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The original version of this book is something I'll always treasure. It sits next to "Code Complete", the Gang of Four's "Design Patterns" book and Martin Fowle

The original version of this book is something I'll always treasure. It sits next to "Code Complete", the Gang of Four's "Design Patterns" book and Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" on my top shelf and I still read parts of it every year.

caseysoftware 7y ago
Add Fogel's "Producing Open Source Software" and Brooks' Mythical Man Month and you've perfectly described my shelf too. I found most of those when I was a lowly junior developer and they were instrumental in shaping my thinking, approach, and understanding of tradeoffs. I'd love to see more people pick them up.
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  I just looked and realized that I actually have Mythical Man Month next to the Pragmatic Programmer book...
  - afabisch 7y ago
    Same here. Those two books seem to be ordered only as pairs. ;)
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Kernighan and Pike’s “the practice of programming” is up there with those on my shelf.
- martininmelb 7y ago
  Yes. That book has probably shaped my thinking and coding more than any of the others above (although they are also very good).
tunnuz 7y ago
Would you still recommend the original version? I have a printed copy and tried to read it ages ago, but gave up (it bore me). I am sure I'd appreciate it better now, but with a new edition coming out I'd be wondering whether I'm missing out.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  When I first read it 5 years into my now 10 year programming career, it felt timeless. I've been meaning to reread it ever since. Curious what I would think now.
- ralphc 7y ago
  Hunt and Thomas themselves don't really recommend it anymore. Large parts of the industry have changed over the years. They're interviewed in episode 352 of The Changelog podcast. It's worth a listen if you're a fan, or interested in either edition.
  - leetrout 7y ago
    That was a great listen. Thanks for the recommendation.
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sideshowb 7y ago
Ssh you're not meant to confess to design patterns these days ;-)
mav3rick 7y ago
To any new grad reading this...Code Complete is still relevant !!
maaaats 7y ago
I bought a rubber duck for fun after reading the first passages as a student. Sincr then I've been known as the rubber duck guy and people constantly gift me them. They are all over the office.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  I couldn't bring myself to do it for real with an actual rubber duck. But I recently came up with the concept of "comment ducking" which is when you just start writing a comment in the source code as if you were explaining to someone and that actually works as a substitute!
ilovecaching 7y ago
I used to think those books were great before I got my first job at FAANG. Literally the only thing that matters is moving fast. Technical debt is just the price of scaling and beating the competition. Code quality is really not important at all as long as the product works and is bug free. So I’ve become extremely nihilistic about software development. It isn’t that I don’t think the properties of clean code and software craftsmanship aren’t worth it, it’s that companies and the engineers who build them from startups don’t care and are focused on keeping their doors open. Long term health is a very secondary concern. I’ve done my fair share of preaching that we should refactor and start focusing on quality during code reviews and it’s basically just shouted down with “don’t fix what isn’t broken” and YAGNI.
- taneq 7y ago
  While I share your nihilism about engineering quality in a startup environment, if you don't keep your doors open, the long term health of your codebase will fall to zero. If you have an established, cashflow-positive company that's not hell-bent on scaling fast (or being forced to scale unnaturally by VC backers) then the balance swings back and it becomes worth investing in your codebase.
- dawidw 7y ago
  > Literally the only thing that matters is moving fast > Code quality is really not important at all as long as the product works and is bug free According to Robert C. Martin is not possible to move fast without good quality.
  - ilovecaching 7y ago
    That's the thing though. Martin says that, but then you watch a company scale to billions of people ignoring all of his advice. So the question is - does Martin actually have quantitative proof that what he is saying is correct, or is he just selling wishful thinking? The field of software engineering as an academic discipline is the least understood of the computer science subfields because it's qualitative not quantitative field. Of course scaling to billions of users only proves that it can be done without quality, not that they could have done it better with quality software.
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caseysoftware 7y ago

Add Fogel's "Producing Open Source Software" and Brooks' Mythical Man Month and you've perfectly described my shelf too. I found most of those when I was a lowly junior developer and they were instrumental in shaping my thinking, approach, and understanding of tradeoffs. I'd love to see more people pick them up.

alasdair_ 7y ago
I just looked and realized that I actually have Mythical Man Month next to the Pragmatic Programmer book...
- afabisch 7y ago
  Same here. Those two books seem to be ordered only as pairs. ;)

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Kernighan and Pike’s “the practice of programming” is up there with those on my shelf.

martininmelb 7y ago
Yes. That book has probably shaped my thinking and coding more than any of the others above (although they are also very good).

tunnuz 7y ago

Would you still recommend the original version? I have a printed copy and tried to read it ages ago, but gave up (it bore me). I am sure I'd appreciate it better now, but with a new edition coming out I'd be wondering whether I'm missing out.

anderspitman 7y ago
When I first read it 5 years into my now 10 year programming career, it felt timeless. I've been meaning to reread it ever since. Curious what I would think now.
ralphc 7y ago
Hunt and Thomas themselves don't really recommend it anymore. Large parts of the industry have changed over the years. They're interviewed in episode 352 of The Changelog podcast. It's worth a listen if you're a fan, or interested in either edition.
- leetrout 7y ago
  That was a great listen. Thanks for the recommendation.

deleted 7y ago

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sideshowb 7y ago

Ssh you're not meant to confess to design patterns these days ;-)

mav3rick 7y ago

To any new grad reading this...Code Complete is still relevant !!

maaaats 7y ago

I bought a rubber duck for fun after reading the first passages as a student. Sincr then I've been known as the rubber duck guy and people constantly gift me them. They are all over the office.

james_s_tayler 7y ago
I couldn't bring myself to do it for real with an actual rubber duck. But I recently came up with the concept of "comment ducking" which is when you just start writing a comment in the source code as if you were explaining to someone and that actually works as a substitute!

ilovecaching 7y ago

I used to think those books were great before I got my first job at FAANG. Literally the only thing that matters is moving fast. Technical debt is just the price of scaling and beating the competition. Code quality is really not important at all as long as the product works and is bug free. So I’ve become extremely nihilistic about software development. It isn’t that I don’t think the properties of clean code and software craftsmanship aren’t worth it, it’s that companies and the engineers who build them from startups don’t care and are focused on keeping their doors open. Long term health is a very secondary concern. I’ve done my fair share of preaching that we should refactor and start focusing on quality during code reviews and it’s basically just shouted down with “don’t fix what isn’t broken” and YAGNI.

taneq 7y ago
While I share your nihilism about engineering quality in a startup environment, if you don't keep your doors open, the long term health of your codebase will fall to zero. If you have an established, cashflow-positive company that's not hell-bent on scaling fast (or being forced to scale unnaturally by VC backers) then the balance swings back and it becomes worth investing in your codebase.
dawidw 7y ago
> Literally the only thing that matters is moving fast > Code quality is really not important at all as long as the product works and is bug free According to Robert C. Martin is not possible to move fast without good quality.
- ilovecaching 7y ago
  That's the thing though. Martin says that, but then you watch a company scale to billions of people ignoring all of his advice. So the question is - does Martin actually have quantitative proof that what he is saying is correct, or is he just selling wishful thinking? The field of software engineering as an academic discipline is the least understood of the computer science subfields because it's qualitative not quantitative field. Of course scaling to billions of users only proves that it can be done without quality, not that they could have done it better with quality software.

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