I own this book since winter 2004 and now it’s impossible to accurately calculate how much did this book contributed to my career and made me smile whenever I hit a previously well documented antipattern.
My boss introduced me this masterpiece after attending Colorado Software Summit 2003 and watching Bill Dudney talk live on J2EE AntiPatterns.
This was a gem for a junior solution architect like me back in that time. I already knew about many of the illustrated antipatterns but what made this book special was its academic approach to taxonomy and remediation. Each antipattern section includes a background to nature of problem, a generalized form of the antipattern, a list main symptoms, related consequences, typical causes and a very much needed known exceptions part to guide the reader about where reality mandates this antipattern, finishing with refactorings for the remedy.
After more than 5 years from its publication and name; most of the covered antipatterns are still valid for every other programming language or platform in existence. Within these years, I audited hundreds of different software projects whether built on J2EE, .NET or any other exotic platform and detected hundreds —if not thousands of antipatterns, thanks to Dudney, et. al. The unavoidable and frustrating process of reporting was dramatically easier with this book too. Following the same taxonomical path to define the problem let us to create easier to understand write-ups by borrowing their style and language.
All in all, the footprint of this book in my career is significant. Reading these kinds of books greatly sharpens ones nose for code smells.
This book deserves a spot in library of software engineers who are into software architectures. It’s possible to have a peek inside of it on Amazon.
