The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))

Here's another 'foundation pick' for serious programming collections: a guide that tells how to save time and enhance productivity with tools which can be adopted over many platforms and styles. Work smarter, get the most out of a computer, and improve coding habits with a guide that tells how to apply streamlining habits to the programming environment. <br />

This is an excellent book for professional developers. There are many concrete, specific suggestions for allowing you to work faster and more effectively. Also, there are numerous pointers to excellent, free tools. But the book is not just a random catalog of tips and tools; it includes an interesting discussion of various aspects of a general approach and philosophy of software engineering that is not tied to any particular development methodology. <br /> <br />One refreshing aspect of the book is that, although Ford refers to practicing several tenets of agile development, the writing is not doctrinaire. <br /> <br />I'd strongly recommend this book for anyone who writes code for a living. <br />

I've been a fan of Neal Ford's for several years now, both from his blog and his presentations at No Fluff, Just Stuff conferences around the country. He has an engaging, easy-going style that works extremely well in person. Along with all the advice, this book demonstrates how naturally his style translates into book form, too. <br /> <br />Neal's recommendations run from low-level, practical advice (like how to use wget to cache web sites locally) to mid-level, broader recommendations ("when coding, always prefer the keyboard to the mouse"), to high-level philosophy ("don't shave yaks"). Best of all, his irreverent humor comes through on nearly every page. <br /> <br />Neal obviously loves being a developer, and while he has the natural cynicism that comes from long years in the trenches, this book is much more about helping programmers become successful rather than lamenting the sad state we're in. It's a great "work-arounds" book that I expect to revisit over and over again. <br /> <br />I have to admit I was initially worried about this book. I'm much more of a Java/Eclipse/Windows person than a Ruby/IntelliJ/Mac person like Neal, and I was concerned that his advice would come across as disapproving or worse. That wasn't the case at all. There were recommendations for everybody, including many that I've already put into practice and many more that I'll be working through in the future, especially as I transition to becoming a more Groovy/IntelliJ/Cygwin individual. :) <br /> <br />This book is excellent, and more than that, it's fun. I highly recommend it.

This is a terrific book for boosting your productivity in two areas: how you work, and how you code. <br /> <br />The first section of the book, Mechanics, focuses on tools you can use to boost your productivity as you're working with your system. Ford launches off into an exploration of lots of little crazy tools that help you automate or ease repetitive tasks. You'll find lots of goodies from virtual desktops to shortcut tips/launchers, to using Ruby to script everything from splitting up SQL to automatically sorting your laundry and washing it for you.[1] <br /> <br />All these little tools and tricks add up to drastic decreases in the amount of friction you're forced to suffer through while doing your daily job. Cutting this friction lets you focus on the job at hand, instead of trying to bend your environment to your will. <br /> <br />The second section of the book, Practice, discusses ways to speed your development. There's an awful lot of goodness in this portion of the book, ranging from re-emphasizing critical aspects of object oriented programming, to object and method composition. Ford walks through a lot of great stories meant to get you to re-evaluate why you do things a certain way. The infamous Angry Monkeys story gets pulled out as an example, and Ford also concisely covers development principles like the Law of Demeter, Occam's Razon, and his Polyglot Programming meme. <br /> <br />The book's concise, amazingly well written, and a definite must-have for your bookshelf. <br />