Graduate developers

[Ketchup]

At my current clientco, there are a bunch of graduate developers who are causing my a lot of headaches. They are smart guys (and a girl) but do not have a clue how to design components. Some of the howlers i have seen today pushed me over the edge and i pulled the team-leader up on it.

He is a nice guy and a great man-manager but totally inept when it comes to filling the role of lead-architect (which he has nicely palmed off on me for no more $$$). We had a team meeting about my concerns and one of the graduates explained that they had only been taught how to program at uni, and not how to design the system and asked for recommendations of reading material, at which point i was a bit stumped.

I read code compete, Go4 when i was a graduate, but also had a superb senior dev who pulled me up on every mistake i made. Unfortunately i can't see this guy doing that, and many of these graduates are getting off to the wrong start. Can anyone recommend any reading or online courses on how to structure code and components?

[d000hg]

Who hires graduates without expecting to mentor them? Crazy!

I think Code complete and Go4 are both relevant. There are a few here you could look at: Book Reviews - Joel on Software

This is the suggested reading list for CS at Durham:
https://www.dur.ac.uk/natural.scienc...ers/rlists/cs/

However I think you need someone to guide them. Or get them to talk to each other about what they do.

[doodab]

Martin Fowler "patterns of enterprise application architecture" is worth a read as well.

[Ketchup]

I told them to go and understand the SOLID principle and ensure every class they right conforms to it. Also suggested reading some of the above examples. Thank you.

[RasputinDude]

+1 for Joel.

Design Patterns - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Design-patte.../dp/0201633612

[billybiro]

Can anyone recommend any reading or online courses on how to structure code and components?

For reading, start with these (in no particular order):

The Mythical Man Month - Fred Brooks
Clean Code - Robert Martin
Code Complete 2nd Edition - Steve McConnell
The Pragmatic Programmer - Andrew Hunt & Dave Thomas
Peopleware - Tom DeMarco & Tim Lister
Patterns Of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler
Design patterns: Elements of reusable object-oriented software - Erich Gamma et al (the Gang Of Four)
Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided By Tests - Steve Freeman & Nat Pryce

And if you're working with any "legacy" code (i.e. existing code that may be badly designed and probably has little or no unit tests):

Working Effectively With Legacy Code - Michael Feathers
Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code - Martin Fowler, Kent Beck et al.

There are many other great books out there, but if they can get through this lot and understand the content within, they'll be well on their way.