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technoskald 's review for:
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
I have too much respect for my time and dignity to finish this book. While it’s from my era (mid to late 90s computing is my jam!), much of the advice should stay there. The book often takes a condescending tone, showing the readers just exactly how smart the writers are. How much detail do we need about helicopter controls?
Many of the metaphors have not aged particularly well - broken windows theory is largely discredited in many ways, frogs DO jump out of boiling pots, and if your software isn’t killing people or blowing things up then maybe a “tracer bullet” isn’t the right metaphor. (We call them “Hello World” stories in my shop.)
Other problems include:
* advice that is non-obvious to the point that I doubt its validity
* examples of problems with no generalized advice about solutions
* approaches that don’t work well in a culture of code reviews, devops / full stack engineers
* answers that boil down to “it depends, figure it out”
* tremendous detail about technologies that are no longer widely used
I might have given this a different score back in 2000 when the book was new, but in 2021, you have better options.
Many of the metaphors have not aged particularly well - broken windows theory is largely discredited in many ways, frogs DO jump out of boiling pots, and if your software isn’t killing people or blowing things up then maybe a “tracer bullet” isn’t the right metaphor. (We call them “Hello World” stories in my shop.)
Other problems include:
* advice that is non-obvious to the point that I doubt its validity
* examples of problems with no generalized advice about solutions
* approaches that don’t work well in a culture of code reviews, devops / full stack engineers
* answers that boil down to “it depends, figure it out”
* tremendous detail about technologies that are no longer widely used
I might have given this a different score back in 2000 when the book was new, but in 2021, you have better options.