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A Fresh Graduate's Guide to Software Development Tools and Technologies (2012) [pdf]

186 points by federicoponzi 9y ago

mettamage 9y ago
Did anyone read this book? Any thoughts about it? I looked at it really quickly and it seems good, but I haven't read it and then used the knowledge. So how useful is the actual knowledge itself in a practical context? Also, I would be curious to know if there is a 2017/18 version of it.
- mtrn 9y ago
  > Did anyone read this book? Just skimmed through a few pages, found a small name error: > Java millennium (Java ME) which is made to create Embedded Systems
  - godelmachine 9y ago
    Thought Java ME stands for Java Micro Edition
    - ChristianGeek 9y ago
      It does. OP is saying that “Java Millenium” is an error.
- vippy 9y ago
  We're using Scala, other shops are using Haskell and Node. Many shops have micro-services. Some do not. APIs and security are a thing. Domain modeling and the creation of a ubiquitous language is a thing. Automated testing is still surprisingly bad (flaky tests are common and upstream disorganization can lead to man hours lost updating tests when upstream test data changes). The flamewar-inducing comment: managing state and inheritance patterns in object oriented systems kind of sucks. (I'm operating a reasonably high-level of abstraction; analytics, statistics, and modeling.)
- noisem4ker 9y ago
  I think it helps you gain a quick perspective on what's actually out there, especially in case you missed something in your curriculum. I personally found the Java EE chapter a better introduction than the official starting documentation from Oracle, with fewer buzzwords and more actual information. The Object orientation chapter feels a little out of place to me, though; hardly anyone with a degree in IT wouldn't know about it. Overall, not reference material but a good intro, although it's somewhat outdated and the fact it was put together from individual essays leaks through.
Waterluvian 9y ago
Version control should be chapter 1!
- davewritescode 9y ago
  Agreed, this was missing from my college curriculum and learning git well has been a huge asset in terms of productivity. When you understand version control, you can make changes without fearing that you can't get back to where you are right now.
  - arjo129 9y ago
    We were introduced to version control in our first year. The only problem was that till we started managing large code bases, most people found it very difficult to understand why we used Git in the first place.
    - toomanybeersies 9y ago
      I found I had the same problem at university re: VCS. It's hard to see the benefit of using git when it's for a single assignment over two weeks where you're the only contributor.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        No group assignments in your course? I couldn't get my team mates to use it, but I did on my end, and it was a godsend. Other teams were merging stuff by hand and losing hours (in total) in the process.
        toomanybeersies 9y ago
        Doing computer science rather than software engineering, I didn't have many. Most group assignments involved us sitting there together at a computer basically doing peer programming.
    - 9y ago
geofftrojans 9y ago
It is frustrating how widely applicable this book is. Universities across the country are struggling to adequately prepare students for software engineering jobs. It is also frustrating that this book from 2012 is still applicable in 2018. I'm not sure what the solution is or what would drive change here.
- adrianN 9y ago
  In my opinion, it is not the mission of universities to prepare students for jobs. Universities are research institutions that prepare students for research. That's why all professors have to do research. Vocational schools exist for the purpose of job training. Big companies can also train their own workers.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    That's the theory that hasn't been true in years. It ought to be as you describe, but it isn't - universities nowadays are glorified vocational schools with an extra option to go on a research sidetrack if you really don't like money. It's visible across the board - from the reason people choose to go to a university, to the focus universities have on attracting students and teaching, vs. supporting actual research.
    - ajdlinux 9y ago
      The problem isn't with the universities, it's with the lack of vocational schools with any depth or rigour for intellectually-demanding fields like software engineering. Sure, my local vocational school does offer a certificate and diploma of software development - a 2/3-semester program which teaches a couple of Java and C# courses and how to use a database. Which is to say, it teaches you the bare minimum you need to know to become the most junior level of applications developer in an enterprise IT department - vastly, vastly underqualified to go into many of the kinds of jobs that expect CS degrees. The other problem is that, well, I actually liked the theoretical and conceptual side of doing a CS degree, learning from lecturers who were researchers in the field. I, and most of the good software engineers I know, would have regretted just going to a vocational school. IMHO, there's a third option worth considering. Here in Australia, lawyers start off by obtaining a law degree (a Bachelor of Laws or a Juris Doctor) from a university. However, before they're admitted to practice, they have to obtain a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice - a 6-month course which focuses on the practical skills of being a lawyer. I don't see why there couldn't be a similar type of program to teach practical software development workplace skills - obviously, not as some kind of mandatory licensing program, but as an optional extra.
godelmachine 9y ago
Where can I get a full PDF version of this book? Really wanna read this! Edit → Got it! The links there are PDFs to each chapter. I can download them individually and create a book :) Thanks all.
mohangaradi 9y ago
well written. Quick previews for all you need to get started as software engineer
mmjaa 9y ago
No section for "Embedded" development? I think its missing a big part of the current picture ..
- carlmr 9y ago
  We're always the first to be forgotten.
  - cbHXBY1D 9y ago
    If anyone has a book similar to this for embedded - I'd love to know. I've recently been reading Elecia White's Making Embedded Systems which is the closest thing to this book I can think of.
    - carlmr 9y ago
      That would have been my first suggestion.
azifali 9y ago
I really like the structure / topics of the book, except EJB - the bloatware packaged with Java for years.
dreamygeek 9y ago
Cloud computing should come later in the order. Students should build their foundation from the basics. Cloud computing is more of an advanced topic.
stevesimmons 9y ago
Note that is a very old version of the book. I found the current version from: - The very bottom of the 2012 PDF page [1] mentions the related doc generation project, MarkBind [2] - The MarkBind site mentions two software engineering courses whose materials were written using it. - One of these is TE3201 [3], which links to the current version of the book [4]. [1] http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/ http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/ [2] https://markbind.github.io/markbind/ https://markbind.github.io/markbind/ [3] https://nus-te3201.github.io/website/admin/index.html https://nus-te3201.github.io/website/admin/index.html [4] https://se-edu.github.io/se-book/ https://se-edu.github.io/se-book/

