Clean Code (2008) is at the top of my Books I wish I'd read 10 or 20 years earlier list, along with Refactoring (1999). They totally transformed the quality of

Clean Code (2008) is at the top of my Books I wish I'd read 10 or 20 years earlier list, along with Refactoring (1999). They totally transformed the quality of my finished programs, in many ways. Some what I learnt may fit into "That's so obvious, why didn't I think of that", or making conscious the things you already do... Refactoring, just by naming and defining the activity, was useful. They're both talking about the programming equivalent of editing for writers. And how to do that, how to get from the 'dirty code' first draft to the 50th draft with everything as good as it can get. Do your future self (and other people) a favour - they're the ones who will have to read and understand your programs. A couple of years later I came across Allen Holub's Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming (1995). I didn't learn anything from it, but it contains almost all of what's in those 2 books, and was written years earlier, (so could have been read earlier), and I think he deserves more credit.