Review By: Scott Brookhart
09/17/2010This book is a collection of ninety-seven, two-page-long bits of advice from active programmers and developers. Each unique viewpoint provides sound practices that can be used in day-to-day programming and developing activities. Though not organized this way, these short tips are categorized into nineteen different categories. These tips are not language-dependent or dedicated to a particular programming type, rather the advice is general and comes across as common sense. However common these tips may be, the book is worth reading and keeping handy to reference when needing an approach and philosophy to programming and developing.

Programmers usually must be competent with one or more computer languages (usually more); understand the general approach to getting work done in an organized way following processes; able to speak with customers about the software in development; keep up with the latest technologies; make sure that the computer application meets all of the requirements of accessibility, usability, scalability, and reliability; and still make time for family. Real-life programmers keeping up with the tasks listed above are the ones who've written these tips in order to help fellow programmers. That is the main reason you should add this book to your library, if nothing else, to hear what has helped others in our trade become better at what they do. We all want to be better at our job. Sometimes it requires taking a step back from the deep dive into code to think about what we're trying to accomplish and how we can do things more efficiently or take a more sensible approach.

I recommend this book to coworkers. I also would hope that as a result of reading this, my coworker would take a step back and consider his trade and his approach to delivering a sound product.