The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas

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Book Summary Information

• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)
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• Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams
• Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development
• Implementation Patterns

Book Reviews of The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

Book Review: Priceless
Summary: 5 Stars

The only downside that I could note is that the authors often refer to their own preferred languages & scripts, which both dates the product a little (more so with each passing year), and is also not so useful to those working in different environments or who have their own strong preferences.

However, the nuggets of wisdom and common-sense analogies in this book are golden. If you're like me, you'll often find yourself nodding along with the book while reading a passage that describes something you've experienced or espoused first hand and grimacing when it points out a trick you wish you had thought of when working on some past project.

This book really doesnt have much to do with _programming_ but is really more about _being a programmer_. It's sort of like a self-help for proggies, a mentor-in-a-book. The book's subtitle is "From Journeyman to Master", and this jives with the idea of the things in the book being the sort of Guild-lore a Master Craftsman might pass on to his favored Journeymen prior to retiring back in the days of yore.

I've been a professional developer now for 6 years, self taught and continuously employed at several companies during that time. This book appealed to me when I picked it up because it is true-to-life, and several of the real-world considerations mentioned jived with my own experiences. The ideas and practices that I already had were crystalized and refined by this book, and it also introduced me to ways of thinking that I had not considered.

Perhaps the most significant single line in the book for me is on page 255, "A project that falls below expectations is deemed a failure, no matter how good the deliverable in absolute terms". This struck home because I was once involved in a major project involving multiple programmers from multiple locations around the States, which met every design specification and delivered exactly what was promised, but which was mothballed after its completion because the management didnt understand it. Their expectation was something other than the specification which they had approved and thus we harried developers wasted the better part of a year on a system doomed to failure not because it didn't work or was a bad idea, but because the head honchos just didnt get it. I never understood why until I read that line in this book, and then it all came clear -- their expectations were not in line with the deliverable, and thus they did not want the deliverable despite the fact that it functioned exactly as planned.

Since then I've made it a point to personally do all that I can to ensure that the consumers of projects I'm involved with are "on the same sheet of music" when it comes to understanding what all the tech-speak and specifications actually MEAN. Prototyping and "Tracers" as described in this book have been used to provide mockups before any real code has been written. Documents couched in "Laymans Terms" have been produced. Sometimes it's overkill, but at the end of the projects no consumer comes back saying "thats not what I thought it was going to be". Some Project Managers dont like it, as they feel like it's stepping on their toes, but in the end no Project Manager will complain if the Project is successful -- they get to look good for a while, so kibitzing over the means isn't a priority ;) .

All that aside, if you are a working developer with a grounded approach to programming, and dont have the conceit that you already know everything, I think you should give this book a read thru.

Summary of The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

Some of the authors' nuggets of pragmatism are concrete, and the path to their implementation is clear. They advise readers to learn one text editor, for example, and use it for everything. They also recommend the use of version-tracking software for even the smallest projects, and promote the merits of learning regular expression syntax and a text-manipulation language. Other (perhaps more valuable) advice is more light-hearted. In the debugging section, it is noted that, "if you see hoof prints think horses, not zebras." That is, suspect everything, but start looking for problems in the most obvious places. There are recommendations for making estimates of time and expense, and for integrating testing into the development process. You'll want a copy of The Pragmatic Programmer for two reasons: it displays your own accumulated wisdom more cleanly than you ever bothered to state it, and it introduces you to methods of work that you may not yet have considered. Working programmers will enjoy this book. --David Wall

Topics covered: A useful approach to software design and construction that allows for efficient, profitable development of high-quality products. Elements of the approach include specification development, customer relations, team management, design practices, development tools, and testing procedures. This approach is presented with the help of anecdotes and technical problems.

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