Top 3 noteworthy books I read in 2014

So the year 2014 is over and I wrote few posts about books that I enjoyed reading over this period. However, reading IT books about frameworks, processes or practices can be a tiring activity. So once in a while I feel the need to grab a book of a different kind and recently I started reading about the history of our field and also the company side of things – especially startups. In this post I want to offer a short review of books that stood out to me the most and maybe entice you a bit to give them a chance and learn valuable lessons described in them (and there are quite few of them). So without further ado, I present to you my top 3 books of 2014.

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RESTful Java with JAX-RS 2.0

In the age of APIs, it is more obvious than ever that significant part of business value of many organizations (or their products) stems from their exposed interfaces. One of the most popular architectural styles to design and build such an API is REST. RESTful web services were introduced to Java in JSR 311 and the specification got name JAX-RS. At the time of writing this review JAX-RS reached version 2.0 and 2.1 is being drafted. Realizing this I felt the need to brush up on my previous knowledge of this technology and see what it has to offer. In my search for study resources I came across an awesome book called RESTful Java with JAX-RS 2.0 by Bill Burke, software architect and developer from Red Hat with years of experience working with REST and related technologies.

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Getting Started with Google Guava

Getting Started with Google Guava

At the time of writing this there is basically no literature regarding this awesome library from Google. For those of you who have never heard of Google Guava – it is a collection of Google’s core Java libraries that they use in their Java projects. This short but very informative book was written by Bill Bejeck, senior software engineer with 10 years of experience. For more information check out his blog. I would also like to give credit to my friend Petr Fiala who was kind enough to help me with this review and consulted me on some of the less known topics to me. I would also like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me access to this book. Continue reading “Getting Started with Google Guava”

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (Second Edition)

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

Peopleware is one of the most significant books ever written about pitfalls and best practices of software development. This timeless book was written by two software consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister from their vast experience in the world of management of software development. Authors provide insights into processes and environment of software development that are backed with many statistical data collected over the course of their professional lives. There are currently 3 editions (published in 1987, 1999 and 2013) each bringing new observations and statistical data with a few changes and corrections to the prior edition. This review is based on second edition which was current release at the time of reading.

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