Book cover of Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

Book description

Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices-and hundreds of new code samples-illustrating the art and science of…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Code Complete as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I've found this book enlightening in many key areas of software development, and as I was reading it, I felt connected with the author (even though I've never met him, I could imagine us having a conversation about software engineering, and agreeing on pretty much everything).

It was a revealing book for me, in the sense that it gave a formal framework to several ideas I've noticed as a practitioner over the years. In that regard, I wish I'd come across this work way earlier in my career.

Software engineering involves several phases such as requirements gathering, design, programming, testing, and deployment.

This book explains techniques that allow you to build quality and robustness into every phase of the process. It discusses design, classes, defensive programming, collaboration, refactoring, and more.

The book uses many examples in an assortment of languages but the concepts apply to any programming language. In fact, the main themes like building error detection into every step of the process generalize to even non-programming parts of the development process.

If you’re an experienced developer, you may have discovered some of this book’s ideas elsewhere or…

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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

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