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Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development
- By Scott Bain
- Published Feb 27, 2008 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the Net Objectives Lean-Agile Series series.
- Copyright 2008
- Dimensions: 7x9-1/4
- Pages: 448
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-321-50936-6
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-50936-9
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Product Author Bios
Scott L. Bain is a thirty-year veteran in computer technology, with a background in development, engineering, and design. He has also designed, delivered, and managed training programs for certification and end-user skills, both in traditional classrooms and via distance learning. For the past eight years, Scott has been working for Net Objectives in Puget Sound, teaching courses and consulting on design patterns, refactoring, unit testing, and test-driven development. Along with Net Objectives CEO Alan Shalloway, he has contributed significantly to the integration of design patterns in Agile environments. Scott is a frequent speaker at developer conferences such as JavaOne and SDWest.
For software to consistently deliver promised results, software development must mature into a true profession. Emergent Design points the way. As software continues to evolve and mature, software development processes become more complicated, relying on a variety of methodologies and approaches. This book illuminates the path to building the next generation of software. Author Scott L. Bain integrates the best of today’s most important development disciplines into a unified, streamlined, realistic, and fully actionable approach to developing software. Drawing on patterns, refactoring, and test-driven development, Bain offers a blueprint for moving efficiently through the entire software lifecycle, smoothly managing change, and consistently delivering systems that are robust, reliable, and cost-effective.
Reflecting a deep understanding of the natural flow of system development, Emergent Design helps developers work with the flow, instead of against it. Bain introduces the principles and practices of emergent design one step at a time, showing how to promote the natural evolution of software systems over time, making systems work better and provide greater value. To illuminate his approach, Bain presents code examples wherever necessary and concludes with a complete project case study.
This book provides developers, project leads, and testers powerful new ways to collaborate, achieve immediate goals, and build systems that improve in quality with each iteration.
Coverage includes
- How to design software in a more natural, evolutionary, and professional way
- How to use the “open-closed” principle to mitigate risks and eliminate waste
- How and when to test your design throughout the development process
- How to translate design principles into practices that actually lead to better code
- How to determine how much design is enough
- How refactoring can help you reduce over-design and manage change more effectively
The book’s companion Web site, www.netobjectives.com/resources, provides updates, links to related materials, and support for discussions of the book’s content.
Author's Site
Please visit the author's website at www.netobjectives.com
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful
Good practices but does not live up to its title, By Bas Vodde (Singapore) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development (Hardcover)
Emergent Design by Scott Bain is a interesting book. The title is very promising, when I first heard about it, I got very excited! Finally a book about how designs emerge, how designs emerge from multiple people and how designs evolve over time compared to specifying. After reading the book, I felt the book was good, but disappointing. It did not cover the topics I would like to have seen.The general idea of the book is that software should grow better over time instead of decay over time and that the optimal design will emerge. An idea I strongly agree with. The author links this to software development needing to change to become a profession. If SW development is a profession, then people will use proper practices and design will emerge. The practices (in a broad sense) are principles of design, patterns and disciplines. After the first couple of chapters the book was having a good start, though I started wondering if the author didn't bite of more than he could chew... Read more
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful
lots of commonsense advice, By
This review is from: Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development (Hardcover)
Bain's book is a graceful read. At least compared to some texts on "heavy" methodologies like CMMI. He addresses the professional programmer. At some level, there is an introspective feel to parts of it. Can the profession be more professional, in reducing bugs and bad coding practices? More pertinently, can you do this? In expanding on the possible answers, he takes us on a recap of decades of progress in programming.One big innovation was the rise of object oriented programming, compared to earlier procedural efforts. Hence C++, Java and other OO languages. Another key idea to remember is that of patterns. Even if you can't remember all the patterns he discusses, at least being aware that such exist is a good step forward in your abilities. There is also lots of advice about littler details. Like having names for classes, methods and variables that are as descriptive as possible. Doesn't matter what language you're using. You should always strive here, so that... Read more
