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The M in Rails’ MVC: Domain Driven Design

by jfcouture on September 25, 2007 · 1 Comment

One of the best books I’ve read about design is Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, by Eric Evans. InfoQ has a small ebook called Domain Driven Design Quickly that provides a nice summary of the book. It was a good refresher for me as I read DDD about three years ago.

So What is Domain Driven Design? Read the link to have a good overview. Here are the two most important points:

  • Focus on modeling the domain and domain logic of your application.
  • Build a “Ubiquitous Language” that is used by all the team (from domain experts to analysts to developpers).

The most interesting part of the book for me was the patterns presented as the basic building blocks of a model-driven design: Layered Architecture, Entities, Value Objects, Services, Modules, Aggregates, Factories, Repositories. These are all very simple but fundamental patterns in software development. These are types of objects that are present in all designs. Understanding the difference between a value object and an entity is crucial and can help simplify a design.

The book also discusses the importance of iterative design, the importance of incorporating back what you learned about the domain in the model as you iterate and how to preserve the integrity of the model. There is a good discussion of ways of separating the model as the team gets bigger.

The value of this book for a Rails developer

Ever heard about skinny controller, fat model? This is THE book about building a rich model.

However, it really depends on the type of application you’re building. Most Rails application are mostly concerned about CRUD operations without too much logic behind. You won’t get out much from this book.

But if you’re working on a business app with a lot of business logic, then this is a must-read.

The ebook also has a small interview with the author. He highlights the expressiveness of ruby and mentions that DSLs are probably the next big step in Domain Driven Design.

Popularity: 31% [?]

 

Montreal Web Development Book Club, August Edition

by jfcouture on August 29, 2007 · 2 Comments

Last monday was the third edition of the book club. We grew to a party of five this time. Heri talked about Building Scalable Websites, a book by Cal Henderson, lead developer of flickr. Even though Heri recommends the book, he didn’t seem very passionate talking about it. He says it covers a lot ground, but there is only one chapter that talks specifically about flickr. It led to a discussion about denormalization. People thought that few knew about it, or that they weren’t pragmatic enough about it.

Chris Lamothe then presented Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac. He liked it a lot as it allowed him to really understand the power of Textmate. I’m halfway through the book and like it, but I’m surprised that about two thirds of the book are consecrated to building your own automations. I was expecting more on the editing side.

Next book was Scrum and Xp From the Trenches, which is available as a free pdf. Fred Brunel and I had a very lengthy discussion about process in general. It’s been a while since I talked about process, which used to be one of my favorite subject. I feel I’ve read enough about Agile in general (I think I’m post-agile now), but the book seems short and contains actual experiences instead of just principles and practices, so I might take a look at it.

Other reports

  • Heri’s report
  • Fred Brunel’s review of Scrum & XP from the Trenches

Popularity: 16% [?]

 

Montreal Web Development Book Club, July Edition

by jfcouture on August 5, 2007 · 1 Comment

Last monday was the second edition of the book club. Once again there were a lot of great discussions on a wide range of subjects. I had the chance to catch up with an ex colleague, Mathieu Jacques, developper extraordinaire at Dakis Decision Systems. Heri and Patrick Tanguay completed the foursome.

Heri wrote a very comprehensive report if you want more details on the books discussed. The next edition will be on 27th of August, 7pm, at Laika. If you enjoy discussing around a beer, please come!

Popularity: 13% [?]

 

Book Review: In Search of Stupidity

by jfcouture on June 29, 2007 · No Comments

In Search Of Stupidity: Over 20 Years Of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, by Merrill R. Chapman, 2nd edition

ISOS looks at the last 25 years of computing and provides an interesting look at what went wrong for some companies: how Wordstar lost the word processor market, the failure of the IBM PC Junior, what happened at Ashton-Tate with dBase, etc.

Positives: The writing is really engaging. Once you start the book, you will not put it down. All the stories are very interesting and well written.

Negatives: There isn’t a lot of analysis of what went wrong. It’s mostly the facts, plus a “they made a positioning mistake” sentence and that’s it. I do not understand how the in fighting between two groups of developers at a company can be considered a marketing mistake. Sometimes the author likes to be clever and his humor might annoy some people.

Conclusion: Well worth your time if you like reading about the history of the computer industry and if you would like to avoid some of these mistakes yourself.

Popularity: 7% [?]

 

First Montreal Web Development Book Club

by jfcouture on June 27, 2007 · 1 Comment

Laïka hosted the first Montreal Web Development Book Club this past Monday. There wasn’t as much people as expected, probably because of the long weekend. It was still loads of fun and packed with great discussions. I presented In Search of Stupidity by Merrill Chapman. I’m going to post a review soon, but the book generated some good discussions about the industry in general.

The next book was Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, which is about ways to organize information, such as hierarchies and tags. Evan Promodou, who started wikitravel (which recently won a Webby award), is obviously very interested in the subject. This led to a discussion about RDF. I never understood the interest in RDF (I think XML is good for almost everything except what people actually uses it for), but I’ll definitely have to check out how he uses it on wikitravel. Anyway, the book seems very interesting as it also presents a historical perspective on the subject, such as the Dewey system.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web was the last book of the night. Heri mentioned that he read the book 3 times. The way he said it, I’m not sure if it was because it was such a good book or because it was hard to understand. It seems to be very academic, but still the book to get if you’re interested in information architecture. Anyway, this lead to a great conversation about how to evaluate if your site has a good architecture, especially in the case of a wiki as big as wikitravel.

For those interested, all meetings will be held last monday of the month. The next one should be on July 30 at 7pm, at Laika. You can read Heri’s report here and Evan’s here.

Popularity: 8% [?]

 

Latest Amazon Order

by jfcouture on June 27, 2007 · No Comments

People who know me thinks Amazon.ca survives because of the “few” orders I make from them. Here what’s in my last, in case you’re wondering what I’ll be reading in the next few weeks:

Popularity: 6% [?]

 

Book Review: The Gods Themselves, by Isaac Asimov

by jfcouture on June 17, 2007 · No Comments

Nebula and Hugo award winner in 1972 and 1973. Humanity finds an unlimited source of energy, but it will destroy the sun. The book is divided in three parts, each presenting a different viewpoint: a young scientist trying to convince of the danger, the aliens responsible for the energy source and a scientist on the moon with the help of a female intuitionist.

If you like Asimov’s style, you will like this book. If you don’t, the book has the same flaws as most of his writings. Character development is limited. Most of the book deals with side stories. The first part ridicules the ego and lust for fame of scientists. Asimov then describes a strange alien society where they live in groups of 3 (a Rational, an Emotional and a Parenting), how they make love and evolve to another form after they have 3 children. The last part is about the difficulties involved living on the moon. The “real” story occupies a tenth of the book and there isn’t much development, other than finding a solution.

I personally love Asimov’s imagination and I couldn’t stop reading once I started, always a sign of a great book. 4.5/5 stars.

Popularity: 11% [?]