Saturday, June 7, 2003

First ESDS Book: "Code Reading"

A little over a year ago, I announced that I was working with Addison
Wesley on a new book series, the Effective Software Development Series.
Now I'm pleased to announce that the first book in the series has come out.
It's "Code Reading" by Diomidis Spinellis, and I think it's really good.
(Duh. It wouldn't be in the series if I didn't.)

The subtitle of the book is "The Open Source Perspective," and at one
point, I remarked to Diomidis that the most accurate title for the book
would actually be something like "Everything you need to know about
examining open source software projects."

Fundamentally, the book is about how to go about making enough sense of
unfamiliar software systems so that you can modify or extend them. All of
the examples are from Open Source projects, and the book ships with a CD
containing the full source of everything the book mentions. That's some 7
millions lines of code on the CD.

You can find more information about Code Reading at
http://www.awprofessional.com/catalog/product.asp?product_id={DE5EA6BB-1743-406B\
-A680-D1B335BA7EA2}

I hope you like this opening salvo in the Effective Software Development
Series.

Scott