1/3 of Jolt Finalists Available In Kindle Edition

There were next-to-zero technical books available for the Kindle shortly after its launch. I was delighted to discover 4 of the 12 books that were finalists for Jolt Awards this year are now available in Kindle form:

  • Geekonomics
  • Outside In Software Development
  • WPF Unleashed
  • xUnit Test Patterns
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"The Definitive ANTLR Reference" by Terence Parr

I second Andrew Binstock's recommendation of "The Definitive ANTLR Reference" by Terence Parr (author of ANTLR), even to Binstock's sly observation that the book "sort of lulls you into the false belief that you could write a new scripting language fairly easily."

I really like ANTLR. Not long ago, I …

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"xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code" by Gerard Meszaros

My first reaction to the book xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros (Addison-Wesley) was shock: 800 pages on writing unit tests? Isn't that taking things a little too far?

I have a problem calling such an omnibus a "patterns" book. At 800 pages, xUnit Test Patterns is …

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Book Design

Charles Petzold and Jeff Atwood have gotten in a bit of a kerfluffle that, I think, is an unfortunate example of how online writing can escalate and over-dramatize disagreements between even two talented writers. I'm sure that Atwood appreciates Petzold's work and I'm sure that Petzold appreciates constructive criticism. I'm …

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DeveloperWorks Podcast About Jolt Awards, With Rosalyn Lum and I

DeveloperWorks interviewed Rosalyn Lum and I about the Jolt Awards (IBM was a big winner this year).

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stpBA Storyboarding: Best Rookie Product I've Seen In Years

The easiest Jolt vote I've made in years was for stpBA Storyboarding, a product which every architect and team lead owes themselves to evaluate. I would say it is revolutionary, but it is better than that -- it simply makes the way you probably already work vastly more efficient.

Essentially, it …

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2007 Jolts Awards

The Jolt Awards were announced last night. The list of winners is below. We had some particularly competitive categories this year (in Technical Books, I advise you to simply fill your shopping cart with the finalists). Most delightful, this was a year where there was some real innovation, which I'll …

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iPower, my pwned host, boasts of being "Hacker safe"

I wasn't going to name names, because I do not know the vulnerability which allowed a rootkit to be installed on my system. I may well have been the source of whatever vulnerability by which the system was compromised.

But this "Hacker Safe" blaze front and center on the iPower …

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Jolt Book Finalists: Incredibly Strong

Normally, I don't have a lot of problems making decisions like this, but I've changed my mind 3 times about which book will get my top vote in this year's Jolt Awards for Technical Books. This is a very, very good set of books:

Books (Technical)

Code Quality (Addison-Wesley) by …

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Peter Coffee Leaves eWeek for Salesforce

Peter Coffee, who's been providing some of the most insightful, technically-based discussions of the IT and software industries for 18 years, has left eWeekto become Director of Platform Research at Salesforce.com. This is a significant loss to the field (although I am sure a great benefit to Salesforce.com …

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