

Things Every Programmer Should Know [wiki] - TrevorBurnham
http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/

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TrevorBurnham
This is the official site for an O'Reilly book that came out recently. The
contents of the book can be found on this page:
[http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contri...](http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Contributions_Appearing_in_the_Book)

Here's the book's Amazon page: [http://www.amazon.com/Things-Every-Programmer-
Should-Know/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Things-Every-Programmer-Should-
Know/dp/0596809484/)

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tjpick
the thing is, you browse the first half dozen articles and there's no
programming in there. You can't expect it to help you become a better
programmer if there are no good code examples to follow. Anything else is just
lip service.

IMHO you'd be better off with Bently's "Programming Pearls".

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grumpyfart
I don't agree on the code examples, I think it can be a good book without code
examples however this is not a good one :)

As a replacement I'd recommend Code Complete and Pragmatic Programmer

~~~
tjpick
Those books are both good suggestions too ;)

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cabalamat
Am I the only one who thinks the default font is a bit small? A minor quibble,
perhaps.

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Estragon
Why 97?

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jrockway
Because 97 is two less than the product of two ones (eleven) and one number
less than ten.

The same calculations lead me to believe that the world will end in 2012!

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grumpyfart
I've recently read the book actually only first "20~ things" out of it and
it's a pretty bad book. I stopped reading after 20.

On paper "97 things" idea seems great but in practice it's pretty much
rubbish. I've read 97 things a project manager should know as well and that
wasn't good either.

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mhansen
Could you elaborate on why you think it's bad?

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grumpyfart
\- It's writing style is bad, somehow consistently bad

\- Structure is no good (I think this is expected though) but I was looking
for an overall consistency like in Founders at work.

\- Most of the advices written in many words but can be summed to 2 sentences.
And rest of the text doesn't elaborate the reasons like they supposed to
mostly they are there to fill up space.

Overall I don't have one bad thing but it's like reading a bad novel, you
don't feel like that the author or the book has a soul.

Again Founders at Work is a perfect example of having multiple people to
contribute but keeping the book in a good writing format.

