Code Complete

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Summary: The "Bible" of software development!
Review: I consider this the "Bible" of software development. Period! End of the story!

This invaluable ...software book should be a required reading for anyone considering software development or starting a career in software development. A colorful book covering just about everything any programmer should know. It is thorough, fact filled, witty and priceless piece that should be on every software developer's bookshelf.

One of our company's first questions for software developers in our hiring process is "have you read Code Complete" ...

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book! Absolute must for every programmer.
Review: This book should be read by every programmer - no matter how experienced he or she is. And not just read and tossed away, but kept as everyday reference. I think that like all good books it will never loose its value. Languages and technologies change, but good programming practices don't.

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Summary: Out of date, and targetted for newbies.
Review: This book is horribly out of date. It was written in the early 90's, and the author deals mainly with a handful of programming languages, only one of which people really use nowadays. Furthermore, much of the information is very basic. There is definite value in reading this book if you're a new college grad, and have no industry experience; there are lots of common sense coding practices detailed that people generally pick up on the job. However, for those with industry experience, especially those who have worked on a released product, the entirety of this book will old hat, save for chapter 31-Personal Character, which I think is deserving of a read by everyone - but just spend 10 minutes with it in a bookstore.

Rating:
Summary: A Must for Developers & Dev Managers
Review: Please this on your team's reference list. Make sure to get a copy for each developer (no need to be cheap when you're trying to develop world-class software)!

This book will trigger ideas and provide the foundation for consistent, world-class software in your team. If you're a manager, make sure that you read it to!

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Summary: THE BEST...
Review: computer software book, period. McConnell goes all the way on this one. If your just starting in the business or a seasoned veteran you MUST read this front to back.

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Summary: dated, still good!
Review: Most all the advice given is still relevant and very good. I especially appreciate how all sources are properly referenced and credited.

After reading though, you see the foundation for n-tier component based development was architected long before it was put into practice. Given the author's excellent ability to objectively balance features and requirements for Enterprise development; Had modern Visual Basic (modern being 32-bit VB versions 5 & 6) it would have been the authors tool of choice. Sadly, we get a chart comparing QuicKBASIC to Turbo Pascal. With no references to modern languages popular in the Enterprise (such as VB and Java).

Still a good source, should be required reading any hobbyist or student looking to program professionally

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable
Review: This book should be required reading. It's that good. I cannot say enough about how good this book is, so I won't bore you with trying. Just go read it.

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Summary: The foundation of good code starts here!
Review: I am an avid reader and a professional software developer. I've read plenty of tech books, and this one I'd recommend first and foremost. It applies to code regardless of language or methodology (object-oriented or structured); it's exhaustive, essential, and complete.

Whether you're a college grad or a professional, you'll improve the quality of your code down to the smallest of details. This one is as essential to the programmer as Shakespear to the writer.

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Summary: Coders Must Read
Review: This is a must read for the intermediate to senior C++ programmer. It explains a lot of the HowTo succeed. This is a good stepping ground for programmers interested in being Mentors, Team Leaders, Tech Leaders, etc.

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Summary: Lives up to its name and fame
Review: This book is a very helpful and informative guide to software construction. It covers anything from identation to psychology, routine construction to project planning and management, and proves useful regardless of your experience level, or the language you program in.

Even if some of its contents feel a little aged (I think that we can safely discard discussion of Fortran, for example, and syntax-coloring alleviates code layout problems in most modern environments) at least 95% of the contents are still pretty valuable.

The concepts and guidelines teached in this book are useful because they cover things that will probably be with us for years to come. For example, even if OO is not covered in deep, the concept of proper encapsulation and modular design are a recurring theme, and can easily map to OO development. The book is well organized and full of examples, hard data and checklists which will help you improve your general coding practices.

Don't think that this book is targeted to novices or amateur programmers (even if they will find it useful, too): expert coders have probably already discovered many of the principles by themselves, and a lot of the concepts are available in other books (like The Pragmatic Programmer, for example) but this does not detract from the value of this book.

Also don't be intimitated by the size of the book: the style is easy to follow, with plenty of examples, typographic highlights to stress various points, good use of images and diagrams, and lots of recaps, checklists and cross indexing among the various sections. You may read it from cover to cover and then use it as a reference by zooming to the appropriate chapter or section.

I think that this book may be considered a true classic, along with the works of Knuth or Bentley: a new edition could just update the bibliographic resources and perhaps freshen up some of the statistics (most of the points made by the author are backed by hard data and research, a valuable tool in teaching or advocating methodologies or design practices) and let the rest of the contents remain unchanged.

Even in its present edition, I think it fully deserves its 5 stars... in a sense, it deserves them even more, considering how well it stands the test of time in our fast-changing line of work.