My first bad book review

I got my first bad book review on Amazon. It doesn't bother me that much aside from the fact that the author is clearly not even remotely a part of the target audience. I see that quite a bit in Amazon reviews. I remember one ages ago, I think for one of Alex Homer's books, where the reviewer went on and on about how the book doesn't tell you about this or that, and it was a beginner book! I've always been a fan of his writing style, and if it wasn't for him I don't know if I would've ever started coding again.

Fortunately the feedback I've been getting via e-mail has been pretty good. A guy from Spain, despite an apology about having poor English skills (apparently he's never seen teen chat-speak by American kids?), simply said, "I get it now." That's the greatest compliment I could ever get, because that was always the intention of the book.

Now that I've been away from it for awhile, I think the one thing I would do differently is perhaps do another example chapter that applies basic OO concepts. I went with the data access/container object example because the thing I've seen more than anything in bad code is repetitive data access, though I'm kind of a hypocrite because I rarely combine data access and some kind of object representing the data into one thing anymore. Then again, perhaps that's a natural progression for a learning developer. It certainly was for me.

1 Comment

  • Jeff, I have the book. I got it on Friday through theregister . I really like it. I think its the 'next step' book for people who have read 'unleashing asp.net' or wrox 'pro asp.net' before going onto heavier reads like Fowlers & GOF stuff. It bridges a gap for people who have come from more scripted languages into an OO world. I like your writing style, and although I can't say that any topic was unknown to me, I certainly understood them all infinitely better once I'd finished reading. keep up the good work. can i request that your next book is '.Net Design Patterns For Dummies' to help bridge the gap further.

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