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Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers)
 
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Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) [Paperback]

Andy Hunt
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
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Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) + Seven Languages in Seven Weeks: A Pragmatic Guide to Learning Programming Languages (Pragmatic Programmers) + The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development (Pragmatic Life)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1 edition (4 Nov 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1934356050
  • ISBN-13: 978-1934356050
  • Product Dimensions: 22.7 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 13,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andrew Hunt
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Product Description

Product Description

Software development happens in your head. Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head.

In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tips to learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn.

You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware.

Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built.

We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills.

In this book you'll learn how to:

  • Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expert
  • Leverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modes
  • Avoid common "known bugs" in your mind
  • Learn more deliberately and more effectively
  • Manage knowledge more efficiently

  • About the Author

    Andy Hunt is a programmer turned consultant, author and publisher. He co-authored the best-selling book "The Pragmatic Programmer," was one of the 17 founders of the Agile Alliance, and co-founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf, publishing award-winning and critically acclaimed books for software developers.


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    Customer Reviews

    13 Reviews
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    Average Customer Review
    4.5 out of 5 stars (13 customer reviews)
     
     
     
     
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    15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
    5.0 out of 5 stars Classic in the making, 18 May 2009
    By 
    E. Burger (Amersfoort, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    This review is from: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)
    I had this book on my Wish List for a long time before I decided to buy it. Why? I figured that yet another book on mind mapping and other brain train techniques would not add an awful lot what I already knew. Boy was I wrong. Yes, brain training is a good part of this book but it offers far more than that. The Dreyfus model does not only help you to place yourself on your own journey to being an expert (if that is what you want) but it also provides invaluable insights into how to work with others, keeping their strengths and weaknesses in clear sight. Next, getting in the right 'brain mode' will help you to apply those brain train methods far more effectively than you'll have done until now. At least it did for me. Andy explains just how to tune your mind to the right frequency to pick up all those little nuggets of gold that would normally get lost in the static.

    I could go on like this for a while, mentioning 'brain debugging', personal investment plans or how I actually started applying the deliberate learning techniques outlined in this book while reading it and came out with a far more ready recollection of its content, even weeks later. But in short, you should get this book. Personally I think it has been incorrectly categorized as being a computer science book. The information in this book will apply to you whether you are a computer scientist, work in sales or manage your local cooking club as a hobby.
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    8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
    5.0 out of 5 stars A very practical book, 9 Jun 2009
    By 
    Olivier Andre - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    This review is from: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)
    An easy read brimming with usefull methods and techniques that will help you increase your learning and retention pace whatever skill you wish to acquire/develop even if the primary audience is programmers. Amongst many insightful tips the author suggests to "Plan your investment in learning deliberately" I believe this book to be a very good first step in that direction.
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    5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
    3.0 out of 5 stars Probably good for starting programmers..., 7 Sep 2010
    By 
    Ransen Owen (Italy) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    This review is from: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware (Pragmatic Programmers) (Paperback)
    This book is probably a good book on the practical philosophy of programming (and other jobs) for beginners.

    But since I have been doing mind-mapping (for example) for more than 20 years and the other techniques were not new to me the book was mainly a reminder of what I *should* be doing.

    So I'd recommend the book to new programmers (and not only) or to old programmers who have not changed their working methods in the last 20 years, but there were few surprises for me.

    Some of the paragraphs were clunky and clumsy, as if hastily written.

    (The author seems to have a great faith in the Myers Briggs personality test, but it is an awful and unscientific test. It seems to be used everywhere except in psychology and psychiatry. As the Skeptoid podcast points out, introversion-extroversion (for example) has a normal distribution and moreover changes with context. So splitting it into a binary (and final) introvert vs extrovert classification is total idiocy.)
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     Go to Amazon.com to see all 62 reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars 
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