A lot of the books sounds really basic, but stick to it. There are some more interesting bits later on.

Also, even though it sounds basic, try to think how many times you have actually done this. Or do you tend to hack along happily even though you know better. This book just points out when you should know better!

I read the first 40-50 pages of this book before I lost interest. At this stage it felt to me that it was just repeating things that had already been said as well as stating what seemed like the obvious to me. I may give it another try in a few months but for now I’m giving up reading this one.

Should be required reading in CS programs and devteams alike.

Become a better programmer. That’s what the book promises in its Foreward and that’s what it delivers. Inside you’ll find tips for everything from creating modular programs (Orthogonality) to estimating the timeline of a project, and the authors present this information in a way that’s language-neutral and easy to digest. This book is an absolutely-must-read for any programmer, novice or experienced.

This book stands with Design Patterns and Refactoring as a must read for any programmer.

Well, I’m done with it, sort of.

Like I said before, there is just SO much knowledge to absorb in this book. I think I’m going to get the third book in the Pragmatic Toolbox (The one on Automation), read that, and then go back and read all of these again (Skipping some sections that are tool specific).

The book is absolutely filled to the brim with useful advice on the subject of being a better programmer and that, is in part, the problem. There’s no way to metabolize all this information. The pull out placard in the back is nice, but it’s still not perfect.

There needs to be, I dunno, some sort of cumulative excercise (the individual ones are nice, mind you) that makes you flex all the lessons in the book.

This is the sort of book I read to continue questioning the central tenets of my profession. It shows inklings of insight, but I’ve only just begun…