Reviews

Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design by Kent Beck

nflamel's review

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informative reflective relaxing slow-paced

3.5

Short, very well argumented. I would really recommend it to engineers who are early in their cereers.

cjhuitt's review

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fast-paced

3.5

rjbs's review

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4.0

I found the first two parts to be a well-written rehash of things I've read many times before. It was fine, but I was not the audience. It discusses the isolated value of tidying code (refactoring, in the classic parlance).

The third part was very good. It puts the isolated value of tidying code into its economic context, competing with time to begin delivering value as soon as possible. Neither wins, and Beck provides analogies and analysis on how to make decisions about these priorities. Some of it was "things I knew, but expressed very clearly", and some of them were new ideas to me.

Also, it was short!

cie6e's review

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reflective

3.0

myrmidex's review

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informative lighthearted fast-paced

3.75

kejadlen's review

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informative lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

4.0

This book is essentially preaching to the choir with me, and I thought the first half was fantastic, but it lagged a bit in the second half trying to talk about the topic with a slightly higher level of abstraction. Which, mind you, I still agreed with, but I don't think it was as convincing as it could've been.

I'd probably need to re-skim to give it a real final judgment, but the first major chunk of the book matches my programming style quite well and I'd recommend it for that alone, if nothing else.

sagethesagesage's review

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informative fast-paced

4.25

cwrk's review

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informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

One of the best no-nonsense programming books I’ve ever read. Will be returning to it every couple of years

leemartin91's review

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informative inspiring fast-paced

4.0

While it felt a little short and terse, and maybe more like a collection of blogposts combined into a book, the actual insight and knowledge of the book is classic Beck, especially the last "Act" where he really gets into some theory

hellomateyboy's review

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informative medium-paced

4.0

Some really good ideas. Kind of takes a big leap in the middle which was slightly confusing