Ship It!: A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects 
by Jared Richardson, Will Gwaltney, Jr 

Publisher: The Pragmatic Programmers 
RRP: $29.95 (Available in PDF for $20) 

Table of Contents

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Review By Keith Duncan 

Summary
I’m just getting ready to ship my first piece of software (keep an eye our for it) and I thought ‘Ship It!’ by the ‘Pragmatic Programmers’ would be a pertinent read. That’s the only place I’d fault it, where I thought it would be about getting your project off the ground; instead it’s about steering you in the right direction – nonetheless I learnt a great deal from it. I’ve enjoyed their other publications and always look forward to learning something new. Briefly summarized it’s a book in two halves; things that you Really Should Be Doing, then the why and the how. There’s also a handy tips sheet at the end which highlights the main points of the book.

Full Review
There are plenty of real-world example cases given, along with the situation outcome. These show that the authors’ advice is sound and that they know what they’re talking about. I’m certain everyone will learn something useful from chapter five entitled ‘Common Problems and How to Fix Them’. The first one on the list ‘Help! I’ve inherited Legacy Code’ lists a simple four step guide on how to get a project back on the tracks where you might instead be tempted to just continue on blindly. 

I’d only recently started using source control; because if you’re like me you already know what you should be doing, things like unit tests and automated builds. But if you’re really like me then you probably aren’t doing them, yet. The book leads you though some best practices with a focus on working in a team in an office environment, their relevance might not be immediately relevant to indie developers like me, since you’re unlikely to be shoulder tapped. However their notes on ensuring good communication, and that the build product can be put together on any machine are important to note wether you are spread across the globe or all in the same building. 

It took me several reads to get everything out of the book, but not because it was hard to read just to make sure I had caught everything: from my perspective it appears to be a whistle stop tour of the authors’ experiences, how they’ve tackled past issues and where you’ll fall down if you aren’t being proactive. I decided to take them on and try adopting a new practice for a week, trying it out throughly and gauging how well it worked for me; I’ve since adopted test-driven development, have been requesting code reviews and began using Tracer Bullet Development. 

I learnt the most from the chapter on Tracer Bullet Development which has already served me well. I was recently tasked with putting a ‘working’ demo together in about a week. I very quickly hacked several faux interfaces together, the implementations of which are still in place today – I haven’t yet had the need to replace them – leaving me time to concentrate on the business logic. Structured units of work, like serializing to a database, just don’t have to be done ‘til you really need to. 

‘Ship It!’ was a valuable read for a developer in my position. I’ll be applying what I’ve learnt to my future projects and I would definitely recommend it. 

About Keith
I’m a reasonably new Cocoa software developer; I learnt a couple of years ago with Aaron Hillegass’ book – most of the Cocoa developers I know did. I knew a little C before starting but I couldn’t have done very much with it. I’ve got half an engineering degree which I’ve left to pursue my dream: to start my own Mac software development company and to work for myself. Presently, I work for a small media company in Leicestershire. My favorite languages are Objective-C and Ruby and my areas of interest are User Interface and Interaction.