What not how
I am disappointed, because the writers are the top of Microsofts engine driving domain specific languages.
The book tells what is possible using Visual Studio 2005 and the DSL tools. However it does a terrible job in explaining how and when to use the tools.
It is not a handsone book, you can't take it and work through examples and it is not an reading/theoratical book either, you can't read it while one the train to work and hope to learn anything.
Just like the book on software factories this book is elaborate and the writers are smart they are just not capable of making the information simple and interesting enough to stick into my head.
Not for my taste of technical book
The books covers almost all of the capabilities for the DSL world, however in this approach to cover all themes, they present some important subjects in a very light way. The reader must have a previous and seriuos knowledge of DSL items and a lot of experience in Visual Studio 2005.
However some chapters (2,3,4,8 and 9) are very very good :D
THE Book for the Subject
There's no doubt that Microsoft has a steller team working on its DSL tools, and given their position on the DSL team, there's no better team of writers to elaborate both the underlying concepts as well as go in depth on the implementations of those technologies in the Visual Studio DSL Tools.
The more developers and architects getting familiar with DSLs and modeling, the better, and this toolset and book are the best resource I know of for learning more about the domain and getting a very useful and concrete example of the concepts as well as a tool you can use to start building your own.
Buy it. Learn it. Use it.
(3 reviews)
