Rating: 
Summary: Competent, excellent, nice reading very worthwile only aged
Review: I do highly recommend every person writing computer programs reading this book. And I'd wish the author would incorporate the developments of the last years in a new edition of this book. So you find no Visual Basic, no WWW, no Java, no distributed components yet. Anyhow very worthwile and I hope I age as well as this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Thank you Steve.
Review: I can't say thanks enough times. I'm both a college student and an established developer. This book put me on the right track. Putting it's ideas into use not only skyrocketed my performance as a developer, but also changed the way I learn and listen in school. Steve, I wish I could meet you just to shake your hand and tell you thanks face to face. Developers, students, look no farther for books on code construction. If you want to know how to do things right, this is you bible.
Rating:
Summary: "Must Read" for all serious programmers
Review: If you are serious about programming, you must read this book. It is simply the best pure programming book I have read yet. Many of the points are general knowledge and have been written about elsewhere, but this book brings them all together. Like Steve says, this is about coding, something all projects require. While reading the book, I found myself thinking that I should immediately apply most of the techniques. As with other McConnell books, I couldn't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: If I Could Give it More Stars, I Would
Review: If you haven't read this book, you're selling yourself short as a programmer. This is THE definitive guide to Software Engineering. This book is a reminder that software should be written for people first and computers second. No one else has brought these issues to light in this way.This book will be my programming Bible from this day on!
Rating:
Summary: This is my bible!
Review: For many years this book has helped me like no other did. It still is the best programming book that have come across. For any professional coder this is a must and worth every cent!
Rating:
Summary: "Book Complete" for Complete Programmers
Review: This is just _the best book_ on computing programming I have ever found, at least from a global viewpoint. It deals with all those little details I had been wondering about for years (such as conditionals usage, variable naming, and layout styles) in a so clear and open way. I also loved the last part, devoted to software craftmanship, much more than any other technical review on that issue. Definitely strongly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: If you write code, read this book. Period.
Review: If somebody had handed me this book before I took Intro. to Computer Science, I would be on the dean's list right now. Simply put, it is an instruction book on how to properly write code that are sturdy, readable, maintainable, and of generally high quality. It shows how to come close to achieving that Holy Grail of software design: Self-Documenting Code. One thing that should be noted is that this is not a book on software engineering, and it just cruises over the topics of Analysis, Specifacation, etc. Instead, this is a book on how to take a requirement for a certain routine and turn it into clean, maintainable code. The author wisely points out the folly of spending less time on design and more on code optimization. He does not go over "neat tricks" on how to eek one or two instructions out of a loop that is only run once, or other such silliness. If you need to see "slick" code, buy a copy of "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie. (Another book all programmers should read.) In conclusion, if all Computer Science students (or anyone who writes code for a living) read and used the ideas in this book, software today would be a heck of a lot better.
Rating:
Summary: If I could, I'd give this book 10 stars! :)
Review: Reading this book was an eye-opening experience for me! I started programming a couple years ago in BASIC, then I switched to C taking over many of the bad programming style I developed with BASIC. Lately I discovered my interest in programming once again, read through an MFC book and began programming for Windows, a whole new field for me. I always wondered how professional programmers are able to maintain programs that are more complex than Notepad. I thought it's just the experience and knowledge of almost all the possible (MFC) functions that exist. Code Complete showed me that it's a lot more than that, beginning by designing your program, not just starting to write code right away, up to topics like naming conventions for variables, how to determine what code to put into a routine or how to make your program easier to debug. Although Code Complete may sound like a very dry book only for expert programmers, it really isn't. Steve McConnell even managed to throw in a lot of amusing anecdotes or witty tests - like the one: "How many of these data structures do you know?". If you checked (almost) ALL of them, you're advised to read the section about intellectual honesty - because some of the data structures are bogus names made up by the author. :) All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone , whether you're a professional programmer (for me that is any programmer whose job is programming <g>) or a hobbyist like me, wanting to create the applications you always dreamed of but thought you could never manage it. Especially interesting for students or anyone trying to start a career as a programmer: this book contains a lot of 'further reading' advices with short descriptions of the books. So this book is also an excellent entry point for those wanting to become a professional programmer and are looking to fill the mind gaps where necessary.
Rating:
Summary: Begining Programmers PLEASE Read this book
Review: I just wish they required this book for CS Students in college. It could cut my frustrations in half in the average day of being a programmer. It helped me immensely improve my programming skills and gave me some practical advice on how to deal with the Non-programmer types in the office that keep trying to "help" me out. This is absolutely a must read for any programmer out there regardless of platform.
Rating:
Summary: Application Development at its finest
Review: When I first picked up this book, I was impressed immediately. He is a very thorough author, whose work in the field of application development is unparalelled. I have never learned so much from a book. McConnell takes you through a total learning experience that touches on every base of software development, although his primary goal is to discuss software construction. I feel that this book could take a software construction neophyte, as I was, and make him/her a genius, or at least seem like one at the water cooler.
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