Sunday, June 05, 2011

Weekly roundup: a new Practical series

We're getting to the end of the Practical PHP Testing Patterns series, which followed the Practical PHP Patterns one in exploring by-the-book patterns (by the Gang of Four, Fowler and Meszaros) in their application to PHP code. It all started with the Practical PHP Testing ebook, with a simple tenet: working code sample at the end of each chapter/article.

Since these series have gained the trust of many readers, I'm thinking about a new Practical-branded series. The format has worked pretty well: one small topic treated from theory to code sample, twice a week; the level of views is constant and that tells me there is interest.
So what would you like to see after our joruney in design, enteprise application architecture and testing patterns?

Meanwhile, here are my articles published this week on DZone.
Practical PHP Testing Patterns: Literal Value is the simplest pattern for dealing with example values in tests.
The Kindle is ready for programmers is a review of the Kindle from a programmer's point of view. Some people told me that this article addresses their doubts regarding using a Kindle for technical books.
Practical PHP Testing Patterns: Derived Value describes the practice of generating input or expected values for your tests on-the-fly.
PHPSpec: BDD for your classes is a review of PHPSpec and its approach to Behavior-Driven Development in the small.

5 comments:

  1. * Practical PHP refactoring
    * Practical PHP best practices
    * Practical PHP PEAA

    ciao!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, it's not PHP, but I'd love to see you use your talent for digesting complex information and simplifying it for the following:

    * Advanced Javascript: not the usual stuff (here's a prototype chain, etc) but things like:
    - DSLs in JS
    - Promises: (implementation, usage), examination of jQuery Deferred, etc
    - node.js
    - advanced tools (Closure compiler, Jasmine, etc)
    - Coffeescript
    - MVC in javascript
    - testable JS
    - interesting libraries/frameworks (backbone, sproutcore, etc)

    * DDD. A series on the main ideas and components (aggregate roots, etc).

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The PHP focus is to not alienate my readership, which mostly works with PHP; but I'll keep your JS suggestions in mind for my other articles.
    Indeed PHP Refactoring (following Fowler's book I guess) is a nice idea, thanks Odino!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Giorgio,
    Detailed refactoring would be really cool. How to get from a big fat dependency hell to a great design. Maybe with a little help of DDD, Messagebus and stuff?

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  5. markus,
    these series are built as independent issues, so probably it will be one type of refactoring for each article. Just like for tv series, this preserves the ability for the public to pick up the series from any point.

    ReplyDelete