
Best development book I've read, has no code in it - arasatasaygin
http://arasatasaygin.com/pages/best-development-book-I-read-has-no-code-in-it.html
======
kh_hk
I am sorry, but for me that book was a no. It just felt like a self help book,
but for programmers, which is kind of ok if you are feeling any sort of
personal trouble in the field. Not that this is not already told on the back
cover, but no, I would not call this book the best development book. I did not
buy it, instead, it was the result of participating in a local dev Google
something, but it really surprised me how much bullshit the book was full of.

If you are into inspirational quotes, and repeating the same thing over and
over again on your head until you believe it to then get into "hacking" fully
inspired and into the productive zone, then this book is for you.

~~~
sker
Have you (or anyone else) read Code Complete? If so, how do you feel about it?
I started reading it because everyone recommended it, but I stopped at page
100 or so, because I felt it was getting no where.

~~~
DavidWoof
Code Complete was overwhelmingly the most influential programming book I've
ever read. But it's been around for 20 years, and much of the material has now
been rehashed in many other books, videos, forums, blog posts, etc. I think
that's what other posters are getting at when they say it's just common sense:
this kind of thing is everywhere now.

Much of the book is spent making arguments for and providing evidence for
things that are considered obvious today.

So if you stopped because the material sounded obvious and redundant, then
maybe it is for you. But if you stopped because the material seemed seemed
unimportant or trivial, then I strongly urge you to start up with it again.

~~~
candiru
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeinfeldIsUnfunny)

------
swanson
I found _Apprenticeship Patterns_ to be a great book to read in your first few
months working professionally (or during an internship). It's had a huge
impact on me and is one of the three books I recommend to every new hire that
I meet (the rest are here: [http://mdswanson.com/blog/2013/05/31/summer-
reading-list.htm...](http://mdswanson.com/blog/2013/05/31/summer-reading-
list.html)).

Some of my favorite sections:

* The Long Road: keep your focus on the long term, value growth over salary

* Find Mentors: seek out and learn from those that are ahead of you

* Create Feedback Loops: how to get useful feedback

* Confront your Ignorance: what to do when you identify a skill gap that you need for daily work

The book is so grounded and feels real. And after having the pleasure of
meeting Dave and Ade at conferences, you can tell they are very genuine.

You can even read the online version free from O'Reily if you want to get a
taste:
[http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001813/index.ht...](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001813/index.html)

~~~
MichaelTieso
Thanks for the recommendation. Just bought it.

------
aaronbrethorst
Try "Peopleware" from DeMarco and Lister: [http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-
Productive-Projects-Teams-3...](http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-
Projects-Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113)

~~~
vl
3rd edition is out! Great news! Time to re-read.

Now instead of looking for my second edition, I'll spend tonight debating if I
should get paper, or Kindle version, or both. :)

Speaking of influential books, Peopleware and Mythical Man-month are the most
influential software books for me.

~~~
henrik_w
Agreed. The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks is another great book. It is
famous for Brooks's law: "adding people to a late project makes it later".

But for me, even better with that book was one page at the end of chapter one,
entitled The Joys of the Craft. There, Brooks described what's so great about
programming. I really loved that part, and wrote a blog post about it:
[http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-
coding/](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/02/why-i-love-coding/)

------
anaphor
Coders at Work is probably a much better book with no code in it.

~~~
arasatasaygin
Added to my reading list.

~~~
kawsper
You might want to add "Founders at Work" to that list as well. It is by the
same author.

~~~
anaphor
Founders at Work is by Jessica Livingston (of ycombinator fame) and Coders at
Work is by Peter Seibel (of Practical Common Lisp fame, who took inspiration
from Founders at Work).

~~~
kawsper
Oh, I always assumed is was from the same author. Thanks for correcting me :)

------
dschiptsov
It is a common misconception that to be programmer one should read lots of
books. It is as wrong as to say that in order to learn to swim or ride a
bicycle one should read books instead of trying.

Only code by the very best people (Abelson & Sussman, Norvig, PG, Armstrong,
Marlow, Odersky) is worth reading. Common crap found on blogs (especially
about Haskell or Lisp) or github (especially PHP and Ruby code) does only
damage by giving a very wrong impression of what programming is really.

