Monthly Book Roundup (July 2014)
This month includes a classic Groovy book as well as yet another AngularJS book.
-
-
Groovy in Action
Although a bit dated at this point (published in 2007), this is still one of the best programming books I've ever read.
I really wish I had read this book when I first started using Groovy. The writing is outstanding and the examples couldn't be clearer. I especially like how all the code examples include assert statements which makes them very easy to read and understand. I definitely have an even greater appreciation for how thoughful and elegant the Groovy language is.
This book contains great explanations of closures, metaprogramming, implementing builders, etc. I would love to see a newer addition of this book but I found it incredibly helpful anyway.
I can see now why this book gets consistently high praise from Groovy developers.
-
-
Mastering AngularJS Directives
While the code examples were excellent some of the writing was absolutely awful.
It's a shame because this had the potential to be a really excellent book. There was a strong focus on testing and both the tests and the code itself were impeccable. A particularly aggressive editor could have really helped here especially in the first chapter which was especially bad.
There are some great tips and insights for directive development here despite the writing. I would recommend this book only if you're already pretty comfortable with directives otherwise you'll likely just end up frustrated and confused.