Review - The Pragmatic Programmer

I have just finished reading "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, it seems to be on every programmers reading list as a seminal book on the art of being a programmer, especially in the ALT.NET world. I have been aware of it and the ideas and practices that it has made popular for some time, but a busy workload has made reading for anything except necessity impossible until my job change earlier this month.

While I wont pretend to have completely understood everything that's discussed on this first reading I can say that the book is very readable and the general concepts presented in a very clear and easy to understand format. I like the tips they give you every so often throughout the book and might even add them to my quote of the day list to keep them in the front of my mind until I have absorbed the underlying concepts a little more. Key ideas include not getting complacent and lazy, being proud of your achievements and an ongoing commitment to yourself to keep on learning, which sounds like a good philosophy to me.

I said first reading because I will return to the book in 6 months or a year because I think re-reading it will allow me to understand a little more and help me develop as a programmer. I would like to put into practice many of the ideas but before I can ask my team to adopt the approach I need to be able to walk the walk.

The book has lots of examples and isn't focussed on any particular language which is a good thing, languages come and go, but they all do the same thing and once you understand how a loop works it doesn't matter what language is being used the logic remains the same. At the end of each section they pose some questions to give you food for though, a mental work out. This I think is a good thing, clearly Dave Thomas thinks so too, so much that he has set up a virtual mental dojo for us to practice our code kata which I also highly recommend visiting.

The books' aim is to explain how to be more productive by eliminating repetition in code, automating wherever possible to reduce errors. They cover techniques for keeping your code flexible in the sense that it can adapt easily to changing requirements, robust and that you can have confidence in.

I expect to become good friends with this book!