Code Complete
Every once in a while, there are books that change your life. I'm not talking about fiction here (although there are probably more fiction books that changed my life), but books on programming. If I should pick three, the first one would be
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, the book that taught me how to think in an object-oriented way. Next on the list is
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a book that is great in so many ways the space here wouldn't suffice. Classic hacker literature that teaches
everything about programming. In Scheme, mind you. Be it functional programming, recursion or compiler design, it's all there. But when it comes to practical programming, I choose
Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction. Much of what I learned for actual code-writing and documenting comes from this book, probably the best single thing ever to come out of Microsoft. I'm much delighted to learn that the
second editon is in the works. Great news. I'm looking forward to June 2004, when it will be published.
Posted by jens at February 28, 2004 10:41 PM
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