Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those seminal works that meant so much to me early in my software career. I was so honored to be able to review the book before its release and wanted to share quickly why I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did. :)

[@lordmushroom723]

i bought this last week :D hopefully it helps me learn more

[@leouleet8027]

I was expecting a review on the book.

[@MahmudAlHakim]

Thanks for this review :-)

[@monkeybuttgolfer]

Hi Andrea! Thanks for the review. I am a recent CS graduate who just started his career as a software engineer this July. I've been looking for a good beginner book to crack open and give me that boost to further myself in my career. Would this be your #1 recommendation? Or are there other software engineer career books I should check out?

[@manhalrahman5785]

Hi. I am a new software developer, got the job through nothing else but data structures and algorithms. Is this book any good for me at this stage, where I don't understand 99% of the stuff about actual software development and barely managing to getting the tasks done at work? I don't know how databases or computer networks work, neither do I know anything about cloud, nothing about scalability, code readability, software design patterns and most of the jargons. You could ask me problems on dynamic programming any day and I'll happily take it as a challenge, but exposing an API in Ruby on Rails for some already made method got me sweating and took me more than a week!

[@progtom7585]

Im a newbie to programming, is this book a good book to read at this stage of my learning? Im at the stage where almost everything is new to me, even after learning basic java & some js.

[@andreagoulet7377]

Tom I think this is a great foundational book that’s written with the beginner programmer in mind. I have a lot of empathy for newbies. In many ways, I still feel like that. With most of technical books I read, there’s so much knowledge the authors assume you already have - and many times, I feel like I don’t have it. This book is more broad, less deep. So while there might be some terminology or concepts that are new, I think that for the most part they’re presented in a very accessible way. My take is that the authors’ goal is to help you understand 1) the important fundamentals of being a professional software developer and 2) why they’re important. For most of the material in this book, it feels like a guide to figure out which topics you want to dig deeper on - because there’s ALWAYS something more you can learn when it comes to software. Even the folks I know who have been programming for 30 years have areas of tech where they don’t know a lot. In many ways, that’s the joy and frustration of software - you’ll never get bored because you’ll never understand it all. Good luck with your career and welcome to the industry! :)

[@progtom7585]

@@andreagoulet7377 wow thanks for the detailed reply!

[@rafadydkiemmacha7543]

I think this book is much more useful for seasoned programmers than for noobies. I know from my own example, I read it when I started with programming and now I know that I didn't get much from it. You need certain context to understand what this book says.