Best Practices

Perl Best Practices
$40.00
I came to perl from a C++ background, and was initially horrified by the aspects of perl that control-freak-language developers usually are. However, after using it on and off for a couple of years it became my language of choice because it's so quick and easy to do things that just take too much coding in other languages. (As a friend of mine said who kept pushing me to get used to perl, "Yes, Dave, perl *is* the dark side, but once you go there you'll never want to go back...")

Being A Good Developer I have purchased a number of perl books, and several of those have been useful. The problem is that there's a tremendous amount to remember, especially if you're not coding 100% in perl, especially since encyclopediac reference books just don't have time for the 'why' aspect.

This book excels in a few important ways:

1) There's always a 'why' given, and the right way and the wrong way are contrasted. This makes it, for me, far easier to remember things. It helps that the author uses English very well, and I virtually never find myself wondering what he meant. (In too many programming books, there's just not enough editing of the explanations, and very poor English.)

2) While I don't always agree with the author's best practices, most of the time I do, and he always makes his case well.

3) He shows both 'before and after' code, and gets the amount of code needed to make the point exactly right. I almost never find myself flipping past over-long examples, nor do I find myself not getting things because he's too concise.

This book was both highly useful and a pleasure to read. (Perl is indeed the dark side, but now I revel in the dark side.)

Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management: From Data to Decisions (Wiley Best Practices)
$45.00
This is a very practical book that quickly gets to to best practices. I like the case study of how American Express eliminated budgets.

Software Requirements, Second Edition (Pro-Best Practices)
$39.99
Wiegers' book is one of the standard references for requirements gathering that's around. We have these on our shelves at our company for all the analysts and while there are other references around on project management and project implementation, this book has outlines of all the different parts focusing on requirements gathering: gathering participants on the project and client side, setting expectations, how to document, what your first steps are as well as the pitfalls. Every analyst needs this on their book shelf as a reference.

Best Practices in Policies and Procedures
$25.95
I though I would find more detailed and practical information about how to write documents