Sebastopol, CA--All true craftsmen need the best tools to do their finest work, and programmers are no different. Java Power Tools (O'Reilly, US $59.99) by John Ferguson Smart covers thirty open source tools designed to improve the development practices of Java developers in any size team or organization. Each chapter includes a series of short articles about one particular tool of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) including build systems, version control, unit testing, quality metric tools and more. In fact, it is the equivalent of thirty short reference books in one package.
"The book is about the tools and techniques that I us and teach in my daily work," says Smart. "These tools are a great way to improve your code quality and coding productivity all round, and are worth talking about. As far as I've seen, there are no reference books that cover a full range of tools and techniques in this way. They tend to specialize in one particular area."
Smart points out that are a lot of ways you can improve your development process, in very practical and down-to-earth terms, but people don't always have the time or energy to investigate them. "This book aims to show people what tools and techniques exist, how and where they are useful in practice, and to put people in a position to choose the tool that suits them best," he says.
No matter which development method your team chooses, whether it's Agile, RUP, XP, SCRUM, or one of many others available, Java Power Tools provides practical techniques and tools to help you optimize the process. The book discusses key Java development problem areas and best practices, and focuses tools that can help increase productivity in each area of the development cycle, including:
- Build tools including Ant and Maven 2
- Version control tools such as CVS and Subversion, the two most prominent open source tools
- Quality metrics tools that measure different aspects of code quality, including CheckStyle, PMD, FindBugs and Jupiter
- Technical documentation tools that can help you generate good technical documentation without spending too much effort writing and maintaining it
- Unit Testing tools including JUnit 4, TestNG, and the open source coverage tool Cobertura
- Integration, Load and Performance Testing to integrate performance tests into unit tests, load-test your application, and automatically test web services, Swing interfaces and web interfaces
- Issue management tools including Bugzilla and Trac
- Continuous Integration tools such as Continuum, Cruise Control, LuntBuild and Hudson
"Development teams are increasingly being asked to do more with less. To write more flexible and imaginative applications, with more added value for the users, but on dwindling budgets," says Smart. "But many organizations are slow to adopt the tools and techniques that could help them streamline their development projects. Developers have little time to research better approaches, but they can't afford to wait too long. A team trained in and equipped with modern development tools and techniques has a clear competitive advantage over a team using more traditional techniques, no matter what technologies are being used. It's like comparing going into battle in a modern tank or on horseback. To stay competitive, organizations need to learn how to work smarter and use whatever tools and techniques are necessary to support the development teams to get the job done efficiently. That's where a book like this can help."
John Smart is a freelance consultant specializing in Enterprise Java, Web Development, and Open Source technologies, currently based in Wellington, New Zealand. Well known in the Java community for his many published articles, John helps organizations optimize their Java development processes and infrastructures and provides training and mentoring in open source technologies, SDLC tools, and agile development processes. John is principal consultant at Wakaleo Consulting, a company that provides consulting, training and mentoring services in Enterprise Java and Agile Development.
For more information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bio, and samples, see the catalog page for Java Power Tools
Java Power Tools
John Ferguson Smart
ISBN: 978-0-596-527973-8, 871 pages, US $59.99
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
About O’Reilly
O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.