API Economy

The clearest explanation of software development I have come across.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. Some terminology is introduced without much ceremony; I had to look a few things up along the way. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

Good value. Not perfect, but I would buy another book from this author.

I have been working with software development for a few years now and I still found plenty here that was new to me. The chapters on software development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

It does the job, though it took some patience to get through.

I have been working with software development for a few years now and I still found plenty here that was new to me. Some of the material is available elsewhere, but rarely presented this clearly. It is denser than the page count suggests, and I found myself slowing down around the middle. Three stars feels about right. It will stay on my shelf, but it will not be the first one I reach for.