Like many of you self-taught coders, I have read 100′s of programming books and so have become somewhat of a connoisseur or aficionado of this type of reading.
Well, I recently picked up a copy of Professional Cairngorm by Jeremy Wischusen (Wrox Publishing) and while I am not a big fan of Wrox usually, I must say this book is very well written.
Jeremy seems to be one of those guys who writes so well you forget your learning anything and you even forget you are reading.
- He doesn’t talk about things he hasn’t explained yet (unless he tells you it’s coming later) so you don’t get frustrated thinking it may never come.
- His writing style reminds me of Joey Lott, very thorough and smooth at the same time. Most technical topic writers seems to go back and forth and sideways while they are writing, as if they are trying to spit out a ton of knowledge on each page. Whereas Jeremy writes smooth like he knows where he is going and he knows how to take you there.
- He gives the history of Cairngorm in a way that is surprisingly NOT boring.
- He not only tells you the “WHAT” that you want to learn, but also gives very complete “WHY”‘s as well.
- I could go on, but I need to get to work!
So if you’re wanting or in most cases “needing” to REALLY learn Cairngorm, I’d take a look at his book, it is very good.
Thanks Jeremy for that great piece of writing that surely will clear up a lot of confusion surrounding Cairngorm amongst the lower ranks (guys like myself). At the very least it has made me appreciate the Architecture and given me a solid understanding of why and when I would want to use it or any other micro-architecture for that matter, as well as giving me solid pros and cons relative to it’s use when compared to not using it.
I might also mention that a great companion book to go with it would be ActionScript 3.0 Design Patterns by Joey Lott and Danny Patterson. I have found no book as good as it for explaining Design Patterns as they are used in ActionScript.
For a general design pattern book, I also like “Head First Design Patters” Java Based and very good. Also comes with a great poster “Your Brain on Design Patters” that I put up in my home office that is a quick index of design patterns and their intended uses.
