Rating  - Needs More Meat
Well written and organized, with a lot of short code fragments to illustrate the main points. However I have agree with the reviewer who suggested that this book should have been titled "Kent Beck on writing readable code". I'd add to this that the book is quite Java specific. Fine with me, but this needs to be pointed out. The book would have been more interesting to me if it documented the different approaches in use (along with their advantages and drawbacks) e.g. for choosing between checked and unchecked exceptions. Instead we get a few general statements about what exceptions are, and some suggestions along the lines of "low-level exceptions should be wrapped with high-level exceptions". The level of detail is often not enough to be interesting for somewhat experienced developers, but the book may be too abstract for beginners. Given the compact size of the book you'll still get good value for your time from reading it. Just don't set your expectations too high -- or expect to get good value for your money...
Rating  - Wrong title, outrageous price
The right title should be something like... "Kent Beck on writing readable code". The word "pattern" is way out of context, and will induce you to expect to find something way more precise, detailed and technical than then general advice that this book has to offer. This text could be considered like a chance to have a chat with Kent Beck discussing his ideas on the importance of writing readable code, and on general guidelines for code clarity and expressiveness. I have seen a review complaining about using Java for the examples, but the truth is, you will see very little code in this book. I am also not very sure of the idea target reader for this work. An experienced programmer has already figured out this general advice by himself, but the level of abstraction and detail is too terse to be useful to a beginner. I believe that more material, more detail and a more tutorial-like style could have made this book a worthwhile read for a junior developer. As it is , I have to say it, but I have to rate it as a pretty useless book. I am a big fan of Kent Beck, I admire his programming style, his 'very good habits' and all his did with the XP movement. Together with Martin Fowler, and Allen Holub he's one of those guys who can really have a deep influence on the way you program and think about Object Oriented programming, but this time he' really been a bit self condescending. And the price.. come on..40 bucks for this? You should be ashamed...
Rating - Not much content ... Where's the Beef???
The material that is there is good, there just is not much of it. It does contain the basics of writing good clean code, but the weight of the content just isn't there.
The book is kind of like this review.... to the point, but light on content.
I'd recommend buying the cheap PDF version and printing it yourself.
Rating  - well said...
Just finished reading this book. Really enjoyed Kent Beck's short but precise and easy to follow through style and comments. Yes, as we develop software we seem to forget about the complexities we create and don't necessarily think about the "next" person whom may have to read the code that we write and extend as he/she sees fit.
Very clear point made at the start and at the end. We developers have to communicate better. So far in my profession, I have to maintain someone else's code as well, and as you may guess, it was not a pleasant experience, and I swear at times I rather had a root canal... :(
Anyway, great book. Read it! It has one typo that I scratched my hand for 30 seconds. The y-axis of Fig.9.2 on page 109 is missing. One can deduce it by looking at the subsequent figures, but since this is the first figure, I did not get it right away. Also coloring may be a better option since the lines are very close. I was also lost in "Performance Measurement" (last chapter), but it has been a long day, and probably my bad... And yes the points are made.
Overall enjoyed reading this book and definitely picked up some ideas and cemented down certain aspects of my development/design career. I think anyone, especially Java programming, would benefit by reading this book. Definitely recommend. Thanks, Kent. Cheers! - Baskin
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