Code Craft

What Hacker News says

1. blubJul 2022
   I agree with the other poster saying that learning programming languages doesn’t make you a better coder, just as learning natural languages doesn’t make you a better communicator.

   It’s much more efficient to pick a flexible programming language which allows using various concepts (functional, OO, etc) and constructs and then apply it in various domains which exercise those concepts/constructs.

   Coding can also be learned. Code complete (2nd) is one of the few books focusing on this area - the author calls it construction - and goes into detail about building functions, parameter passing and so on and so forth.

   Another interesting book I read was Martin Reddy’s - API design for C++. You could try finding something similar for your chosen language.

   Finally there’s a couple of books by Pete Goodliffe which are language-independent: Code Craft and Becoming a Better Programmer. Naming, comments, error handling - there’s tons of stuff in there.

   Now onto the topic of Rust and Go - I’ve recently learned both and am about average skills-wise. Go’s easy (the book Efficient Go covers it) and has many sweet spots like network, cmdline tools, heavy concurrency services. Rust is complicated but you can see that it’s a heavy duty language that you can use almost everywhere. Neither made me a better programmer, because I was familiar with most of the concepts they provided. And the new stuff doesn’t improve ones skills, it’s just tooling.

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2. buckbovaJul 2016
   Definitely touch on a lot of topics here. And all looks well organized. It also does look like a laundry list of buzzwords and techspeak.

   Obviously this wouldn't be used to teach anyone any particular topic in detail but to get them familiar with the general concepts/steps involved in software dev.

   Edit:

   The two books I read that I thought covered these ideas well were Code Complete and Code Craft. But it's been about a decade now. Perhaps they're too dated.

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3. EliRiversJun 2015
   I read his previous book, "Code Craft", when it came out back in 2006 (I think). I preferred it to the heavyweight of the day, McConnell's "Code Complete". "Code Complete" was more like a reference book, but "Code Craft" was something that flowed well from cover to cover (to be fair, they are clearly meant to be different kinds of book; "Code Complete" is structured more as a reference book); much more readable as a book. Definitely worth a read, especially if you've got a couple of years practical code monkey experience under your belt and want to improve rather than just spending the next decade getting the same year's experience over and over.

   It was also from No Starch, and at risk of repeating myself across threads, it's just nice paper and a good binding and I swear it does smell good.

   Anyway, if anyone's got "Code Craft" and this one, I'd be interested in what the differences are.

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4. nimmenMay 2011
   i read some great book about similar things you looking for, but forgot its name :/ http://www.amazon.com/Code-Craft-Practice-Writing-Excellent/... this one might be it, but i dont remember now as i dont have that book near me
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