Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Brilliant !! May 14, 2008
C. A. Rumbold (England)
I'm not a professional programmer, but a hobbyist, yet this book was not only fascinating but has enabled me to write better programs and above all think more about what I'm doing. It's for hobbyists who have got beyond the normal how to books, and want to know how to do it well. If you're an amateur who wants to become more professional, this book is for you too.
Working smarter - not harder! July 11, 2007
Dominicz (Swindon, Wilts United Kingdom)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
One thing that is never taught through courses, book or programming courses is the "grammar" to use a language. By that I mean, you can use English quite liberally, but to get an impact, to persuade and entice the reader, you need to use the language correctly.
In order to get the best out of your code - from design, structure, documentation, testing, debugging and deployment you'll need to be shown the ropes. Putting it altogether in one place is what this book does and it does it amazingly well!
Full of references to respected software architects and engineers, all of his points are put across in clear, concise language. Points are factually referenced which goes to show the variety of reading material the author went through to get where he is today. The book uses C++, C#, C, VB and Java with benchmarks to show how doing what he says does help.
I bought this book when I was confident with C# and just needed some help with when to refactor, how to comment, how I should use exceptions, optimising loops and other general "grammar" issues.
Very highly recommended for anyone looking to "work smarter - not harder!"
Thought I coded nicely... I was wrong. March 8, 2007
TG (UK)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Quite an odd book. I can understand why it's so highly rated BUT
reading it cover-to-cover is tedious. However, what sticks in the mind *does* make a difference when coding. If you can't remember the actual advice it's enough of a prompt to dip back into the book.
If the point of the book is to enable a more experienced programmer to create more then it delivers hence the 5 stars I have given it.
However, it's format might put some people off and the first read through for, perhaps, beginners, might be hard going.
Mandatory December 5, 2005
Dominic Batstone (London)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
Code Complete 2 is another brilliant book from Steve mcConnell. I should have read this years ago when I graduated. It is easy to read despite being fairly chunky. Everything is here you'll need. Designing classes, loops, naming conventions, debugging, testing, refactoring, human factors and loads loads more.I agree in part with the more negative review on here. Any book is the authors point of view, but Steve mcConnell backs everything he says with data from previous experiments, journals and "famous" successfull/failed projects. There are many compelling arguments in here to change the processes you use to develop and design software. I'm getting my boss to get everyone in the department a copy before our next major project. It's that good! This needs to be mandatory reading, no excuses.
 Collection mish/mash of s/w engineering issues June 30, 2005
24 out of 55 found this review helpful
This book is basically pulls together a number of issues relating to software engineering. However bear in mind that the concepts and ideas quoted are not the authors. Much of this information can be found in other books and research papers. If you have a degree level qualification in s/w engineering or computer science, then you will probably have covered most of this during year one and two.I particularly like the section on coding style and layout. However there are other areas which lack credibility or proper thought. For example, paired programming (taken from XP). He only talks about the positive aspects. I am convinced the author has never tried to apply this on a real world project. If you want an indication as to why the s/w engineering industry is in such a bad state and repeatedly fails to learn from past experience - read the section on programmer experience. He's got this completely wrong in my opinion. He obviously finds talented programmers with more experience than himself a a threat to his position at Microsoft! On the whole though, its a good book to read if you don't have the information already. Check out Ian Summerville - Software Engineering, Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man Month, and Kent Beck XP first though.
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