There is a good hint: _read the standard library of "extraordinary"
programming languages_ \- Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell, Erlang, Scala and, sigh..
Clojure)

But the very same law holds for any art, be it poetry or music composition, or
fiction - 95% is just stuff, a mediocre crap.

btw, ''The Mythical Man-Month'' has no code in it.) And the first two chapters
of ''The Programmers Stone'' (which are the only worth reading) has no code in
it also.

~~~
yeahbutbut
There is some value in being able to read non-expert code, you're more likely
to run into non-expert code during your day to day job. Someone like Abelson,
or Armstrong, will write clearer almost effortless code. Someone at work may
spend a thousand lines trying to munge an associative array out of a database
result. You have to be able to read both.

------
arithma
I first read the few quotes and they made sense. I thought this is good.

Then I went to HN and saw the cynicism. It is one of the moments when am
thankful for the cynicism. I should waste my time on something more
specialised. It's worrying how naive sometimes one gets until one gets another
POV.

------
the_cat_kittles
I've found woodworking to be an incredible analogy (and also contrast) to
software dev. The guy at [http://woodgears.ca/](http://woodgears.ca/) was
formerly a software engineer, and I find it interesting how this influences he
approaches woodworking.

~~~
mark_h
There was a talk at Clojure/conj by Tim Ewald on just that:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw)

"Programming with hand tools"

Lots of conference reviews nominated it in their favourite talks too.

~~~
nickik
I want to agree. Watched this just yesterday and really, really liked it. Its
a bit slow in the beginning and but it really ties to getter in the end.
Better then I first thought.

Its a really important point and I often have trouble explaining this to
people, now thanks to this talk I have a much clear handle on what the point
is.

It can be used when arguing things like ORMs and things like that.

------
poulsbohemian
Is Mythical Man Month that well known that there's no need to even bring it
up? Surprised to not see it in this list yet. No code, but reading it will
surely influence your approach to software.

------
yetfeo
One of the best development books I've read is Thinking Forth [1]. Don't let
the Forth aspect put you off. It's full of great design tips and ways of
thinking about programming.

[1] [http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/](http://thinking-
forth.sourceforge.net/)

------
colund
I can only speak for myself, but I am tired of these "soft" software
development books and the various "movements". They seem to be attempts to
transform our technical field from solving real world problems via math and
deep understanding into something like politics or religion.

I think recent success of these soft topics may be based on people's feeling
of self improvement and enlightenment. I can understand that it creates a nice
feeling, but prefer to be enlightened by actually learning to solve real
things in a more elegant, efficient way than before and I prefer to learn the
rest via actual work experience.

Real self-help would mean to become independent from advice from the outside
and looking into yourself and finding out how you can do something better by
actually doing it...

~~~
crux
Values like efficiency and elegance are mediated and determined by the
community and the subjective individual. They're neither unambiguous nor
universally agreed upon. Even on the very simple, immediate level - is
elegance more like readability or concision? Is efficiency a matter of
performance or maintainability? Now expand your view to encompass all the
problems and questions that come up in the course of your job—the majority of
them, as noted above, having more to do with other people than writing better
code.

Being better at your job isn't simply a matter of advancing along the
numberline of skill and smarts. And unfortunately, many of those who think it
clearly is, or can be, are assholes who are lousy at working with others.

------
ericHosick
Just a story.

I was lecturing a class on UML and Design Patterns to students who had never
coded before (basically UML).

The class textbook, lecture notes and lecture slides I was given had a lot of
coding examples.

During the 12 week class, I wrote a book on Object Oriented Modeling (staying
two chapters ahead for the students) that had almost no source code.

It was a challenge to explain OOM, UML and Design Patterns to students who had
no prior coding experience.

I do feel it is totally possible to teach people how to "program" without
knowing how to code.

~~~
tsumnia
It is possible with the help of flowcharts and pseudo-code; the issue I've run
into many times is depending on the class, you'll lose student interest over
not actually doing anything. If it is a matter of limited resources, ala no
computers, then go for it, but looking back, I'd feel a little short-changed
if I couldn't walk out of the class without a functional program, no matter
how insignificant.

This is where I liked MIT's EdX course. Mostly Python interpreter, but around
the end you were given a GUI simulation of controlling a Roomba. You wrote the
Roomba's logic and then ran the simulation. You could walk away from the class
and say 'Look at this... I built this'.

~~~
ericHosick
I do agree that there is really nothing to show that you've done: program
wise. On the other hand, the students did learn a lot about critical thinking
which, I feel, is a great start to programming.

This was also for a BIS degree (not a CS degree) which focused on the
"business" side of information science: so most students weren't interested in
coding (though I felt this was not to their advantage).

Really, it was a bit the fault of administration for placing the class in the
first semester of the degree when students had not taken any programming
classes yet.

~~~
tsumnia
I'm in the same boat, business side of IS, teaching Visual Basic.

If you don't mind me asking, what textbook did you use (or atleast company)?
We use Cengage currently and I'm just appalled at some of the stuff I have to
cover. I've been searching for a replacement.

------
the1
meh, if you like such books, read 7 habits of successful something.

------
NAFV_P
I was thinking of doing the exact opposite of this book, writing a book in C
code that has to be compiled first.