186 points by federicoponzi 9y ago

Did anyone read this book? Any thoughts about it? I looked at it really quickly and it seems good, but I haven't read it and then used the knowledge. So how useful is the actual knowledge itself in a practical context? Also, I would be curious to know if there is a 2017/18 version of it.

mtrn 9y ago
> Did anyone read this book? Just skimmed through a few pages, found a small name error: > Java millennium (Java ME) which is made to create Embedded Systems
- godelmachine 9y ago
  Thought Java ME stands for Java Micro Edition
  - ChristianGeek 9y ago
    It does. OP is saying that “Java Millenium” is an error.
vippy 9y ago
We're using Scala, other shops are using Haskell and Node. Many shops have micro-services. Some do not. APIs and security are a thing. Domain modeling and the creation of a ubiquitous language is a thing. Automated testing is still surprisingly bad (flaky tests are common and upstream disorganization can lead to man hours lost updating tests when upstream test data changes). The flamewar-inducing comment: managing state and inheritance patterns in object oriented systems kind of sucks. (I'm operating a reasonably high-level of abstraction; analytics, statistics, and modeling.)
noisem4ker 9y ago
I think it helps you gain a quick perspective on what's actually out there, especially in case you missed something in your curriculum. I personally found the Java EE chapter a better introduction than the official starting documentation from Oracle, with fewer buzzwords and more actual information. The Object orientation chapter feels a little out of place to me, though; hardly anyone with a degree in IT wouldn't know about it. Overall, not reference material but a good intro, although it's somewhat outdated and the fact it was put together from individual essays leaks through.

