Kent Beck's new book, Implementation Patterns, is a book about writing code in Java. The patterns in this book are based on Kent's reading of existing code as well as his own programming experience and habits. These patterns are about developers communicating through code which is reminiscent of his earlier work on Smalltalk Patterns. They are lower level than design patterns and about the same granularity as Larman's GRASP patterns. The patterns in this book are meant to be a coherent view of how to write code people can understand that serves human as well as economic needs.
Kent provides us with his experience in an elegant and concise (the entire book, with appendices, is 156 pages) format. He does not give rules, but gives values, principles, and rules of thumb:
There is no universal rule. Programmers need to think, communicate, and learn. That's part of being professional.
This is a book that is useful for both junior as well as senior developers - each will come away with something different. Read the full book review for more detail.