There's some strongly negative reviews for 'Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code' but I am not one of those people that feel this is a waste of time reading. Becoming a better developer and designer doesn't come from just one book, one idea, one THING, rather it comes from other things in life by doing/experiencing lots of things and this book is worth the time to read. With 550+ pages of content you will learn about documentation, tools, testing, architecture, source control, etc. You will learn more about what makes a good application and how to go about writing it. You will enhance your development skills and hopefully be better off when you are done with this book.

I like the content of this book and it's tailored towards anyone in the software business that wants to learn to write and design better. While a lot of the concepts in here you will find in many other books, this is a welcome addition to the bookshelf.

My only glaring negative is the boring design in this book. Nothing about the layout makes one get excited about reading it and that's never a good thing. Serious time should have been spent making the inside of the book look better to make the experience better. This isn't a reference book and it doesn't need to look like one.

**** RECOMMENDED

This one is a very good book. It is essentially a book in natural philosophy, not quite "scientific", coming from observation to show you a little bit of everything. An insight to the entire world of programming if you like.

It goes from bottom up, from coding style through techniques and tools to paradigms and architecture. A lot (A LOT) of things explained, briefly, but perfectly understandable. It lacks any analysis or in-depth discussion, but that is on purpose.

Not that many things for an experienced programmer to learn from this book though. To a point where it is boring. It took me longer to read this book through than many others, because I knew much of it in the first place.

The language of the book, the author really is in for wordplay and puns of all sorts, it's all over the place. And although I do believe that proficiency (and desire to excel) in written language is a sure indication of a great programmer, this is not always to the book's best. It sure doesn't read like a textbook, but that's ok. There were a few really good jokes, but most of it is just wordplay for its own sake. For example,

[quote]
This is the really nasty one - when your program isn't pushing up the daisies, just pining for the fjords.
[/quote]

Look, I know what "pushing up the daisies" mean, and I can deduce the meaning for "pining for the fjords" from the context, but having it written like that doesn't really help.

Like some other reviewer, I also didn't like the "good programmers" vs. "bad programmers" checklists. See, being a good programmer (aren't we all ?), I wouldn't know how bad programmers think, thus any attempt to declare "bad programmers do that" would be at best a guess.

What's really good about this book, is that it goes under a positive "do as I do" key, not a negative "don't do as I say", seen much more frequently. I'd guess that the guy is really keen on what he's doing, and you can feel it in his book.

I was pleased to see that yet another author's word supports my belief in that programming is simply patience, discipline and common sense. Oh, and PRACTICE.

Anyhow, a great book for a beginning pragmatic programmer.

I have two comments.
First, do not expect technical details on this book. There isn't. Second, the only paragraph that is really good is on page 461 and it says: "Find the classic books of the field". This is not one of those. He recommends and I agree almost completely:
* Code Complete
* Design Patterns: Elements of reusable object-oriented software
* The mythical man-month
* The psychology of computer programming
* The practice of programming
* Peopleware
* The pragmatic programmer
* refactoring

I do not thing that "Code Craft" is one of those.

I was at the library and this happened to be next to another book that I wanted, so I picked it up too.

And wow, it's rare that I am this disappointed in a book. The content is very thin. It sounds like it was completely gathered from secondary sources, e.g. reading other books about software engineering. It doesn't sound like the result of actual experience.

Every page is filled with platitudes without any examples of real experience backing it up. I'll grant that he has assembled an extraordinarly wide range of *terms* and terminology. It looks like he has tried to shove 3 sentences about every topic in software into a single book. Unfortunately, this ultimately makes for a book with little use.

Another sticking point is the writing style. It comes off like the author is an annoying guy trying to be funny and trying to be your friend. The first sentence irritated me: "What's in it for me? Programming is your passion. It's sad, but it's true."

Huh? Why is it sad that programming is one's passion??? There are similar head-scratchers elsewhere in the book. He also devotes a section to talking about the various types of "code monkeys". And the last type is "You. In the interest of politeness, we'll say no more about this curious beast. Sadly, some people are beyond help..." What? The reader is beyond help? If I pretend for a minute that he's not insulting me, then I still don't know what he's trying to say. This book is incoherent.

And what's with all the reviews below that read like advertisements? Give me a break. It looks like a lot of the author's friends are spamming Amazon's reviews.

I recommend reading Joel Spolsky's books for real, specific insights on programming and the software development process, earned from experience, written in a much clearer and more entertaining style.

I'm also reading Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" now.

Code craft is an awesome book for anyone who wants to be a better developer. It touches on a lot of practices, viewpoints, areas of conflict, and focuses on turning you into an individual who can work well in a software development environment while leaving the technology / language-specific details to other books.

The book looks simple and juvenile as you're flipping through it at first, but I think it spends about the right amount of time on things and is right up there with classics such as Code Complete and Rapid Development.

I read it cover to cover in about four days and have loaned it to a coworker to look through.