job of breaking down the software development process into managable chunks, and how to tackle these chunks. I didn’t really learn anything new from the book – it is essentially a compilation of best practices, almost all of which are covered in various places on the web, but it’s nice to see them in one place.

My only real criticism is that when discussing various tools to help with the various tasks, the emphasis is placed on the author’s favourite commercial tools over the Free/Open alternatives. While this may suit some people, I disagreed with it and made me feel as though parts of the book are more advert than advice.

I would recommend it to all people looking for an overview of the software development process, but they should be warned of the focus on .NET and commercial bias towards development and tools. That said, a few OSS projects could benefit from reading it simply to learn the basics of developing software – to paraphrase the book:

Don’t confuse writing good code with developing good software.

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