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Software Craftsmanship

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A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design
by Robert C. Martin

Building upon the success of best-sellers The Clean Coder and Clean Code, legendary software craftsman Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin shows how to bring greater professionalism and discipline to application architecture and design.

As with his other books, Martin’s Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present multiple choices and options, and say "use your best judgment": it tells you what choices to make, and why those choices are critical to your success. Martin offers direct, no-nonsense answers to key architecture and design questions like:

  • What are the best high level structures for different kinds of applications, including web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded apps?
  • What are the core principles of software architecture?
  • What is the role of the architect, and what is he/she really trying to achieve?
  • What are the core principles of software design?
  • How do designs and architectures go wrong, and what can you do about it?
  • What are the disciplines and practices of professional architects and designers?

Clean Architecture is essential reading for every software architect, systems analyst, system designer, and software manager -- and for any programmer who aspires to these roles or is impacted by their work.

Recipes to Improve the Design and Quality of your Code
by Maximiliano Contieri

Often, software engineers and architects work with large, complex code bases that they need to scale and maintain. With this cookbook, author Maximiliano Contieri takes you beyond the concept of clean code by showing you how to identify improvement opportunities and their impact on production code. When it comes to reliability and system evolution, these techniques provide benefits that pay off over time.

Using real life examples in JavaScript, PHP, Java, Python, and many other programming languages, this cookbook provides proven recipes to help you scale and maintain large systems. Every section covers fundamental concepts including readability, coupling, testability, and extensibility, as well as code smells—symptoms of a problem that requires special attention—and the recipes to address them.

As you proceed through this book, refactoring recipes and the variety of code smells increase in complexity. You will:

  • Understand the benefits of clean code and learn how to detect code smells
  • Learn refactoring techniques step by step
  • Gain illustrative code examples in several modern programming languages
  • Get a comprehensive catalog of common code smells, their impacts, and possible solutions
  • Use code that's straight to the point, favoring readability and learning
The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
by Pete Goodliffe

You know how to write code that works, but what about code that's well written and easy to understand? And robust and bug-free? If other programmers looked at your handiwork, would they be able to figure out the code's logic and purpose? Exceptional programmers have more than just technical know-how; they adopt the right approach and attitude to development.

Code Craft will help take your programming beyond writing correct code to writing great code, thus turning you into a true programming professional or enhancing your existing professional skills.

With language-agnostic advice that's relevant to all developers, Code Craft covers code-writing concerns such as presentation style, variable naming, error handling, and security. And it tackles broader, real-world programming issues like effective teamwork, development processes, and documentation. Each chapter ends with a Q&A section that reviews key concepts to get you thinking like an expert, making it an especially great reference for newer programmers who want to work professionally and efficiently as part of a team.

This survival guide for the software factory will show you how to:

  • Write good code when the world's not helping you
  • Avoid disasters and distractions in the workplace
  • Assess your abilities accurately and determine ways to improve
  • Adopt productive attitudes and follow best practices

There's little more valuable than the advice of a true, programming professional. You'll find Code Craft to be clear, practical, and entertaining throughout, and a great way to take your code (and your career) to the next level.

by Jon Bentley

When programmers list their favourite books, Jon Bentley’s collection of programming pearls is commonly included among the classics. Just as natural pearls grow from grains of sand that irritate oysters, programming pearls have grown from real problems that have irritated real programmers. With origins beyond solid engineering, in the realm of insight and creativity, Bentley’s pearls offer unique and clever solutions to those nagging problems. Illustrated by programs designed as much for fun as for instruction, the book is filled with lucid and witty descriptions of practical programming techniques and fundamental design principles. It is not at all surprising that Programming Pearls has been so highly valued by programmers at every level of experience.

What remains the same in this edition is Bentley’s focus on the hard core of programming problems and his delivery of workable solutions to those problems. Whether you are new to Bentley’s classic or are revisiting his work for some fresh insight, the book is sure to make your own list of favourites.

Your Journey to Mastery
by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech books you’ll read, re-read, and read again over the years. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you’ll come away with fresh insights each and every time.

Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development, independent of any particular language, framework, or methodology, and the Pragmatic philosophy has spawned hundreds of books, screencasts, and audio books, as well as thousands of careers and success stories.

Now, twenty years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you’ll learn how to:

  • Fight software rot
  • Learn continuously
  • Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge
  • Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code
  • Harness the power of basic tools
  • Avoid programming by coincidence
  • Learn real requirements
  • Solve the underlying problems of concurrent code
  • Guard against security vulnerabilities
  • Build teams of Pragmatic Programmers
  • Take responsibility for your work and career
  • Test ruthlessly and effectively, including property-based testing
  • Implement the Pragmatic Starter Kit
  • Delight your users

Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with classic and fresh anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best approaches and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you’re a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you’ll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You’ll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career.

You’ll become a Pragmatic Programmer.

Understand Computers — Craft Better Code
by Jonathan E. Steinhart

Many coders are unfamiliar with the underlying technologies that make their programs run. But why should you care when your code appears to work? Because you want it to run well and not be riddled with hard-to-find bugs. You don’t want to be in the news because your code had a security problem.

Lots of technical detail is available online but it’s not organized or collected into a convenient place. In The Secret Life of Programs, veteran engineer Jonathan E. Steinhart explores—in depth—the foundational concepts that underlie the machine. Subjects like computer hardware, how software behaves on hardware, as well as how people have solved problems using technology over time.

You’ll learn:

  • How the real world is converted into a form that computers understand, like bits, logic, numbers, text, and colors
  • The fundamental building blocks that make up a computer including logic gates, adders, decoders, registers, and memory
  • Why designing programs to match computer hardware, especially memory, improves performance
  • How programs are converted into machine language that computers understand
  • How software building blocks are combined to create programs like web browsers
  • Clever tricks for making programs more efficient, like loop invariance, strength reduction, and recursive subdivision
  • The fundamentals of computer security and machine intelligence
  • Project design, documentation, scheduling, portability, maintenance, and other practical programming realities.

Learn what really happens when your code runs on the machine and you’ll learn to craft better, more efficient code.