~~~
sepeth
Did you mean literate programming? Something like "A Retargetable C Compiler"
maybe?

~~~
NAFV_P
> _Did you mean literate programming?_

I was thinking more along the lines of IOCCC. No matter how unreadable the
code is, if it compiles and runs without grievance, it is superior to most of
the nonsensical, god-awful English seen on the web.

> _Something like "A Retargetable C Compiler" maybe?_

Shit - come back to me in ten years time, then I might be able to answer.

------
michaelwww
The book that got me hooked on computers many years ago: "Soul Of A New
Machine" [http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-
Machine/dp/0316491977](http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-
Machine/dp/0316491977)

~~~
ghaff
Still one of the best books out there about getting a product out the door.
(Showstopper--about the development of Windows NT--is another.) Of course, I
may be biased :-) I worked at Data General for about 13 years. I started a few
years after the events of the book but knew many of the people portrayed in
it, including Tom West.

~~~
edanm
Haven't read it (still on my shelf), but have you had a chance to read
Dreaming in Code? That's the book _I_ would describe as "the best book about
getting a product out the door", or not, in this particular case.

~~~
ghaff
I haven't. From the description I'm guessing I would like it. Onto the
wishlist :-) Thanks.

------
mathattack
The best non-Code development that I ever read was the Design of Everyday
Things.

[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-
Norman/dp/0465067107)

It was not written with software in mind, but the core respect for the user
translates enormously well. If you can't tell whether you should push or pull
a door to open it, it's the fault of the door designer, not the door opener.
This translates very deeply into interface (user or technical) design.

------
gesman
General subject is correct: the more code is pasted in the book - the lesser
value it usually is. These 1,200 page overpriced heavy monsters in a bookstore
are usually sheer waste of paper.

~~~
mixedbit
Here are few examples of great 1000+ pages books with lots of code. Though
reading them is much more effort than reading a self-help book:
[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-
Wesley...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Environment-Addison-Wesley-
Professional-Computing/dp/0321637739) [http://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-
Illustrated-Implementation-Vol/...](http://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-Illustrated-
Implementation-Vol/dp/020163354X/) [http://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-
Rendering-Second-Edit...](http://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-
Second-Edition/dp/0123750792/)

~~~
michaelwww
O'Reilly, C# 5.0 In A Nutshell
[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023951.do)

------
DyslexicAtheist
best development book I ever read was called "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas
Taleb.

~~~
fineline
+1, the principals of optionality and bimodal strategies apply very well to
development, and help to explain things such as the dramatic rise to
prominence of Github (similar to Taleb's Hydra analogy).

Also Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, although a bit dated and often
dismissed as hippy pseudo-philosophy, has some very practical aspects about
mental approach to technical problems, dealing with "gumption traps" etc.

------
beat
Non-code books for programmers? I always recommend _How Buildings Learn_ , by
Stewart Brand. It's a well-written and elegant study of the lifecycle of
buildings, and holds many lessons for anyone who realizes their software
continues to exist and change.

[http://amzn.com/B00AFZ3PI4](http://amzn.com/B00AFZ3PI4)

Brand says the three enemies of a building are time, money, and water. What
are the three enemies of a program?

~~~
abdilmaalik
satan is your enemy and the enemy of all humanity.

------
UK-AL
The best development books almost always have no code in it. Success or
failure of projects is mostly caused external constraints, pressures and
relationships and learning control those factors, and not the specific
technologies/programming languages themselves.

------
Tombone5
This is a prime example of someone spending a lot of care on making their blog
very pretty, and then desperately filling it with whatever they can so that
someone will click the link at the bottom and give them a job.

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grigy
I have not read it but "The Pragmatic Programmer" remains the best development
book for me. Interesting how the "Apprenticeship Patterns" compares to it?

~~~
polymatter
How can you recommend it as the best development book if you've never read it?

------
avolcano
As someone who only started working in tech last summer and hasn't yet put a
lot of thought into career development, this book sounds perfect for me.

------
ateevchopra
The techniques you mentioned isn't true for just programming, it is true
everywhere. Awesome !

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ninjakeyboard
Why is there a comma there? Consider: The book I read has code. or The book I
read, has code.

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ommunist
Thank you for the post. It really pushes to think forward.

------
Morgawr
Luckily development has nothing to do with coding.

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L3monPi3
It has code on it...

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tbarbugli
added to my book to read in 2014 list :)

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omribaumer
love it

