The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
- ISBN13: 9780201616224
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.” — Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process–taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics rang… More >>
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
The foreword gives the entire meaning of the book away, “Software is a craft that is best performed by a practitioner [artist]“. As a rational human being, I wouldn’t want a craftsman or an artist building my car or the plane my family flies on to Disney Land. And what about the artist lovingly crafting the software that controls the car/plane?
Essentially, the book is a collection of “lessons learned” from the authors’ perspective. If you’re a software hobbyist, this book might be a excellent read. But, if you dare call yourself a software engineer, woe betide you…
Rating: 1 / 5
I was plotting to buy this book. But before buying, I checked it out on Google Books. This one is certainly not for the programmers but for the people who claim to be programmer. If you are a programmer, you don’t do finger pointing when you or someone else discovers a bug in your program. You just get down to work with debugger. And in fact you learn a lot while debugging. So if you are a serious programmer (not just by some designation at your work), you don’t need it.
Rating: 2 / 5
This book includes a lot of obvious advice (like keep your designs simple — the KISS principle), and is lacking in any profound insights about how to make it so. The material on Design by Contract elevates a marginally useful thought to a major breakthrough, which it is not. One wonders whether the authors have much field experience writing large systems.
Rating: 1 / 5
The very first tip of this book is worth reading “tip 1: care about your craft”. From there it goes down hill, never really focusing on anything in particular, it tries to be a general guide to excellent programming practice, but also teeters dangerously on the edge of a self-help guide. “tip 5: be a catalyst for change”, “tip 10: its both what you say and how you say it”.The carpenter analogy is so ancient and tired. Technology and software development are based on scientific research at the university level, and a lot of really smart people outside academia. If you want to be fantastic, read what they have to say, (and not 2 dweebs who tell you to reckon about your editor as a plane or saw)There is something disturbing about this book thats hard to pin down. If you’re a serious developer you might know the type of programmer this book appeals to. Its usually the sweaty perl programmer with a flannel shirt on in your shop with a lot of philosophies about development. They write 8 lines of impossible-to-maintain hieroglyphic and call it an application. If you’re a serious developer working in a current platform like J2EE, don’t get this book…its harmful, coming up with pointless new terms like “orthogonality” which just add more junk terms to the programming community. They also recommend you learn a new language every year, as if it weren’t hard enough to keep up with one enterprise level platform. This book has a very dated quality in that respect. It does get to some current development issues like refactoring, but glosses over them completely. If youre new to programming maybe its a excellent thought to give it a try. There are a few points that make sense, but if you’re not completely hopeless you should eventually learn them on your own.
Rating: 2 / 5
Overall, I loved this book. It delivered a thoughtful perspective on software development. I especially appreciated the absence of a quasi-religious methodology as well as their apparent orientation towards Unix.Why only four stars? I never really had any AHAs as I read the book. In other words, the authors make excellent points, but they’re somewhat banal.
Rating: 4 / 5
Cool! That’s a clever way of looikng at it!
A bit surprised it seems to simple and yet ufsuel.
Thank you for your post.Really looking forward to read more. Cool.