The Pragmatic Programmer: journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2/e

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech books you'll read, re-read, and read again over the years. Whether you're new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you'll come away with fresh insights each and every time.Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development, independent of any particular language, framework, or methodology, and the Pragmatic philosophy has spawned hundreds of books, screencasts, and audio books, as well as thousands of careers and success stories.Now, twenty years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you'll learn how to:

Foreword xiPreface to the Second Edition xvFrom the Preface to the First Edition xixChapter 1: A Pragmatic Philosophy 1Topic 1. It's Your Life 2Topic 2. The Cat Ate My Source Code 3Topic 3. Software Entropy 6Topic 4. Stone Soup and Boiled Frogs 8Topic 5. Good-Enough Software 11Topic 6. Your Knowledge Portfolio 14Topic 7. Communicate! 20Chapter 2: A Pragmatic Approach 27Topic 8. The Essence of Good Design 28Topic 9. DRY-The Evils of Duplication 30Topic 10. Orthogonality 39Topic 11. Reversibility 47Topic 12. Tracer Bullets 51Topic 13. Prototypes and Post-it Notes 56Topic 14. Domain Languages 60Topic 15. Estimating 66Chapter 3: The Basic Tools 73Topic 16. The Power of Plain Text 74Topic 17. Shell Games 78Topic 18. Power Editing 81Topic 19. Version Control 84Topic 20. Debugging 88Topic 21. Text Manipulation 97Topic 22. Engineering Daybooks 100Chapter 4: Pragmatic Paranoia 103Topic 23. Design by Contract 104Topic 24. Dead Programs Tell No Lies 112Topic 25. Assertive Programming 115Topic 26. How to Balance Resources 118Topic 27. Don't Outrun Your Headlights 125Chapter 5: Bend, or Break 129Topic 28. Decoupling 130Topic 29. Juggling the Real World 137Topic 30. Transforming Programming 147Topic 31. Inheritance Tax 159Topic 32. Configuration 167Chapter 6: Concurrency 171Topic 33. Breaking Temporal Coupling 172Topic 34. Shared State Is Incorrect State 176Topic 35. Actors and Processes 183Topic 36. Blackboards 189Chapter 7: While You Are Coding 195Topic 37. Listen to Your Lizard Brain 196Topic 38. Programming by Coincidence 201Topic 39. Algorithm Speed 207Topic 40. Refactoring 213Topic 41. Test to Code 218Topic 42. Property-Based Testing 228Topic 43. Stay Safe Out There 235Topic 44. Naming Things 242Chapter 8: Before the Project 249Topic 45. The Requirements Pit 250Topic 46. Solving Impossible Puzzles 258Topic 47. Working Together 262Topic 48. The Essence of Agility 265Chapter 9: Pragmatic Projects 269Topic 49. Pragmatic Teams 270Topic 50. Coconuts Don't Cut It 276Topic 51. Pragmatic Starter Kit 280Topic 52. Delight Your Users 287Topic 53. Pride and Prejudice 288Postface 291Bibliography 295Possible Answers to the Exercises 299Index 313