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Best development book I've read, has no code in it

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Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#31

Post by watwut »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

I do not think it is a book you are supposed to read from start to end. It is more a book you randomly open when you feel bored or tired, read part of random length and then close.

Kind of book equivalent of opening facebook/news for 5 minutes and then going back to work. Except that you learn little bit each 5-10 minutes long session.

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#32

Post by [deleted] »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

[deleted]

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#33

Post by dysoco »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

I think the book has some good points, but it was basically common sense and the whole book could have been resumed in a blog post.

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#34

Post by michaelwww »

mixedbit wrote: post #24
gesman wrote: post #11

General subject is correct: the more code is pasted in the book - the lesser value it usually is. These 1,200 page overpriced heavy monsters in a bookstore are usually sheer waste of paper.

Here are few examples of great 1000+ pages books with lots of code. Though reading them is much more effort than reading a self-help book: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley... http://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-Illustrated-Implementation-Vol/... http://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Second-Edit...

O'Reilly, C# 5.0 In A Nutshell http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#36

Post by DavidWoof »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

Code Complete was overwhelmingly the most influential programming book I've ever read. But it's been around for 20 years, and much of the material has now been rehashed in many other books, videos, forums, blog posts, etc. I think that's what other posters are getting at when they say it's just common sense: this kind of thing is everywhere now.

Much of the book is spent making arguments for and providing evidence for things that are considered obvious today.

So if you stopped because the material sounded obvious and redundant, then maybe it is for you. But if you stopped because the material seemed seemed unimportant or trivial, then I strongly urge you to start up with it again.

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#37

Post by radicalbyte »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

It's a great book for people who started coding 10-15 years ago.

Since then most of the lessons in Code Complete have become part of the soul of modern languages, frameworks and libraries. So you learn them through proxy.

Still, I still come across people who could learn from reading it again, especially what it says over comments, testing and generally writing legible code.

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#38

Post by dionidium »

sker wrote: post #25
kh_hk wrote: post #3

I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book, but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google something, but it really surprised me h…

Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it? I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page 100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

How long had you been programming when you read it? Code Complete and The Pragmatic Programmer had been on my Amazon wishlist for nearly ten years when I finally ordered them a couple years ago. I had the same reaction as you to both. I had already learned all those things through experience. On the other hand, I don't know if the books would have done much good for me ten years ago. Maybe I needed to learn those things on my own, over time.

I think more people read those books and say, "yes, I agree with all of this already" than read them and think, "oh, here is a new thing I haven't thought before and will use from now on."

Re: Best development book I've read, has no code in it

#39

Post by colund »

I can only speak for myself, but I am tired of these "soft" software development books and the various "movements". They seem to be attempts to transform our technical field from solving real world problems via math and deep understanding into something like politics or religion.

I think recent success of these soft topics may be based on people's feeling of self improvement and enlightenment. I can understand that it creates a nice feeling, but prefer to be enlightened by actually learning to solve real things in a more elegant, efficient way than before and I prefer to learn the rest via actual work experience.

Real self-help would mean to become independent from advice from the outside and looking into yourself and finding out how you can do something better by actually doing it...

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