pragmatic_programmer

The Pragmatic Programmer

Tip 1: Care about your craft

Tip 2: Think about your work

Kaizen: Japanese for continuously making small improvements

Chapter 1: A Pragmatic Philosophy

Chapter 2: A Pragmatic Approach

Chapter 3: The Basic Tools

"When you see hoofprints, think horses - not zebras"

Chapter 4: Pragmatic Paranoia

"They dont trust themselves, either"

Tip 33: If it cant happen, use assertions to ensure that it wont

Chapter 5: Bend, or Break

Tip 38: Put abstractions in code, details in metadata

"With linear code, its easy to make assumptions that lead to sloppy programming"

Chapter 6: While You Are Coding

"Dont be a slave to history. Dont let existing code dictate future code"

Want to cultivate a culture of testing

Chapter 7: Before the Project

• Many project failures are blamed on an increase in scope - also known as feature bloat
  • Track feature requirements
    • Just like code source control
• Maintain a Project Glossary
• Program specification is the process of taking a requirement and reducing it down to the point where a programmers skill can take over

Chapter 8: Pragmatic Projects

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking"

• Automate for the sake of repeatability and consistency

"The palest ink is better than the best memory"

• Anonymity, especially on large projects, provides a breeding ground for:
  • Sloppiness
  • Mistakes
  • Sloth
  • Bad code