McConnell's Code Complete 2nd Ed. - He's baaaaccckkkk!
I finally received Code Complete 2 in the mail from Amazon yesterday and spent a few hours reading it last night. From what I’ve read so far, it’s every bit as enjoyable and insightful as the original. The 1st edition used to be my favorite book, but the content has become dated in the last 10 years. McConnell’s writing style is simply the best I’ve seen in a programming book and he now includes C# and Java examples throughout the book – the 1st edition had Pascal along with C, Basic and pseudocode.
If you’ve never read Code Complete, go buy the 2nd edition now. In fact, if you've read the 1st edition, buy the 2nd edition now. This book is that good!
He takes a good look at coding practices and not only discusses good and bad coding approaches, but gives you an understanding of why bad coders should be flogged. Ok - he’s not that severe but his writing style leaves very few ambiguities. For example, he discusses testing and touches on the role of TDD – although he keeps the approach more universal and jargon agnostic. He dives into proper interface factoring among other topics that didn’t exist in his first role. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to topics. Even my wife identified the book when it came and said “you used to talk about that book all the time and now he revised it? Great!”
I used to ask any candidate with more than 2 years of experience if they read Code Complete – I think this question goes back on my list. I always ask about books in interviews – any candidates that can’t talk intelligently about the last 3 books they have read get a “no hire” from me. The original had so many fundamentally sound coding practices that it was pretty revered in the 90s. I’m glad to see Steve McConnell brought it back!