General Development Books

Code Complete aims to be a reference or encyclopaedia about programming skills and tools. It contains a wealth of useful information, in as much detail as you're likely to want. High-level design issues such as modularity, cohesion and coupling, etc. are discussed, as well as the lower-level details which never seem to get much coverage elsewhere: how to write a function, how to name variables, what type of comments to use, and so on.

If you are a programmer of any kind, you should own this book. It's not a light read, but it will probably answer some questions you have about programming, even if the question is "What's the deal with gotos?"

If you are a web programmer, buy 60 copies of this book, and rip the pages out of 59 of them and wallpaper your freaking house with them. You need it.

This book describes the 'big picture' of development, and how things can go wrong at a higher level than just the source code and the tools you use. It deals with development practices, and how they affect people.

Worth the price just for the story about the coffee shops.

A very good book, which is now sadly out of print, which ought to be some kind of capital crime.

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This book is very helpful - firstly, it lists the basic, fundamental things you need to get right on a project, before you should even think about trying to achieve 'rapid development'. It then lists various techniques that can be used to speed up development, assuming these fundamentals are in place. The most useful part of it is that each technique is assessed in a standard way, according to how efficient the technique is, how risky it is, and how long it will take to get it right.

The book also lists a series of 'classic mistakes', which many developers will recognise from their own jobs. This is a useful list for doing quick 'sanity checks' to make sure you're not about to do something dumb.

Like McConnell's other books, the information is clear, useful, backed up by research and data, and assessed honestly, without regard for industry trends and buzzwords.

I cannot stress this enough: buy a copy of this book, and read it every six months. You will learn from it.

I've heard people tell me they didn't learn anything from this book, and anyway what can Microsoft tell them about writing bug-free code? In general, when I've looked at the source code such people write, it's apparent that they are correct - they really did learn absolutely nothing from this book.

The book uses C as an example language, but many of the higher level issues and attitudes apply to just about any programming language.

Anyone writing code should own this book. They won't, though. Such is life.

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