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
A Gold Mine of Wisdom, By
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This review is from: Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development (Hardcover)
This book is a gold mine of wisdom.This book contains a ton of wisdom that has come out of the software engineering field over the years. It brings together a lot of software development best practices that can be found in other resources and puts them together under the umbrella of Emergent Design. He covers patterns, principles, processes, and practices by presenting the best of each that has been proven to work again and again. The common sense communicated out of this book is priceless. The author has a presentation that touches on a lot of the content found in the book. It can be viewed by Googling for "EmergentDesign_12_11_2007". Forward thinking is something that I find lacking in a lot of the environments I am exposed too, especially development environments. This book nails how to do forward thinking when it comes to software design and development. You will end up making your solutions more valuable with each change, instead of... Read more |
Online Sample Chapter
The Nature of Software Development
Table of Contents
Series Foreword xvii
Preface xxiii
Acknowledgments xxix
About the Author xxxi
Chapter 1: Software as a Profession 1
How Long Have Human Beings Been Making Software? 1
What Sort of Activity Is Software Development? 2
What Is Missing? 6
Who Is Responsible? 8
Uniqueness 9
Chapter 2: Out of the Closet, Off to the Moon 11
Patterns and Professionalism in Software Development 11
Andrea’s Closet 12
Off to the Moon 18
The Value of Patterns 26
Summary 27
Chapter 3: The Nature of Software Development 29
We Fail Too Much 30
Definitions of Success 31
The Standish Group 32
Doing the Wrong Things 34
Doing the Things Wrong 35
Time Goes By, Things Improve 38
One Reason: The Civil Engineering Analogy 38
Giving Up Hope 41
Ignoring Your Mother 42
Bridges Are Hard, Software Is Soft 43
We Swim in an Ocean of Change 43
Accept Change 44
Embrace Change 45
Capitalize on Change 46
A Better Analogy: Evolving Systems 49
Summary 52
Chapter 4: Evolution in Code: Stage 1 55
Procedural Logic Replaced with Object Structure 56
The Origins of Object Orientations and Patterns 56
An Example: Simple Conditionals and the Proxy Pattern 58
The Next Step: Either This or That 62
Why Bother? 65
One Among Many66
Summary 67
Chapter 5: Using and Discovering Patterns 69
Design from Context: More Carpentry from Scott 70
Patterns Lead to Another Cognitive Perspective 79
Patterns Help Give Us a Language for Discussing Design 79
Patterns in This Book 80
Summary 81
Chapter 6: Building a Pyramid 83
Elements of the Profession 83
A Visual Representation 85
Summary 86
Chapter 7: Paying Attention to Qualities and Pathologies 89
Encapsulation 91
Cohesion 91
Coupling 99
Redundancy 106
Testability 112
Readability 114
Pathologies 114
Summary 119
Chapter 8: Paying Attention to Principles and Wisdom 121
Separating Use from Creation 122
The Open-Closed Principle 129
The Dependency Inversion Principle 133
Advice from the Gang of Four 135
GoF: Consider What Should Be Variable in Your Design and Encapsulate the Concept That Varies 143
Summary 146
Chapter 9: Paying Attention to Practices 147
Consistent Coding Style 148
Programming by Intention 153
Encapsulating the Constructor 155
Commonality-Variability Analysis 161
Practices and Freedom 166
Summary 167
Chapter 10: Paying Attention to Disciplines: Unit Testing 169
Economies of Testing 169
JUnit Framework 175
Mock Objects 204
Summary 212
Chapter 11: Paying Attention to Disciplines: Refactoring 213
Refactoring Bad Code 215
Refactoring Good Code 216
Structural Changes Versus Functional Changes 218
Refactoring Helps You Choose Your Battles 219
Patterns Can Be Targets of Refactoring 220
Avoiding Refactoring: Prefactoring 220
The Mechanics of Refactoring 221
Refactoring Legacy Code 231
Summary 233
Chapter 12: Test-Driven Development 235
What Makes Development Test-Driven? 235
Testing and Quality 238
Test-Driven Development and Patterns 241
Mock Objects 244
Mock Turtles 248
Testing the Decorator Pattern 248
Summary 253
Chapter 13: Patterns and Forces 255
Making Decisions in an Evolving Design 255
Christopher Alexander and Forces 256
More Choices, More Forces 266
Summary 271
Chapter 14: Emergent Design: A Case Study 273
The Problem Domain: The MWave Corporation 273
The Teams 275
The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work 277
A New Requirement: Complex Machines 281
Oh, By the Way 283
More Good News 285
Summary: What a Long, Strange Trip It Has Been 287
Chapter 15: A Conclusion: 2020 289
Appendix A: Evolutionary Paths 291
Appendix B: Overview of Patterns Used in the Examples 301
Appendix C: The Principle of the Useful Illusion 385
Bibliography 393
Index 395
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