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Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin)
 
 
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Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) [Paperback]

Robert C. Martin
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
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Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) + The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers (Robert C. Martin) + The Pragmatic Programmer
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Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (1 Aug 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0132350882
  • ISBN-13: 978-0132350884
  • Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 18.5 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Product Description

Product Description

Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code—of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding
  • How to tell the difference between good and bad code
  • How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
  • How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
  • How to format code for maximum readability
  • How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
  • How to unit test and practice test-driven development
This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.

From the Back Cover

Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code—of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding
  • How to tell the difference between good and bad code
  • How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
  • How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
  • How to format code for maximum readability
  • How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
  • How to unit test and practice test-driven development
This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.


Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
You are reading this book for two reasons. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Scattergun list of pet peeves, 31 Dec 2009
By 
Samuel Halliday (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) (Paperback)
This book is best described as a list of "pet peeves" by the authors. I stress that this book is mainly written by a collection of authors - and not Robert C. Martin - because this is not stated in any promotional material and appears as an unwelcome surprise in the introduction of many chapters.

The first chapter pledges a lot and is very motivational - continuing the promise of the back cover "you will be challenged to think about what's right about that code, and what's wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft." However, for the remainder of the book, the authors never quite get out of their individual rants and fail to provide any great insights beyond the obvious - concluding with a collection of scattergun practices that are more elegantly described in other books.

The value of the second part of the book - described as "several case studies of increasing complexity" - is not particularly evident. I found the Arg (first) and SerialDate (last) cases to be needlessly long. Everything there could be described in isolation. I had expected the second part of the book to be left as a series of short examples for the reader to work on - in the style of Java Puzzlers - but alas, it was a tour of some recent open source contributions that the author wishes to share with the reader.

The section on Concurrency was particularly shocking. The author appears completely oblivious to "Java Concurrency in Practice" by Doug Lea - discussing the 1999 predecessor by introducing it alongside a derogatory statement about maturity. Not only are the concurrency chapters skin deep, but I question why these chapters even made it into this book. Further evidence that the authors set out with no specific agenda when compiling the book, and have ended up with repetitive, sweeping generalisations that deliver only wholesale value across the board.
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47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Book title needs refactoring, 27 Oct 2008
By 
Dan Sumption "www.sumption.org" (Sheffield, UK) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) (Paperback)
This is a great book, and one which any developer will learn a great deal from. In most respects, it is a five-star book, but... the title is misleading. By rights it should be called "Clean Java Code".

Let me explain: I am an ActionScript developer, and bought this book to improve my code style and structure. For the most part, it has done that: the chapters on naming, comments, functions and classes are absolutely superb. But then, huge swathes of the book are devoted exclusively to Java, and use some fairly complex (and, in my opinion, not very well formatted) code to convey their intention.

I don't generally have a problem with using Java-oriented books to learn more general programming concepts (Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" and O'Reilly's Head-First Design Patterns are both books I would recommend to anyone, regardless of their language-of-choice), but around 1/3rd of Bob Martin's book is virtually impenetrable to anyone who does not already have significant Java experience.

That said, I should re-iterate that this book will be hugely valuable to any programmer. I just wish that they had tried to use a little more pseudo-code and a little less real-world examples, with all of the complexities entailed, and I think a lot could have been done to make the Java code more readable for users of other languages.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A valuable text, but needs a clean-up, 30 Nov 2008
This review is from: Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) (Paperback)
Clean Code is a valuable book for any programmer's bookshelf. Although a lot of the information can be found in other books on software development, particularly those covering "agile" techniques, the text brings everything into one place with a very readable and enjoyable style. I could've done with this about fifteen years ago, rather than learning many of the lessons the hard way over the years.

The book does have some minor issues though. As mentioned by a previous reviewer, it uses Java exclusively for the examples and assumes you are an experienced Java developer. Some of the examples can be heavy going for those unfamiliar with the language.

The book could also do with a bit more proof-reading. Ignoring a copyright of 2009, the words "it's" and "its" seem to have been swapped throughout the book, "an" replaces "and" in a handful of sentences, and there are even some words in the text that are completely wrong. A bit of shame considering.

Don't let the Java or proof-reading put you off though.
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