Code Complete - A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
Steven C. McConnell
Microsoft Press; 2nd edition (July 7, 2004)
ISBN 0735619670
960 pages
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About: Code Complete - A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Code Complete is a classic, and it's an oversight that I haven't got round to reviewing it until now. Put simply, if you are going to read just one book about programming methodology (or just a book that isn't about the practicalities of coding to some API), then this should be the one. It's an essential read that informs you about how to do thing right, and how to think in the right way about things. It's a philosophical and thoughtful book, in that it discusses how you think about programming, how you interact with other programmers, how you program, and how you even deal with the hated non-programmers involved in a project. As well as being about philosophy and attitude, it's also about the nitty-gritty of things like how to indent, how to debug, and how to craft code. This isn't just received knowledge regurgitated, it also occasionally challenges received wisdom. For example, the author argues that the goto, the most evil command on the planet even when not followed by 'hell', is sometimes the best way to expressing a control structure. I would agree, but I'm not happy about letting this particular genie out of its bottle again. The goto is powerful but it's easy to misuse. This isn't a book that you are likely to read from cover to cover as a single task, but you really do need to do your best to keep it at hand and read as much as you possibly can. This is a methodology book that needs no fancy erudite quotes at the start of each chapter to convince the reader of its authority. The author is clearly a programmer who knows his subject and thinks deeply about it. If the book has a fault, it's that it doesn't really go into the object-oriented world - it's really all about structure - and it doesn't deal with advanced constructs such as generics and functional programming. This isn't a much of a criticism, however, just a plea for a volume two! What more can I say than this is a book I would like to have written, and I'm pleased to have read it - more than once.
Related Materials
The Mythical Man Month and Other Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco. Brilliant Project Management: What the Best Project Managers Know, Say and Do by Stephen Barker, Rob Cole. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art: The Black Art Demystified by Steve McConnellResources
About the Author
Steve McConnell is Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software where he oversees Construx's software engineering practices. Steve is the lead for the Construction Knowledge Area of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) project. Steve has worked on software projects at Microsoft, Boeing, and other Seattle-area companies. Steve is the author of Rapid Development (1996), Software Project Survival Guide (1998), and Professional Software Development (2004). His books have twice won Software Development magazine's Jolt Excellence award for outstanding software development book of the year. In 1998, readers of Software Development magazine named Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. Steve was also the lead developer of SPC Estimate Professional, winner of a Software Development Productivity award. Steve has worked in the desktop software industry since 1984 and has expertise in rapid development methodologies, project estimation, software construction practices, performance tuning, system integration, and third-party contract management.Contact
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