New book: Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs

I'm delighted to announce that I've been hard at work contributing to a new book.

The book is called Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: How to make good programming decisions" and the principal author is Tomasz Lelek. The book was Tomasz's idea, and he's written the vast majority of the material, but I've contributed a chapter on handling date/time information, and another one around versioning (for libraries, network APIs and storage).

The aim of the book isn't to provide answers: it's to help you think carefully in your specific context, and ask the right questions. Tomasz and I have both made plenty of mistakes over the course of our careers - or been adjacent to other engineers making those mistakes. The choices that have been mistakes for us might not be a mistake for you - but it's better to go into those choices with your eyes open to the trade-offs involved, and where they can lead in different situations.

This isn't a book about a specific technology, although of course it demonstrates the ideas using examples which are specific. Almost all of the examples are in Java, but if you're not a Java developer that really shouldn't put you off: the ideas are easily transferrable to other environments. (In particular, if you understand C# it's very unlikely that Java syntax will faze you.)

We've just launched the book into MEAP (Manning Early Access Program), with an estimated publication date of fall 2021" (which means I really need to get on with polishing up my versioning chapter). The first seven chapters are available in the MEAP right now, which includes my date/time chapter.

What about C# in Depth?

You may be wondering where that leaves C# in Depth. The 4th edition of C# in Depth covers C# up to version 7, with a chapter looking ahead to C# 8 (which wasn't finalized at the time of publication). That means I'm already two versions behind. So, what am I going to do about that?

The short answer is: nothing just yet. I haven't started a 5th edition.

The longer answer is: yes, I definitely want to write a new edition at some point. However, I suspect the structure will need to change entirely (from version-based to topic-based) and I expect it to take a long time to write. Additionally, I have an idea around a diagnostics book which has morphed several times, but which I'm still keen on... and if I can get traction for that, it will probably take priority over C# in Depth, at least for a while.

So yes, one day... but probably sufficiently far in the future that it's not worth asking any more until I announce something.