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Pragmatic Programmer, The: Your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd edition

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (September 13, 2019) © 2020

  • David Thomas
  • Andrew Hunt

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The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech books you’ll read, re-read, and read again over the years. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you’ll come away with fresh insights each and every time.
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development, independent of any particular language, framework, or methodology, and the Pragmatic philosophy has spawned hundreds of books, screencasts, and audio books, as well as thousands of careers and success stories.
Now, twenty years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. This book teaches students how to:
  • Fight software rot
  • Learn continuously
  • Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge
  • Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code
  • Harness the power of basic tools
  • Avoid programming by coincidence
  • Learn real requirements
  • Solve the underlying problems of concurrent code
  • Guard against security vulnerabilities
  • Build teams of Pragmatic Programmers
  • Take responsibility for your work and career
  • Test ruthlessly and effectively, including property-based testing
  • Implement the Pragmatic Starter Kit
  • Delight your users
  • Today’s best approaches to transforming requirements into working, maintainable code that delights users
  • Thoroughly revised with 10 new sections, extensive new coverage, new examples throughout — and future-proofed with greater technology-independence
  • Brings together pragmatic advice on everything from personal career fulfillment to more effective architecture
  • New online ancillary materials - including an Instructor Manual and exercise sets - will make this book more valuable in a classroom setting 
Approximately ten new sections will be added to this edition, and several obsolete sections will be dropped. 30-40% of remaining sections will be updated extensively, and there will be new examples and other updates elsewhere. To lengthen this edition’s life, the authors are abstracting away references to specific technologies wherever possible.
Foreword xi
Preface to the Second Edition xv
From the Preface to the First Edition xix

Chapter 1: A Pragmatic Philosophy 1
Topic 1. It's Your Life 2
Topic 2. The Cat Ate My Source Code 3
Topic 3. Software Entropy 6
Topic 4. Stone Soup and Boiled Frogs 8
Topic 5. Good-Enough Software 11
Topic 6. Your Knowledge Portfolio 14
Topic 7. Communicate! 20

Chapter 2: A Pragmatic Approach 27
Topic 8. The Essence of Good Design 28
Topic 9. DRY–The Evils of Duplication 30
Topic 10. Orthogonality 39
Topic 11. Reversibility 47
Topic 12. Tracer Bullets 51
Topic 13. Prototypes and Post-it Notes 56
Topic 14. Domain Languages 60
Topic 15. Estimating 66

Chapter 3: The Basic Tools 73
Topic 16. The Power of Plain Text 74
Topic 17. Shell Games 78
Topic 18. Power Editing 81
Topic 19. Version Control 84
Topic 20. Debugging 88
Topic 21. Text Manipulation 97
Topic 22. Engineering Daybooks 100

Chapter 4: Pragmatic Paranoia 103
Topic 23. Design by Contract 104
Topic 24. Dead Programs Tell No Lies 112
Topic 25. Assertive Programming 115
Topic 26. How to Balance Resources 118
Topic 27. Don’t Outrun Your Headlights 125

Chapter 5: Bend, or Break 129
Topic 28. Decoupling 130
Topic 29. Juggling the Real World 137
Topic 30. Transforming Programming 147
Topic 31. Inheritance Tax 159
Topic 32. Configuration 167

Chapter 6: Concurrency 171
Topic 33. Breaking Temporal Coupling 172
Topic 34. Shared State Is Incorrect State 176
Topic 35. Actors and Processes 183
Topic 36. Blackboards 189

Chapter 7: While You Are Coding 195
Topic 37. Listen to Your Lizard Brain 196
Topic 38. Programming by Coincidence 201
Topic 39. Algorithm Speed 207
Topic 40. Refactoring 213
Topic 41. Test to Code 218
Topic 42. Property-Based Testing 228
Topic 43. Stay Safe Out There 235
Topic 44. Naming Things 242

Chapter 8: Before the Project 249
Topic 45. The Requirements Pit 250
Topic 46. Solving Impossible Puzzles 258
Topic 47. Working Together 262
Topic 48. The Essence of Agility 265

Chapter 9: Pragmatic Projects 269
Topic 49. Pragmatic Teams 270
Topic 50. Coconuts Don’t Cut It 276
Topic 51. Pragmatic Starter Kit 280
Topic 52. Delight Your Users 287
Topic 53. Pride and Prejudice 288

Postface 291
Bibliography 295
Possible Answers to the Exercises 299
Index 313
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt are internationally recognized as leading voices in the software development community. They consult and speak around the world. Together, they founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf, publishing award-winning, leading-edge books for software developers. They were two of the authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Dave currently teaches college, turns wood, and plays with new technology and paradigms. Andy writes science fiction, is an active musician, and loves to tinker with technology. But, most of all, they’re both driven to keep learning.

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