The Pragmatic Programmer: An Uplifting Story

Over the course of this reading week, I had the opportunity to catch up on some light reading. The book I chose for this excursion was The Pragmatic Programmer. As a student studying in a software development field, it felt that it was necessary to look upon individuals who are successful in the same field and soak up any sort of advice they could offer. Upon reading the first few chapters, I can confidently say that this book creates an excellent guideline that will allow programmer to fix small errors they’re making every day, which in turn will make them a far better developer.

I initially chose to read this book, because of its popularity in the field, many developers across multiple platforms have recommended this book to other developers of any skill level. Whether you are a beginner entering a post-secondary field, or an expert working full time, no one is perfect, so everyone will have something to learn. Since I fall in the middle of the spectrum, I felt that it was about time I read it.

Thus far, I have read the first two chapters of the book, The Pragmatic Philosophy, and A Pragmatic Approach, and just reading these two chapters helped me learn about ethical programming, and how to assert myself in a manner that allows me to be a better programmer each day. The authors go into heavy detail about coding techniques that will make process of completing a project a lot easier, and while these topics are very important, I felt that the most important topic the book covered was “Your Knowledge Portfolio”. To become a better programmer, you need to invest in yourself. Building small habits are essential, if an individual can take 30 minutes out of each day and invest that time into their programming abilities, over the course of a month, these 30-minute intervals would have added up to 15 hours. Within a month, this habit would’ve resulted in an individual obtaining a new skill, which makes he/she a stronger candidate for any position in their field.

I personally feel that the authors have done a great job conveying their message so far, the book is designed in a manner that makes it very easy to read, I never found myself having to read things twice to understand the content. The writing style is also very unique, the book is centered around conveying a pragmatic approach to programming, however, there is not many direct programming references in the text, the authors make use of analogies to display the content on the book. I enjoyed reading it, and I believe that this will also allow other programmer to put into context the severity of the small mistakes they’re making.

Overall, I believe that the book was well done from the parts that I have read thus far, and I can only imagine what is left to come.