The pragmatic programmer is a fantastic book - thoroughly readable for amateurs and non-programmers - with lessons that can be applied to more than just computer-engineering. It's a universal manual for delivering clean, organized and pragmatic work while eliminating needless bureaucracy. It's also a fantastic primer on building and managing cross-disciplinary hierarchy-less teams. A fantastic book!

کتابی که هر برنامه‌نویس باید بخونه! شاید این جمله خیلی تبلیغاتی باشه، راستش قبل از این که خودم این کتاب رو بخونم، وقتی این جمله رو در مورد این کتاب شنیدم چنین حسی داشتم‌ اما الان به جرات می‌گم که این جمله، اصلا تبلیغاتی نیست و یک توصیه حرفه‌ای است.
بخشی از حرفهای این کتاب رو، قبلا در کتب دیگه، بعضا با ادبیات تخصصی‌تر خونده بودم. مخصوصا در حیطه تست و ریفکتور. اما خیلی از مباحث تازگی داشت. به ویژه مباحث مربوط ��ه حوزه مدیریت پروژه، چگونگی همکاری تیم، چگونگی ارتباط با کاربران و .... بسیار جذاب و اثر گذار بود.
من ویرایش اول کتاب رو نخوندم اما برای من بسیار جالب بود که نویسنده‌های کتاب، بر اثر بیست سال تجربه، بعضی نظرات گذشته خودشون رو نقض می کردند و اعلام میکردند که اشتباه کردند و بعد، بر اساس تجارب جدیدشون اطلاعاتی رو در اختیار خواننده می‌گذاشتند.
مثالهای ملموس کتاب، خواننده رو در درک بهتر کتاب یاری می‌کرد.
در مجموع کتابی است که توصیه می‌کنم بخونید. حتی اگر ویرایش اول رو خوندید، حتما ویرایش دوم رو مطالعه کنید. خیلی دوست دارم بعدها، مجددا این کتاب رو بخونم و ببینم چقدر تونستم توصیه‌های کتاب رو، عملیاتی کنم.

Re-read it recently, first time maybe 10-12 years ago. Some parts are still relevant today.

Amazing book.
Impressed by rubber ducking method when it comes to inertia.
And the agile approach is on point.
Requirements ‘cherry picking’ xD
Thanks Ryder Carroll~

It is a great book every software developer, architect, designer or even QA engineer should read. It focuses on principles and giudance so it may feel like it MISSES some level of details.

Note: I read the 1999 edition
Although the book contained a lot of useful bits, I believe its name is a bit misleading, it should be close to 'From Apprentice to Journeyman'. For me a lot of the mentioned advice was either already industry standard or was already part of my toolset/mindset.
Nevertheless its a useful reminder as well as a very well written and very well structured book on a lot of important topics. Definitely a recommendation for anyone just past the starting out phase.

Who is this book for?

Certainly not for experienced, skilled software developers. Considering myself at least experienced, I found most of the material in this book a rehash of methodologies and techniques I've used for more than a decade. Granted, there were a few gems here and there, but mostly I was bored because I didn't learn anything new.

One has to respect that this book is from 1999, so in that perspective, it must have been quite ground-breaking. Had I read it in 1999, I wouldn't have known any of these things.

The question is, though: would I have been able to use this book for anything back then? While I found myself agreeing with lots of advice given in the book, I also found that the reason I could agree with so much is that the advice is so vague that you can read your own interpretation into it.

Perhaps you could view that as a strength of the contents. It attempts to plant a lot of seeds into the readers' minds, without ever being prescriptive or dogmatic. In that sense, it lives up to its titular pragmatism.

Still, it leaves me with the feeling that if you don't already know how to work in this way, will you be able to learn it from the book? I don't think so.

As an overall observation, it seems that most of what the authors call pragmatic programming is simply what's later become known as agile development. Thus, I have much respect for the authors; in 1999, they were certainly at the bleeding edge of modern software development (perhaps they still are today), but I don't think the book stands the test of time.

Great book that I really wish I read earlier in my career. Nothing ground-breaking, but a great synopsis of many different popular coding practices. Not sure how the OG version was, but the 20th anniversary edition was still relevant with industry standards.

Overall, I would recommend it to any software developer, particularly interns or juniors.

chicken soup for the programmer's soul

Must read book for any levels, especially foe those who started their journey as a programmer

I deem this one an essential read for every software developer who wants to understand effective and basic principles to succeed in his field and what it takes to be a programmer.

In general I'd recommend it to anyone just getting started with programming, or anyone who wants to get better at programming. The book is good, but because it's designed to be referenced and not read cover to cover theres a lot of repetition.

A note on the audio book...it's a smidge overproduced. 3 speakers, two of whom were obviously recorded remotely, sound effects, vocal effects, meta jokes about the audiobook. I didn't really get much out of that portion of it.