Waterluvian 9y ago

Version control should be chapter 1!

davewritescode 9y ago
Agreed, this was missing from my college curriculum and learning git well has been a huge asset in terms of productivity. When you understand version control, you can make changes without fearing that you can't get back to where you are right now.
- arjo129 9y ago
  We were introduced to version control in our first year. The only problem was that till we started managing large code bases, most people found it very difficult to understand why we used Git in the first place.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    I found I had the same problem at university re: VCS. It's hard to see the benefit of using git when it's for a single assignment over two weeks where you're the only contributor.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      No group assignments in your course? I couldn't get my team mates to use it, but I did on my end, and it was a godsend. Other teams were merging stuff by hand and losing hours (in total) in the process.
      - toomanybeersies 9y ago
        Doing computer science rather than software engineering, I didn't have many. Most group assignments involved us sitting there together at a computer basically doing peer programming.
  - 9y ago

geofftrojans 9y ago

It is frustrating how widely applicable this book is. Universities across the country are struggling to adequately prepare students for software engineering jobs. It is also frustrating that this book from 2012 is still applicable in 2018. I'm not sure what the solution is or what would drive change here.

adrianN 9y ago
In my opinion, it is not the mission of universities to prepare students for jobs. Universities are research institutions that prepare students for research. That's why all professors have to do research. Vocational schools exist for the purpose of job training. Big companies can also train their own workers.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  That's the theory that hasn't been true in years. It ought to be as you describe, but it isn't - universities nowadays are glorified vocational schools with an extra option to go on a research sidetrack if you really don't like money. It's visible across the board - from the reason people choose to go to a university, to the focus universities have on attracting students and teaching, vs. supporting actual research.
  - ajdlinux 9y ago
    The problem isn't with the universities, it's with the lack of vocational schools with any depth or rigour for intellectually-demanding fields like software engineering. Sure, my local vocational school does offer a certificate and diploma of software development - a 2/3-semester program which teaches a couple of Java and C# courses and how to use a database. Which is to say, it teaches you the bare minimum you need to know to become the most junior level of applications developer in an enterprise IT department - vastly, vastly underqualified to go into many of the kinds of jobs that expect CS degrees. The other problem is that, well, I actually liked the theoretical and conceptual side of doing a CS degree, learning from lecturers who were researchers in the field. I, and most of the good software engineers I know, would have regretted just going to a vocational school. IMHO, there's a third option worth considering. Here in Australia, lawyers start off by obtaining a law degree (a Bachelor of Laws or a Juris Doctor) from a university. However, before they're admitted to practice, they have to obtain a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice - a 6-month course which focuses on the practical skills of being a lawyer. I don't see why there couldn't be a similar type of program to teach practical software development workplace skills - obviously, not as some kind of mandatory licensing program, but as an optional extra.

godelmachine 9y ago

Where can I get a full PDF version of this book? Really wanna read this! Edit → Got it! The links there are PDFs to each chapter. I can download them individually and create a book :) Thanks all.

mohangaradi 9y ago

well written. Quick previews for all you need to get started as software engineer

mmjaa 9y ago

No section for "Embedded" development? I think its missing a big part of the current picture ..

carlmr 9y ago
We're always the first to be forgotten.
- cbHXBY1D 9y ago
  If anyone has a book similar to this for embedded - I'd love to know. I've recently been reading Elecia White's Making Embedded Systems which is the closest thing to this book I can think of.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    That would have been my first suggestion.

azifali 9y ago

I really like the structure / topics of the book, except EJB - the bloatware packaged with Java for years.

dreamygeek 9y ago

Cloud computing should come later in the order. Students should build their foundation from the basics. Cloud computing is more of an advanced topic.

stevesimmons 9y ago

Note that is a very old version of the book. I found the current version from: - The very bottom of the 2012 PDF page [1] mentions the related doc generation project, MarkBind [2] - The MarkBind site mentions two software engineering courses whose materials were written using it. - One of these is TE3201 [3], which links to the current version of the book [4]. [1] http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/ http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seer/book/2e/ [2] https://markbind.github.io/markbind/ https://markbind.github.io/markbind/ [3] https://nus-te3201.github.io/website/admin/index.html https://nus-te3201.github.io/website/admin/index.html [4] https://se-edu.github.io/se-book/ https://se-edu.github.io/se-book/