Nine. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts, edited by Kevlin Henney

Oren Raab
Oren Raab
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

2010, O’Reilly Media, 258 pages. Written in English, read in English.

(Medium are making me clarify issues regarding possible affiliate links in my articles so please read this.)

Disclaimer: This is another one of those trade books I read as part of my vocation. Your interest, if you’re not a programmer, may vary.

Capping a collection of concepts that would enrich the professional world of a programmer at 97 is a clever idea — it’s both a trademark, part of a series that now has two more books, and an important subtext for the concepts that did make it into the book. Considering there were a lot more articles submitted for the book, as Kevlin Henney, the editor, mentions in the preface (all of which are available, as this things tend to be these days, in a website associated with the book), you immediately get the sense that these are the most important 97 concepts; the 97 that you will mostly benefit from; the 97 that distill the art of computer programming to a concise list.

That’s not really the gist of the book. These are not the first 97 things that every programmer should know. A programmer, practicing or aspiring, should probably gain some experience in one or more programming languages, and one or more programming paradigms, before digging into this book. But it does provide for an interesting list of concepts to expand into once you’ve made your first steps. The reach here is very broad — you can find articles that range from the very scientific discussion of why floats are not real numbers, to very practical explanations of why and how to pair program. The articles can deal with the very technical aspects of various programming languages (the book has been edited to be as generic as possible with regards to programming languages — another book specifically dealing with Java is supposed to also be released soon), to the art of programming itself — anything from clean code to starting with tests, to aspects of working as part of a team, to dealing with other stakeholders in the workplace. Some articles take you out of the box by suggesting that you learn actual languages, or other disciplines that may reflect on your code.

The book has been smartly edited by Kevlin Henney, a seasoned programmer whose hobby — taking photos of public computer failures — has given him the distinction of having the phenomenon named after him (look for #kevlinhenney on Twitter to understand what I’m talking about), not to be divided into sections which deal with different aspects of the programming world, but to have all of the articles interspersed with one another, and have some of the contributors return throughout the book, to provide different ideas and different perspectives.

Those who read the book through, are certain to come out of the other end with at least one aspect of their professional life to further study and to improve.

(The book can be found here.)

Sixty Books

where Oren Raab attempts to read sixty books during 2016, and then write about them.

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