Plenty of ideas to make you think about what you do... | 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective...

Concise, informative, useful. | 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts

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	• 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts O'Reilly Media, 2010 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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A fine survey of basic programming 'musts'

Kevlin Henney edits 97 THINGS EVERY PROGRAMMER SHOULD KNOW, a fine survey of basic programming 'musts' with contributors from across the board in the industry - from Verity Stob to Michael Feathers and more. All kinds of projects and concerns are addressed, from using code in domain language to keeping the build clean and including tools for static code analysis in a project's framework.

Plenty of ideas to make you think about what you do...

I seem to be on a kick lately where I'm reading books that have nuggets of programming wisdom that force you to contemplate what you do and how you do it. This month's book is no different... "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts". Presented by a number of technical gurus and visionaries, these 97 two-page thoughts will probably cause you to feel a mixture of emotions, from assurance that you are doing some things correctly, through guilt over taking shortcuts to come, and finally to some frustration over disagreements. In any case, you *will* walk away with a number of ideas to change what you're doing.

There is no pattern or flow to the material as you read through the 97 chapters. In fact, the main order is by alphabetizing the titles of each chapter. But the editor does provide a secondary table of contents to group the contributions by category, so you can choose to read the material in logical groupings if you so desire. It's also important to keep in mind that this is really a "crowdsourced" compilation of what programmers should know. Given that there is no "one true way" to do things, you may find that some of the ideas and contributors don't necessarily agree with each other on all points. But that's OK, as you should read the material and think about what's being said, knowing that your angle or approach may be slightly different (and potentially just as valid) than what you just read.

Even in the short time I've had since finishing the book, I've already started to refer back to some of the information. For instance, "Ask 'What Would the User Do?' (You Are Not the User)" was driven home the other day when I was debugging an application issue that seemingly could not be reproduced. As the developer, I followed the steps exactly as designed, and always got the correct answer. The problem is, the users *didn't* follow the designed path, and I was blind to a very valid and understandable path they would take. I need to remember... I am not the user.

Another one that haunted me just last week (fortunately, I was not the offender) was "A Message to the Future." The contributor makes the case that every line of our code should be a message to the future, to the smart person who will inevitably have to solve a problem with this code. Make them want to say "This is great code, and it's an elegant solution. I can understand it immediately!" If you can code in such a way to make the world better for Phil (the smart person you haven't met yet), then the world truly will be a better place. I only wish the person who had left me a really nasty bug in one of their agents had been practicing that idea...

Some of these ideas might not be where you currently live in the tech world, but you will find a number of contributions that *do* hit you right where you live and breathe each day. And since just one great idea can change your whole perspective, "97 Things" is a very good investment in yourself, your career, and your future.

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Concise, informative, useful.

This is another great book in O'Reilly's "97 Things Every Should Know" series, and it's every bit as good as the others. The book follows the same highly successful format of creating a book full of two-page articles taken from submissions to a public wiki. Each article is concise, highly pertinent to our profession, and well-written.

The articles are grouped in broad categories such as Bugs and Fixes, Design Principles and Coding Techniques, Refactoring, and Tests/Testing/Testers. There's a couple great sections on softer skills such as learning/continuing education and customer interaction. I was really impressed that the testing section was so long with such great content in it.

Nearly every article in the book was highly useful to me, but a couple highlights would have to include:

* Bob Martin's The Boy Scout Rule on leaving code better than you found it
* Steve Smith's Don't Repeat Yourself on keeping duplication out of your design and code
* Jon Jagger's Do Lots of Deliberate Practice on how to improve your skills
* Paul Homer's Simplicity Comes from Reduction on the power of deleting code

This book's nicely balanced between highly technical concepts (avoiding Singleton patterns, code metrics) and more general topics (education, scheduling). It's a great addition to your bookshelf

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Invaluable Experienced Advice On The Programming Profession

This short but extremely useful collection of essays consisting of Gems of Expert Advice is invaluable in that it will pass on the collected experience of Expert Programmers to a new generation apprenticing in this profession. The nature of Programming is such that certain necessary and valuable pieces of advice will be particular to a given operating system or application environment, rather than being generic expertise to be carried to all sub-domains of this profession. The advice collected in brief two page "Gems" is excellent and very necessary to those learning the practical aspects of the Programming Profession after their University Training. Some of it is applicable in all programming projects such as "Beauty is simplicity." and "Code is design."; other advice while absolutely necessary and invaluable to those specializing in the relevant area, such as "Ubuntu coding for friends." and "Message passing leads to better stability in parallel systems." is less generally applicable. My only nit, with this invaluable collection of short essays and "Programming Pearls" (please forgive the title reuse) is some difficulty in locating exactly the advice that would be most valuable in your current project. I would advise the editors to include an "Set of Tags" calling out all the relevant areas and applications of each essay to simplify locating the Pearls most valuable to the reader functioning in a given programming environment in addition to the level of organization provided by the table of contents.

This is definitely an exquisitely valuable collections of "Programming Pearls" and "From The Trenches Advice" valuable to anyone joining the profession from an academic environment, or newly finding themselves in another programming domain.

--Ira Laefsky
MSE/MBA IT & HCI Consultant formerly Senior Consultant at Arthur D. Little Inc. and DIGITAL Equipment Corporation

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1-2 pages is too short to describe the full concept

I thought this would be a good informative book - but a few things put me off.

1st - I think the number 97 may be too much for everyone to pitch in and do a good job of it and also keep the book thin and also get the point across.

2nd - The ideas talked about in some of the items seem very good - but as the idea got into my head slightly - I saw that the article ended.

Some of the other items I think 50% of them - seemed not really worth writing about probably - they should be known to any developer who had done good enough Software Developer for 10 years or so.

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With this book, you get 97 short and extremely useful programming tips from some of the most experienced and respected practitioners in the industry, including Uncle Bob Martin, Scott Meyers, Dan North, Linda Rising, Udi Dahan, Neal Ford, and many more. They encourage you to stretch yourself by learning new languages, looking at problems in new ways, following specific practices, taking responsibility for your work, and becoming as good at the entire craft of programming as you possibly can.

This wealth of practical knowledge contains principles that apply to projects of all types. You can read the book end to end, or easily browse through to find topics of particular interest. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know is a useful reference and a source of inspiration.

Tap into the knowledge of expert programmers who have earned stellar reputations Learn the basic wisdom every programmer needs, regardless of the language you use Take advantage of the online presence that has evolved from this book project

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