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Title: The Unified Software Development Process
ISBN: 0201571692
Author:
Ivar Jacobson
Grady Booch
James Rumbaugh
Publicate Date: 1999-02-14
Publish: 1999-02-14
List Price: $74.99
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $10.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $44.99
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Not worth a penny
I'm a mechatronics engineer with no formal training in software design. I bought this book to learn the basics of software design for a major project. I regret every penny I spent.
The book contains a nugget or two of useful information, but its writing could not have been worse. A sizable part of the book is dedicated to explaining why software engineers need a formal design process, why that process should be need- and risk-driven, and why it needs to be iterative. This information is very basic; ANYONE should be aware of it almost instinctively. But the book spends hundreds of pages on these basic facts. This is very patronizing and insulting to readers' intelligence. Furthermore, instead of being concise and precise, the book rambles and rambles and rambles and...
In summary, this is a very poorly written, rambling, patronizing, and useless book, not worth a penny. I am writing this evaluation out of extreme anger. When you spend $50+ and several days reading a 300-page book to learn NOTHING, you have the right to feel insulted by the authors. I know no more about software design now than I knew before reading the book.
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2: Boring and Obvious
This book touches on some nice topics but if fails to state anything more then the obvious for anyone that knows anything about OO and the unified process.
I kept reading from one chapter to the next wondering where the actual detailed content was going to start but it never did.
On top of that it is written in such a boring way that I had trouble staying awake on numerous occasions.
Whether you're new to Computer Science or OO or have been in the industry for a while (as I have), you can do much better than this book.
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3: Excellent, if you willing to put in a ton of effort
The "Unified Software Development Process" is still probably the best book yet on software process. Yes, it's difficult to read and it's not an introduction by any means (it reads like a textbook). but, if you're willing to put in the time and effort, what you'll get out of it is i think is worth it. I often had to go over a page many times to understand exactly what they saying, and routinely ended up with a headache. but, I really think it pays off.
The process they present just makes sense, and seems to be the right way to make software. The main ideas (iterative AND phased development, and architecture centric while being use case driven) blends the best from the software development world. I feel that on my successful projects, these same ideas just seem to intuitively happen.
Unlike most process books, this one goes into detail. It shows you what deliveribles you should be creating, what types of workers should be working on the deliverbles and when. These details, for me gave me a much, much clearer understanding about how a process should work. Things aren't so high-level. You can apply them (once you've figured them out) by just following the workflows.
To me, this book has as its foundation in one of Ivar Jacobson's previous software books: "Object-Oriented Software Engineering" (if you think his current book is hard to read, you should see this one, ugh). Also, an excellent book and should be read by every software architect.
I think if you read both these books, you'll have a very solid foundation for what you need to know about Software Engineering. A previous reviewer is right, this is not a introductory text. It's better to read an intro book on the rational unified process first before moving on to this one.
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4: Non-habit forming sleep aid
I had to buy this book for coursework. Now, I can't imagine authors with more knowledge of UML, etc. than these three guys. However, every chapter reads like a student paper in which the main intention is filling up space for credit. Don't get me wrong here. I read programming books for fun. I'm not one of those people who doesn't enjoy reading technical material. They just managed to take an already dry subject and dry it further. As you read through there are various references to other books, articles, whatever. It seems as though no original material was written for this book. So, here's my advice. Read those books. Don't read this one unless you need to catch up on some sleep.
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5: An excellent introduction book for software architect
If you want to be an archtiect or a lead programmer, read it and try to make sense of it. Otherwise, don't bother.
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