Head First Software Development: A Learner's Companion to Software Development

Before begining my first professional program, I bought this book. At first, I was wondering how all those pictures and games exercises will help me to learn about software development. I told to myself, "I'm a in a profession that has books with "dummy" in their titles, and now books with middle school games... what's next? coloring books for developers?" After that though, I went straight to code and put this book right back into my bookshelf. While I was able to deliver the software on-time (with overtime), I experienced success but not with out frustrations. In retrospective, I think I did the right thing by not using this book at first because now I really appreciated what this book offers. I would recommend this to any developer for the following reasons: First, those pictures and middle school games that I just mention, some how they work pretty well if you want to learn something. While I put certain effort to learn from more traditional books, with the head first approach, I was able to learn software development techniques and principles with no effort whatsoever. Seconds, while this book is load with software development fundamentals, their main goal is help out the real-world working developer. With this book, I felt understood, I felt that they knew about my personal frustrations (and mistakes) that I encountered when I was developing my program. Finally,they also try to avoid getting into complex and formal software processes (SCRUM, XP, etc) by presenting pen and pencil techniques that keeps you focus on learning the fundamentals. I just finished reading this book, I feel that my developing powers have increased. Right now, I'm setting up my home CI server to begin my first real open source program. I just got head first design pattern and head first object oriented design and I hope to get the same fun that I got with this book!

Awesome book. As a freelance software developer, I was previously using the book "Systems Analysis and Design 5th Edition by Dennis, Wixom, Roth" as a reference for the SDLC, but I find this book to be so much better. I just picked it up two days ago and read the first half in one sitting, though I did skim through parts of it. HFSD is very practical, where as SAD5th packs massive details into the book, but lacks the real life usability. Reading this book, I feel like I can take their base process and apply it to my particular needs, and start using it immediately. I especially like the part about using a Scrum board, creating user stories(features), introduction to Version Control and test suites, as well as the multiple iterations. Systems Analysis and Design 5th is great if you want to find a ton of charts and diagramming methods, many of which are needed. This book is great if you are in particular a software developer who wants a more simple development life cycle.

I have come around to the usefulness of the book. I first got the book as a kindle download and I could not read the illustrations because they were too small. However, I am now working through the physical book and I find it very useful. One has to work through all the playful exercises - the authors convey the information through fictional situations where one has to go through all the steps of software development in response to the needs presented by the situation. In this way the authors present the method to be used and then incorporate it into the story of this fictional situation. Included in this approach are use of a a lot of conceptual illustrations along with exercises to be completed on 'index cards' and crossword puzzles, among other things. Being able to read the illustrations (I couldn't read them on my machine in kindle) is pretty essential to the book. Plus having the physical book allows me to do the exercises which helped me incorporate and memorize the method employed.

The writers were in rare form when they made this. It describes the design practices of software development in a way that really sticks with me. The humor is off-beat and full of little references to nerd culture.The price is also dirt-cheap for a college textbook. I'd recommend this for anyone who knows how to program but not how to plan things out.

Since becoming a Development Manager, this is the first book I've made required reading for the team. Good software development is NOT common sense. When confronted with something as complex as a software project, people tend to respond with panic (which the book calls the Big Bang) or massive attempts at control (the Waterfall method).HFSD preaches Iterative Development without all the dogma of Scrum or XP. It leaves the controversial stuff to other books, focusing on what good developers pretty much agree on. The practices are easily adopted and flexible, although like all worthwhile things in the world, they take a lifetime to master.There's a lot to like about this book. The other Head First guides are good, but the style really, really fits the material here ... maybe because development is really less about technology than it is about working with others.

I had to get this book for a class and the book is helpful to learn with. However, I just got the book and several pages are just falling out. I bought the book new so this shouldn't be happening. Good book but not well put together physically.

I have got this book 10 days ago or something. So far, after reading the first 3 chapters I can only say i like it a lot. Very clear and understandable approach to software development, ideas, pitfalls, etc. A lot of ideas that can be applied in a real situations, in practice. So far so good :) If things gets worse after reading the rest of the chapters I will sure write one more review, the bad one :)Something I would definitely recommend. Very light reading.