Developer's Quarterdeck Log

Don't let the title of No Fluff Just Stuff 2006 Anthology fool you. From it you might think that it is just a collection of Powerpoint presentations or something from the highly acclaimed NFJS conference. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead it is a collection of 15 different short technical articles addressing a range timely topics. The anthology is meant to showcase the quality of the speakers that present at NFJS and it does a great job at doing so. Just about any developer will find something in the smorgsbord interesting. There are topics ranging from Enterprise Service Buses to cascading Style Sheets. All of the articles are excellent but here are my top three favorites:

1. Buried Treasure by Glenn Vanderburg Here I think the editor saved the best for last. With the incredible speed at which new technologies come and go in our industry it is very refreshing to hear someone advocating that we can't forget the past. Glenn certainly isn't advocating not adopting new technologies, to the contrary he really speaks highly of Ruby on Rails, but makes a great point about not loosing sight of things that were already solved in the past.


2. From Fragility to Agility: Methodologies and Practices by Venkat Subramaniam I am a big fan of agile methodologies so naturally I really enjoyed Venkat's book Practices of an Agile Developer and this article is no exception. He does an excellent job of describing some of the agile methodologies along with their pros and cons.


3. Real-World Web Services by Scott Davis This is a simple and straight forward article on Web Services and is a great introduction. It is nice to see an article geared toward beginners but still is a great read. That is the great thing about the anthology, it has something for everyone.