Paul Lynch's Pages

I saw this title in a press release from O’Reilly, and was intrigued by the description. For the last few years I have been letting myself concentrate almost entirely on WebObjects, and along the way I have acquired a few programming habits as I have matured as a programmer. This book seemed to embody them – and it does. It starts well, with an evangelical sell about agile methods, but then lacks meat. It just keeps on selling and selling, until about two/thirds in, when it entirely turns around and talks code. This sounds ok, but the switch is extreme (not a pun). Checking the catalog, this may be just the switch between two authors; and if so, some sloppy editing. Instead of explaining the code, it just drops onto the paper. Like many current books and articles, it also talks about lightweight, easy to understand programming, and yet is happy to use multiple layers of programming, inner classes, and some of the other horrors of Java style. Part of my reason to read it was because it includes examples that expouse the use of Hibernate and Spring. Summary: good in principle, slips shy of perfection in the execution.