No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology, Volume I
The 2006 Edition

Compiled by Neal Ford

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Pragmatic Press (June 2006)
ISBN: 0-9776166-6-5

Take 13 of the world's best trainers and speakers and ask them to write a chapter on something they care passionately about. The result? A book on software development unlike any other. Fifteen chapters covering the range of modern software development topics, from Domain-Specific Languages through Aspect-Oriented CSS to learning from the past.
These essays are a summary of the latest thinking in the industry, and range from the philosophical to the tutorial, covering the topics that the writers felt were the most important for readers today. If you feel like the neatest technology and latest ideas are passing you by, this book can help bring you back you to speed.
It's all good stuff, without any fluffy filler, as these essays are based on presentations given at the incredibly popular "No Fluff, Just Stuff" symposium series. Twenty-six times a year, the symposium visits a city and the speakers and attendees share ideas and perspectives. The speakers are all internationally known experts in their field.

• Real World Web Services by Scott Davis
• DSLs and Language Oriented Programming by Neal Ford
• Shale by David Geary
• Test Categorization Techniques by Andrew Glover
• Spring AOP: Read this chapter by Stuart Halloway
• Dependency Management by Kirk Knoernschild
• Process Choreography and the Enterprise Service Bus by Mark Richards
• The Cornerstone of a Great Shop by Jared Richardson
• Help! I've Inherited Legacy Code! by Jared Richardso
• Using Code Coverage to Improve Testing Effectiveness by Ian Roughley
• Extreme Decorator: Total Object Makeover by Brian Sletten
• From Fragility to Agility: Methodologies and Practices by Venkat Subramaniam
• The Many Guises of Method Instrumentation by Eitan Suez
• CSS: A Programmer's Perspective by Eitan Suez
• Buried Treasure: Read this chapter by Glenn Vanderburg

As a bonus, many of the authors have contributed to an appendix listing their favorite recent reads, and tools that they find most useful. The book also contains a substantial bibliography of recommended further reading.

Art of Java Web Development
Struts, Tapestry, Commons, Velocity, JUnit, Axis, Cocoon, InternetBeans, WebWork

Neal Ford

Paperback: 450 pages
Publisher: Manning Publications Company; (November 1, 2003)
ISBN: 1932394060

A guide to the topics required for state of the art web development, this book covers wide-ranging topics, including a variety of web development frameworks and best practices. Beginning with coverage of the history of the architecture of web applications, highlighting the uses of the standard web API to create applications with increasingly sophisticated architectures, developers are led through a discussion on the development of industry accepted best practices for architecture.

Described is the history and evolution towards this architecture and the reasons that it is superior to previous efforts. Also provided is an overview of the most popular web application frameworks, covering their architecture and use. Numerous frameworks exist, but trying to evaluate them is difficult because their documentation stresses their advantages but hides their deficiencies. Here, the same application is built in six different frameworks, providing a way to perform an informed comparison. Also provided is an evaluation of the pros and cons of each framework to assist in making a decision or evaluating a framework on your own. Finally, best practices are covered, including sophisticated user interface techniques, intelligent caching and resource management, performance tuning, debugging, testing, and Web services.

JBuilder 3 Unleashed

Neal Ford, Ed Weber, Talal Azzouka, Terry Dietzler, Jennifer Streeter, Casey Williams

Paperback: 1072 pages
Publisher: SAMS; Book and CD-ROM edition (September 1999)
ISBN: 0672315483

Editorial Review from Amazon.com
JBuilder 3 Unleashed does an excellent job of explaining how to write Java programs in Borland's newest Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the language. With plenty of code (all of which ships on the accompanying CD-ROM) and lots of documentation on Java classes, this book enables the intermediate-level Java programmer to become more capable with JBuilder and the language as a whole. You'll find good information if you want to write servlets, interface with databases, or do any of dozens of other software development tasks.

JBuilder 3 Unleashed naturally covers the JBuilder user interface, but the authors don't explain interface elements for their own sake. Rather, they explain the JBuilder interface in the context of doing certain Java programming jobs. Subjects include some fairly exotic aspects of the Java language, including elaborate user interface design, multithreading, internationalization, and client/server architecture.

Coverage of programming JavaBeans (and especially serialization as it applies to Beans) with JBuilder is exemplary, as are the sections on Remote Method Invocation (RMI) and CORBA. In addition to their coverage of the mechanics of JBuilder and Java, the authors include quite a bit of management and engineering information on using Borland's development environment as the centerpiece of a development team, including versioning, testing, and object-oriented analysis and design. --David Wall

Topics covered: JBuilder user interface, multithreading, internationalization, client/server architecture, programming JavaBeans, RMI, and CORBA.

From the Back Cover
JBuilder 3 Unleashed is designed to help intermediate to advanced level Java developers obtain the information and techniques needed to create mission critical JBuilder applications. The book picks up where most JBuilder books leave off and provides the information needed by developers to create robust and maintainable JBuilder Client/Server and multi-tier applications. Topics covered include: Advanced object-oriented design and programming techniques in Java, Enterprise JavaBeans,... read more

Book Description
JBuilder 3 Unleashed is designed to help intermediate to advanced level Java developers obtain the information and techniques needed to create mission critical JBuilder applications. The book picks up where most JBuilder books leave off and provides the information needed by developers to create robust and maintainable JBuilder Client/Server and multi-tier applications. Topics covered include: Advanced object-oriented design and programming techniques in Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, Serialization, Threading, NMI, Multi-tier development: implementation of applications and applets, RMI, CORBA, Enprise's MIDAS technology, N-tier, Application Development, Source code control, Deployment.

Developing with Delphi: Object-oriented Techniques

Edward C. Weber, J. Neal Ford, Christopher Weber

Prentice Hall Computer Books; Book and Disk edition (January 1996)
ISBN: 0133781186 (Out of Print)

Publisher Blurb:
This text shows how to apply object-oriented programming techniques using Delphi, Borland's second generation, visual, client/server development tool. It includes insights into creating large applications in a team development environment, and covers advanced topics such as version control, reusable components and client/server connectivity. A toolkit is included on the accompanying disk which contains common application components that can be used immediately saving developers time and money.

The complete guide to creating large mission-critical applications with Delphi. The authors, all experienced developers, cover the object-oriented concepts underlying Delphi, present examples including a comprehensive case study, and show how Delphi can be used with other technologies, such as OLE 1.0/2.0, DDE, Windows DLLS, and database-related tools.

The Real Skinny:
This book was written about Delphi 1.0, which caused a lot of breathless enthusiam in the programming world when it came out. Our publisher was Prentice Hall, which was essentially a publisher of text books. We got the book done, which provided a reasonable overview of Delphi. It was not particularly about Object-oriented Techniques, but the publisher insisted on that title. We sent the book off to the publisher and waited, and waited, and waited...11 months (!) after we had sent them the final manuscript, the book was published, about two months before Delphi 2.0 (the 32-bit version) came out. Needless to say, our book had a short shelf life. Our publisher thought this was OK because no one gets in a hurry for a text book. I found out later, ironically enough, that the California Polytechnic University at Pomona actually used it as a text book!