David's blog

Err and err and err but less and less and less

David's blog

Err and err and err but less and less and less

Book reviews

Review: Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests

Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests by Steve Freeman I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this book. In spite of its excellent reviews I feared it was going to be another redundant addition to the mountain of books harping on the virtues of Test-Driven Development (TDD), without adding anything significant to […]

Review: RESTful Web Services

RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I began reading “Restful web services” while researching technical solutions for Neurobat Online, the web service version of our intelligent heating controller. Prior to this, most (all?) web service projects I had been involved in were based on SOAP. REST is a heavily […]

Book review: Agile Project Management with Scrum

I began reading Ken Schwaber’s ‘Agile Project Management with Scrum’ for two reasons: 1) it’s a book about Scrum, and 2) it’s from Ken Schwaber, one of the fathers of Scrum. Having now read it, I think these are the only reasons I don’t entirely regret reading it. The book is a series of case […]

Book review: “Hot, Flat and Crowded”

I’ve read Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded”, and firmly believe this book belongs on the shelf of anyone involved in making buildings more energy-effective. Mr Friedman’s previous bestseller, “The World is Flat”, discussed the changes to our world that enabled more and more people to participate in a global economy. “Hot, Flat and Crowded” […]

Presentation checklist

This week I started reading Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen, the well-known book on presentation design and guidelines. (I’ve borrowed it from our library after waiting for something like 9 months. There were about 10 reservations before mine, so I guess it must be popular.) On page 61 there’s a nice list of questions one should […]

Review: Decompiling Java

I just finished reading through Decompiling Java by Godfrey Nolan. You might ask, why would I mention a book on reverse-engineering bytecode in a weblog dedicated to smart buildings? What is the relationship between the intellectual property of companies writing Java code and home automation? The answer, essentially, is OSGi. An OSGi framework, in a […]

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