BookOfTheMonth

I (AdewaleOshineye) spoke to RachelD and AnotherShaunSmith about this on Saturday. Unfortunately I won't be able to make it to Xtc for the next couple of weeks. So here are details for the book of the month idea.

Each month we choose a book. Ideally with some relationship to XP. Obscure gems, tricky tomes and new ideas are preferred over the usual suspects like the GoF book. People are encouraged to read and/or bring in for discussion a particular book during that month. At the end of each month we've had roughly 4 weeks of discussion both in person and on the wiki about a particular book. Hopefully at the last XtC of each month we can come to some conclusions and then pick the next month's book.

I've put up a sample list of books with suggested months and people can append books to each month or restructure the list appropriately.

I suggest we adopt a naming convention of form BOMAuthorTitle?, e.g. BOMBeckTestDrivenDevelopment

February

• PatternsOfEnterpriseApplicationArchitecture

March

• Test Driven Development: By Example (Beck)

April

• ThePragmaticProgrammer?

May

• SoftwareCraftmanship?

June

• Wiki.QuestioningExtremeProgramming?

July

• JourneyOfTheSoftwareProfessional?

Other possibilities

• Wiki.PatternsOfSoftware?
• AntiPatterns?
• AgileJava (Langr)
• Effective Java (Bloch)
• Refactoring (Fowler)
• Design Patterns (Gang of Four) - not that I believe for a minute that there are *any* of us who haven't read this! ;-)
• Extreme Programming Explained (Beck)
• UML Distilled (Fowler)
• AfterTheGoldRush?

Some non software books that are relevant could include:

• Art & Fear: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0961454733/qid=1090846170/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-0093307-8606244
• Small Things Considered, Why There Is No Perfect Design: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400040507/qid=1090846199/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-0093307-8606244
• The Logic of Failure: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201479486/qid=1090846348/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-0093307-8606244
• Organizational Behaviour: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0273651021/ref%3Dpd%5Fsim%5Fb%5Fdp%5F2/202-0093307-8606244

SomeAnonymousPerson keeps writing about XtC having a BookOfTheMonth but then not explaining how this BookOfTheMonth thing is going to work. Eg, how it gets picked, what we do when we have picked it. I guess read and discuss BookOfTheMonth at XtC, as there doesn't seem to be any point in making another page of favourite book titles (we already have this at BooKs). So I was trying to find out who SomeAnonymousPerson is or who else is interested in BookOfTheMonth as more titles appear here so we can actually discuss how it works. --RachelD

Maybe those at 1st XtC meeting of the month could choose/vote on a title and add to wiki the next day to discuss at last XtC of the month? --RachelD³host³³date³February 2, 2003³agent³Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20030202³BookOfTheMonth

Maybe get people to submit ideas and then 'pick one out of the hat' on the night then read and discuss in the following month.