No Fluff Just Stuff Anthology: The 2006 Edition
Twenty-seven weekends a year, the No Fluff Just Stuff conference rolls into another town, featuring the world's best technical speakers and writers. Up until now, you had to go to one of the shows to soak up their collective wisdom. Now, you can hold it in the palm of your hand.
The No Fluff Just Stuff Anthology represents topics presented on the tour, written by the speakers who created it. This book allows the authors the chance to go more in depth on the subjects for which they are passionate. It is guaranteed to surprise, enlighten, and broaden your understanding of the technical world in which you live.
The No Fluff Just Stuff Symposium Series is a traveling conference series for software developers visiting 27 cities a year. No Fluff has put on over 75 symposia throughout the U.S. and Canada, with more than 12,000 attendees so far. Its success has been a result of focusing on high quality technical presentations, great speakers, and no marketing hype. Now this world-class material is available to you in print for the first time.
Review By: Mary Ann Overbaugh
06/25/2007
The book is a compendium of user group topics and resources for learning that would benefit developers and is representative of conference topics presented at the 2006 No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) conference. Topics range from agile development to specifics of new languages, testing methods, and new methodologies.
The writing style is more conversational, and though the chapters are concise, they do not skimp on detailed examples. The authors are personalized through a short survey at the back of the book that includes their credentials and additional references to topical areas.
This book is the equivalent of a wonderful church cookbook, where the recipes were tried prior to writing the recipe book and further improved so those using the cooks could be assured of their quality. The book contains good, solid information from experts and would appeal most to developers but also provides background to testers.
At first glance, I thought with my limited development background that I would fail to appreciate the value of this book as much as a developer who might find these short chapters intense, succinct, and eye opening. But I almost could see the light bulbs going on as dots were connected. This book is the next best thing to a real live mentor.