Read you a book for great good!

Posted on April 21, 2013 by Nadir Sampaoli

Last september I decided to start a life-long plan of self-improvement: I started gathering info around the web (there are even some other blogs, like Coding Horror, that provide their own list of suggested books for programmers and the like) about good technical readings and books to take advantage of the teachings that more experienced craftsmen and developers have been so kind to share with newcomers.

The first tome of my imaginary encyclopedia was Code Complete (2nd edition), by Steve McConnell. It’s a fairly large (took me almost three months to finish it) overview of software development fundamentals and tips about managing your projects (be they small or large).
The nicest thing about this book is that everything he states is backed by reasoning and statistics gathered through several years of on-field (someone would say In Trenches) experience.
I have to admit that some of the chapters concerning practical coding (like using flow structures and functional decomposition) didn’t come new to me, but I guess they were aimed to completeness.

Another book that deeply changed my approach towards facing my daily jungle is The Pragmatic Programmer.
It’s a gathering of several short (and very entertaining, if you ask me) anectodes used to represent real-world issues you probably have meet often before. It’s followed by practical examples and real-world applications of those teachings.