The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master Book

This is essentially a self-help guide for programmers, the kind of book that enumerates the habits of Good and Happy People and makes you feel slightly guilty about not practicing most of them, but probably won't result in you forsaking your evil ways and stepping on the path toward Nirvana. Hunt and Thomas are friendly but occasionally annoying gurus. Their cloying metaphors (boiled frogs, etc) and kitsch jokes are offputting, and some of their advice borders on insult. One assumes that when they devote a whole section to interpersonal communication that they are targetting the particularly closeted and uncouth breed of computer geek recently emerged from the dark and brutish cave of high school, struggling to make headway in a world full of messy, inconsistent, emotional people who don't even know how to reverse grep an Apache log.

That said, I think there are nuggets of good advice for everyone all over the book. Programming, like reading and writing, is ultimately a private, personal activity, and to be honest, most of us software engineers were that closeted high school nerd at some point, and draw upon that focused, single-minded persona when we do things like coding, so there are lessons to be learned from taking a step back occasionally and examining the craft, as Hunt and Thomas do. They are, as I said, occasionally infuriating, but even their silly aphorisms and mantras are usually memorable (what software engineer isn't constantly trying to stay DRY?). I've no doubt I'll be flipping through it again in the future, especially when I feel like I've hit a wall, fell in a rut, or found myself exploiting tired and hackneyed idioms that don't do the English language any justice.