---
title: "Picking a fight with a book author"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/16/picking-a-fight-with-a-book-author.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/16/picking-a-fight-with-a-book-author.html"
published: "2005-03-16T21:05:00"
updated: "2005-03-16T21:05:00"
tags: ["Off Topic"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Looks like Alex picked a fight with non-other than Francesco Balena, long time coder and regional director, and personally someone who's code and tips I've used as a VB developer for many of my projects. Francesco is…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Picking a fight with a book author

By Roy Osherove March 16, 2005 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

**Historical article** · Originally published March 16, 2005; technical details may be outdated.

Looks like [Alex picked a fight](http://weblogs.asp.net/alex_papadimoulis/archive/2005/03/15/394671.aspx) with non-other than Francesco Balena, long time coder and regional director, and personally someone who's code and tips I've used as a VB developer for many of my projects. Francesco is the co-author of [this book](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735621721/iserializable-20), which Alex just gave a scathing review on.

Personally, I think Alex is too harsh. I know Fancesco's work for a long time and trust him when he writes a book about best practices such as the one mentioned. You should definitely go read his comment to the aforementioned post on the bottom - it's enlightening.

Alex [posted more](http://weblogs.asp.net/Alex_Papadimoulis/archive/2005/03/16/394892.aspx), with less harsh words.

If anything, it looks like I'm going to order this book now - it seems very cool.

Was this just a clever marketing ploy?

## More in Off Topic

[All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic)

- Mar 22, 2005

    ### [VS 2005 Pricing and Licensing (sucks)](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/22/vs-2005-pricing-and-licensing-sucks.html)

- Mar 17, 2005

    ### [Funny TechEd video - Scott & Rory](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/17/funny-teched-video-scott-amp-rory.html)

- Mar 12, 2005

    ### [The Real Roy](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/12/the-real-roy.html)

- Mar 12, 2005

    ### [How most developers don't give a damn about productivity](https://osherove.com/blog/2005/3/12/how-most-developers-dont-give-a-damn-about-productivity.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/