A friend brought this book to my attention recently. As an experienced enterprise Java developer who has recently added Objective-C to his toolkit of technologies to solve problems with, I was happy to see a book so close to my heart. I have started (but not yet finished) reading this one and so far it seems well worth the read for those of you who want to also add Objective-C to your Java skillset.

It is one of the most venerated books in the world of Software Engineering. It is such an icon it even has its own nickname and even the acronym of the nickname is easily recognized by most software architecture and design zealots.

I am of course talking about Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. Also known simply as the Gang of Four book, or even more simply as just GoF.

I in fact never purchased the book myself, but I have definitely read it and it has been on my bookshelf for the best part of a decade now. When I first moved to the United States I moved into an apartment that was being rented and paid for by the company that hired me. It was the heady days of the .com explosion so there was a high rate of turnover at the company. When I moved into the apartment, it was clear that the previous occupant/employee had only just vacated and had left some personal belongings behind. One of the items carelessly discarded was a copy of Gof.

Now to be fair, the book will put the hardiest of readers to sleep pretty easily – it is most definitely a tome of knowledge, not a work of entertainment. But nonetheless, my copy is certainly worth the dead trees it is printed on.

As with many new ideas, there is rarely just one person thinking about them. It usually takes these visionaries getting together and coming up with some common terminology and cohesive thoughts to really launch the new idea into the mainstream. This is what GoF did for Design Patterns, and it is in this launching that its main value resides.

It is hard to believe that this book is already 15 years old. But InformIT has just published an interview with 3 of the gang (Vlissides died on Thanksgiving Day in 2005) to look back on the book, its influence on the Software Engineering industry since its release and whether in the rapidly changing world of app stores, mashups and the like, whether the book is still relevant.

InformIT: Design Patterns 15 Years Later: An Interview with Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, and Ralph Johnson > Design Patterns 15 Years Later: An Interview with Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, and Ralph Johnson

I couldn’t get to sleep last night, so pulled out The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein. I purchased it the day it came out a couple of weeks ago, but with JavaOne etc. I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

It is an easy read so far, I made it through the first 100 pages before my eyelids finally gave in.

I think I have bookmarked every other page so far, because there are things I need to go back to and address – mostly websites and tools I need to take a look at.

I will post up a more complete review when I am finished with it.

After upgrading my SCEA certification recently (see this post), I have summarized some key pieces of information and the resources I used to pass the exam below. I hope this helps others pass as well.

The Basics
The place to start is the main SCEA exam page on the Sun site (http://www.sun.com/training/certification/java/scea.xml). You will find a description of the exam objectives as well as plenty of plugs for Sun’s own training courses to help you pass the exam (I have never taken any training directly from Sun, so I cannot speak to their value).

Certification Structure
Remember, the certification is made up of 3 parts.

The first part is an exam and is the hardest part, this is the part you are really doing all of the study for. The exam is a computer administered multiple-choice style exam (the same as the SCJP exam if you have done that one).

The second part is a take home assignment. This part will take the longest and involves presenting a solution (via UML and other documentation) to a business problem. There is no coding involved.

The third part is another computer based exam, but is made up of long answer questions this time. You should plan to do the 3rd part ASAP after you have submitted and passed the 2nd part. The questions in this part will ask about certain design considerations and other decision points from the assignment and why you chose the solution option that you did.

Obviously it will depend on your level of proficiency as an architect and specifically with the JavaEE technologies, but I think you should plan on 3-6 months in prep for the first part, 1-3 months to complete the assignment and then you should be able to do the 3rd part within a month of submitting your assignment depending on how long it takes Sun to review your assignment and you to get scheduled in to take the exam.

Websites
Below is a list of some websites that contain relevant information.

• Sun JavaEE Blueprints – http://java.sun.com/blueprints/enterprise/index.html
• JavaRanch list of online SCEA resources – http://faq.javaranch.com/java/SceaOnlineResources
• JavaRanch SCEA FAQ – http://faq.javaranch.com/java/SceaFaq
• Paractice exam on about.com – http://certification.about.com/od/freequestions/a/blscea_intro.htm

Books
I have read all of the following books at one point or another. They are all mentioned as recommended reading at various places in the official Sun documentation for the exam.

Some Notes on Upgrading
If you have previously passed the SCEA for an earlier version of the JavaE/J2EE specification, then you can complete a modified version of the SCEA certification to upgrade to the latest version (currently JavaEE 5). The upgrade certification process only requires you to sit and pass the first part of the normal certification – the multiple choice exam. You do not need to re-do the assignment or the long-answer exam.

When I sat the upgrade exam, I noticed that a significant proportion of the questions were related to web services. I suspect that this is because the first time I sat the exam, web services were not officially part of the JavaEE stack and so perhaps the upgrade exam is tailored to cover only the newer parts of the specifications – but I cannot guarantee that this is the case.

Do you have other resources that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments.

We finished reviewing “User Stories Applied – For Agile Software Development” by Mike Cohn as a group.

This was the second book we have reviewed as a group by Mike Cohn. Previously we also reviewed Agile Estimating and Planning

I can highly recommend this book if you are looking to improve your use of User Stories and you need a gentle introduction to some other Agile topics. The book specifically ties the use of User Stories to both Scrum and XP and shows the benefits of using User Stories over other requirements gathering techniques. In addition it provides guidance on how to generate User Stories and also how to ensure the stories are of the correct level of precision.

We will definitely be adopting many of the processes in the book, particularly those related to generating the stories up front and identifying user types and creating personas to represent important user groups.

The link below will take you to Amazon.com to purchase the book if you are interested.

Just posted a review over at Amazon.com detailing my dealings with Sony this morning.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2IMJT4IX8YQ96/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm