Greatlemer's Musings

I've not yet finished the final chapters on BDD and testing but as far as the rest of the book goes it's been disappointing. It doesn't really walk you through much of how to create a backbone application - it instead presents you with some source code for an existing app and then talks through what's going on. Whilst this may work for some people, for me I like to see the journey to that point rather than a description of what's there now (if something's good enough it'll be clear what's there anyway). Some of the code links in the book are now dead too and so it's probably best to just look at this book in the online rather than the physical version. Sadly this one's not really worth a purchase in my opinion. - G

Whilst not mentioned in the title, this book is specifically about test driven development using Django. It actually provides one of the best tutorials to starting with Django (in my opinion) as it walks you through everything from creating your first project my app through storing it in a version control system to running your own continuous integration server that will auto deploy your code into the wild for you (as long as the tests are green that is) In terms of testing it introduces the concepts well covering a variety of methods. My one criticism of this book would be that it does a little too much for you in terms of setting up the functional tests. When I tried to implement some on my own after I struggled to work out what to say. Overall though it's a brilliant book and you can try it online for free first too (just search for "obey the testing goat"). - G

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Mazes for programmers is an interesting read. Covering the unusual topic of creating mazes it works through a dozen different algorithms for doing so, as well as guides on how to apply those algorithms to a variety of grids of varying shapes, dimensions and surfaces (including how to make a maze that can fit in a Möbius strip! All of the code examples are in ruby, but the algorithms are explained well enough that you should be able to recreate them in whichever language you wish. Definitely an unusual but fun read and recommended if you're a fan of mazes or just like to learn new algorithms for things. - G

Like the pragmatic guide to sass I reviewed the other day - this is s great reference book. Structured in the same way, the author explains a topic first on before providing examples with each topic taking up a double page. All in all, a very concise reference that covers most topics you will need to know to use the version control system. - G

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So I picked this up as part of a way to learn more about backbone and how to use it. Whilst the examples are centred around backbone, the book is more of an explanation on how to use various JavaScript testing tools - particularly sinon. That said it was useful to learn a bit more about those tools and pick up a little more knowledge of backbone structure, but I'm not sure I would recommend this one too much. - G

This arrived this weekend. Easily one of my favourite games of last year - I was more than happy to pick up a second copy to show my support (and to get the cool art book and soundtrack too)! - G

I’ve been a fan of the seven in seven series for a while and I felt that this book didn’t disappoint. The languages in question are programming languages and it introduced another interesting set including two (elm and elixir) which have made it on to my list of languages I want to do more with. Unlike the original seven languages book, this was written by a trio of writers and I felt that it affected the flow to the point where there wasn’t so much consistency. The first book definitely told a story as it went through, likening each language to a film character, and whilst the second still did this it felt very much shoehorned in at the end. That said, the choice of languages was good and informative and it still maintains the style allowing you to dip your toe in and get the feel of each one. All in all a very good read and has encouraged me to find out more about several of the languages involved. - G

So it's been three weeks of the new blog and somehow I've managed to get something out every day so I'm quite pleased with the progress. This new resolution seems to be working so far.

So it's been a few days now and I've got to see a little more of the framework. It's starting to make a little more sense now and I think I'll get there soon although it's bringing up the eternal problem from software development of where the best place to associate a function should be - without really knowing what the full responsibility of each component should be it makes it tricky!

For a book on a recent technology this is a little old now (my copy said it was published in 2011) however it still refers to a version after 3.1 so the core syntax shouldn’t be too far. It’s laid out in the same style as the pragmatic guide to git (which presumably is the standard for the “guide to…” range) in that it breaks things down into small chunks with each pair of pages having a short discussion on a topic on the left page and then some examples of the topic in action on the right. This for me makes it great as reference material as combined with a decent index it’s easy to find things. On top of the coverage of SASS it includes a section on compass (a library of ready to use mixing for common tasks) and blueprint (a framework for making grid layouts which doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2011). All in all I’d say that if you like to have physical reference books then this will be useful for you although it could do with an update soon. - G