Saturday, October 06, 2012

Book Review: Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software, by Max Kanat-Alexander, O'Reilly Media

Writing code seems like an easy task, and perhaps it is.  However, it can be difficult to write simple, clean code.

The book, "Code Simplicity: The Fundamentals of Software", explains:

  • Why do you want to write simple code?
  • How do you write simple code?
However, you will not find any code samples in this book.  While this may not be appealing to some readers, I did not feel that this lowered the quality of the book.  

It contains many guidelines and principles that experienced software craftsmen already know and might pass on to their apprentices.  Some of these principles:
  • Don't write code that isn't needed
  • Make the code easy to change
  • Comments -- should you add them? Why/why not?
A very experienced crafstman may not get much out of this book, but if you consider yourself a beginner or intermediate software developer, then I'd highly recommend this book.  It's full of great tips that will benefit you immediately and in the future.

You can find more about Code Simplicity on its product page on O'Reilly.