"It may help to drink some beer before trying to understand this."

"Your boss asks, 'What have you been doing all day?'  You reply, 'Logging in!' Is your boss happy?"

-from Applying UML and Patterns, by Craig Larman

I feel no shame (nor insecurity in my heterosexuality) whatsoever when I tell you that I'm enough of a fan of the Daily Grind to have a Mike Gunderloy poster in the bedroom at our home.  I can't explain how I got it without violating the terms of the restraining order so let's just leave it at that.  You can no doubt imagine my reaction when I found out that the author of the Daily Grind, a blog I've been reading almost since its inception, actually linked to a post I had written.  Sure, he used the word "infecting" in the description, but when you deal with a cold, analytical mind like Mike Gunderloy's, you take whatever scant bits you can get.  

One notable aspect about Mike Gunderloy is that he has aboslutely nothing to do with Applying UML and Patterns.  However, there are two reasons for my seeming sidebar into nowhere:

a) With his link comes some renewed pressure and accountability.  The vengeful James Kovacs pointed out that my book list reviews haven't been publicly updated in some time.   This needs fixing, so today I have posted yet another book review.
b) Talking about Mike Gunderloy is *still* more exciting than talking about Applying UML and Patterns.

Many of you have noticed that a vast majority of my book reviews tend to lean on the enthusiastic side.  This review is not one of them, despite the interesting single curl drop-down hairstyle Craig Larman displays on the back cover.  Remember this footnote from my review of Refactoring?

"There was actually *another* reason I was near death, but you'll have to tune in next week to find out the answer".

Most people originally assumed I was just courageously recovering from a head cold, but the truth was far more sinister - reading this book nearly *cost me my life*.  Nothing makes you crave death more than slogging through about a 1/3rd of Applying UML and Design Patterns.

Beginning of the book with the best pitch for agile methodologies and an explanation of what the RUP really means?  Fantastic.

Latter half of the book with a description of various patterns and how they fit into UML design?  *Amazing*.

Inception?  SNORE.  And as someone who has read through the entirety of the GOF Design Patterns book, I *know* boring.  

Now, dissing the GOF Design Patterns book is hardly that unique - in fact, it seems like these days it is in vogue to rag on the classic blue book.  However, most developers who have read "Applying UML and Patterns" seem to want nothing more than to spoon with Craig Larman and whisper sweet nothings in his ear for writing it.  As I'm not one of those people (and not just because I'm rampagingly hetero), I can see that my opinion on this book won't be terribly popular with the masses - I can recommend it, but make sure you're not expecting an exciting read.  Thankfully, the latter half of the book or so almost makes up for the plodding nature of the text preceding it.  Larman uses two main examples throughout his book: point of sale and Monopoly.  I was a little disappointed that most of the emphasis went to the point of sale, but part of this is probably my own bias towards Monopoly.  To those of you that find point of sale examples to be incredibly sexually arousing, I'm sure you'll get quite a charge out of Larman's book and I also recommend you see a doctor.

I can't give this thing ***** in good conscience, and yet I can't give it 0/5 either; it does have some useful information and I do feel as if I'm a better developer for reading it.   The first part gets a 3.5 out of 5, the "abyss" pages get 0 out of 5 for nearly ending my existence, and the last half or so of the book gets 4 out of 5.  For those of you who are familiar with my ratings scale, this is like knowing a woman who was average/cute in junior high, gained a whole bunch of weight in high school, and then started working out and became a 20 year old hard-bodied, large-breasted stripper - sure, you'd kill to make out with her now, but would you really have gone through the dark years to get there?  Recommendation to read, but skip Inception if you'd like to keep your sanity!