Scott Millett sent me a copy of his book, Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns, for review. Although I'm a big fan of design principles and patterns when it comes to building ASP.NET websites, I really wasn't sure what to expect from this book in a market that is saturated with such information in one form or another. My library is full of books on design patterns, SOLID, OOP Principles, DDD, etc, and I was sort of expecting his book to be a watered-down, Microsoft-centric version geared to ASP.NET.
However, much to my surprise, I really enjoyed the book and think it is perfect for those ASP.NET C# developers looking for a single book that takes the best of various design patterns and principles and shows you how to leverage them in your ASP.NET web application. The book introduces you to various design principles and patterns to help you solve problems in your web applications and then begins to show you how to leverage them in your layered ASP.NET applications for each and every layer. If you are worried about being tossed into a pile of concepts with little code to show you how you leverage it, don't be. Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns is oozing with code that is written in a very concise and focused manner with no fluff. And, just in case you didn't see enough code, there is a case study at the end of the book that creates an e-commerce store to show you an end-to-end solution of the various principles and patterns in action.
For those interested in OSS projects, I was really happy to see the sample code using OSS Projects, like AutoMapper, MonoRail, StructureMap, Castle ActiveRecord, and NHibernate in addition to Microsoft's EntityFramework and, of course, WebForms and ASP.NET MVC. Being able to see the patterns and principles using a broad number of technologies is refreshing and very useful for reinforcing one's understanding.
All in all, the book strikes me as a better entry point for ASP.NET C# web developers that want to incorporate more design principles and patterns in their web applications than books that mainly define and catalog the concepts and have examples in other programming languages that don't relate to their day-to-day development. Once you have an overview of the patterns and principles and how to use them in layered ASP.NET web applications then go ahead and buy the heavy duty titles from authors like GoF, Fowler, Martin, Larman, Evans, etc. that go into the subjects really deep and from a mostly conceptual manner.
That being said it is important to understand that the book does not touch every design principle and pattern. It is not a catalog and it doesn't aim to bring you to tears with every last detail of a principle or pattern. It gives you the meat and potatoes by showing you the common uses to improve your code and moves on. Although I didn't read every line of code in the book what I did see was nicely written.
My only nitpick about the book is that I think it is poorly titled. The book will get lost in a sea of “design pattern” books and people won't realize that it really shows you a way to build layered ASP.NET web applications using principles and patterns. What's worse is the free excerpts on the WROX website further miscommunicate the book's worth by just showing a brief introductory part of the book that mentions a number of design patterns and principles mentioned in the book. I'd recommend WROX putting up an excerpt that reinforces a combination of code, descriptive commentary, and use of principles and patterns so people get a real feel for the book.
Check out the book and reviews on Amazon.
David Hayden