IOC Design Resources

Question

I've done quite a bit of searching on this and haven't had much luck finding something cohesive. I'm a relatively new developer and have just started in my first professional development position. I know that I have a great deal to learn even in the realm of the basics. Based on listening to PodCasts, reading blogs, papers etc; I've come to understand that keeping separation of concerns, IOC, Dependency Injection in mind when designing and building software seems to be the right thing to do. I get the concepts at a VERY high level and want to approach what I do with this in mined as much as I can.

So, here's the rub. HOW the heck do I design stuff this way? I work on a team that has inherited a web based product that is very tightly coupled, very poorly documented and generally not an easy to maintain bit of sofware. Evryone seems to like the idea of removing some of this couple. They like the idea of developing automated tests (which from what I've read is easier to do with loosely coupled components). Nobody seems to know how to do it. I'm willing to take a stab at it, but I need guidance. Everything I've found always seems to talk about this stuff in a very high level way, or conversely, focuses on just a small piece of the whole. I'd like some guidance on a book, or series of tutorials, or videos, or SOMETHING that takes a somewhat real-world example and shows you how to apply these principles. Ideally, I'd LOVE to see something that says..."Take this order entry app, for example. THIS is how most people put it together today using standard ADO.NET DataSets, blah...blah...blah. NOW! If we apply the IOC principles to make this a loosely coupled project, here's what you do differently. Here's WHY you do it this way, and here's what you have to consider when you try to accomplish this."

I know this is a bit long winded, I'm just a bit frustrated that most of the comprehensive trainig material out there that I've found simply doesn't discuss this topic in a way that someone starting out can apply good practices from day one.

Thanks all for your time.

Steve

Answer 1

I was in the same situation and i bought these two books

(The PDF version to print out) http://www.manning.com/osherove/ and http://www.manning.com/prasanna/

Answer 2

I would suggest that you check out the book James Kovacs mentioned in this blog post. One is particularly poignant for your situation. That is "Working Effectively with Legacy Code." It has very good explanations of the concepts of refactoring. It also gives examples of these concept that, although in a C#, Java, and C++, are very easy to follow.

Answer 3

You should definitely check out the IoC screencasts on dimecasts.net. They are very straight-forward and will help you to grasp some of the concepts.