Ken Pugh

I was attracted to this book by the title: 'refactoring' and the agile development philosophy are sometimes used as an excuse for insufficent design. So I liked the explicit emphasis on the need to get stuff right the first time.

Ken Pugh writes with an engaging style that is very easy to read and makes sound suggestions. It would be a valuable guide for new developers looking to broaden their horizons from tools and code. However, there is not a lot that is new in this book and the principles are somewhat introductory for a more experienced programmer. 'Journeymen' programmers would be better served by the Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike, or by the Pragmatic Programmet by Hunt and Thomas.… (más)

The cover of Interface-Oriented Design depicts a traditional manual QWERTY keyboard, probably circa 1920 or so, with thin black Arial-fonted letters on creamy white discs. What does a typewriter keyboard have to do with interface-design? Why show us an antique piece of word-processing (since, after all, isn't that what a typewriter is?) hardware do discuss current programming practices? Pugh, with the wit and clarity that permeates the entire work, quickly dives in to explain that the typewriter keyboard is the perfect analogy for his topic. The QWERTY keyboard layout is an interface that has been around for the past 130 or so years. This interface has seen numerous implementations since being introduced, on manual typewriters, electric typewriters, and all forms of computers. By having been decoupled from any particular technology (rods and levers on the early typewriters to the latest technologies found on touch-screens and their ilk), the QWERTY interface has -- so far -- thrived.

[for full review, see Technology Electronic Reviews, v.14, no. 1 (June 2007).… (más)