No matter wheather you like Microsoft or not…

That’s it and it’s coming.

November the 4th (USA), November the 10th (Europe)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinect

Well, I’m not an experienced developer nor a well shaped professional. Anyway, in my little experience, I’ve had the chance to discover how much important could be a true, experienced and offish advice in everyday work. In particular I’ve had the chance to get those advices from colleagues, friends. Unfortunately most of the times you have to rely on yourself only, so no way to get a slap on your back right when you need it. But hey, you are old enough to find some help in another way. For example by paying…for a good book! If you are strong enough to live without getting some slaps on your back, of course..

After a year and a half I realized I was wondering in the dark, every day: my work as developer was totally out of control, code I was writing was really far from being a good one and I felt lost as I didn’t know how to improve. Then a slap on my back came from a good friend of mine. He gave me a good advice: to buy a simple, thin book titled “Practices of an Agile Developer” written by a certain A. Hunt. In the meantime I was starting reading yet another strange book titled “Extreme programming explained”. I think that just a little bunch of you out there read it at least once in your life. Anyway, as I trust in my friend’s advices, and most of all I like to test whether they were right or not, I started reading this new book. And soon I proved that advice was really a good one.

Again, I’m not an experienced reviewer. Well, I’m not a reviewer at all. But at least this time I think I can give you a good advice: Practices of an Agile Developer is really a good book. Not a wonderful book, not the best book in the world, but a book that is worth paying for. One reason for all: it gives you what it promises (whether the title of a book is a promise, of course). As a matter of fact, as the title states, it is very practical, always agile and really developer oriented. In each part of it. So please, do not expect some kind of “philosophical sugar” as you won’t get any out of it.

The book is composed by 10 chapters, split in short, incredibly clear and very focused sections. The most interesting thing about it, at least the one I liked most, is that every single section is an advice. Thanks god, this book is a big bunch of advices ready to be digested!! A full set of experienced friendly passionate advices that can immediately change your everyday life as (un)experienced developer. Furthermore, another thing I really loved, is that I found many little pieces of my everyday working life spread more or less in every section of this book. This was very surprising to me as I finally realized it: this book is not made of oddities, this book is not fiction, this book comes from real life and helps me dealing with real life.  As the back cover states “you could learn all this stuff the hard (…) way, by trial and error, but this book can save you both time and pain. Read it, and you’ll be a better developer.”. Yet another good advice!