A summary of all posts that are currently in progress of my review of the book The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas.
118 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, The Requirements Pit
#begin Lets discuss the first section called “The Requirements Pit”. If you have attended some formal computer science education, or maybe more specialized in regard to gamedev you might know that courses describe requirements engineering or elicitation as a...
116 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Before the Project
#begin David and Andrew start this chapter off smashing us right in the face with reality. They ask the question and I quote: “Do you ever get the feeling that your project is doomed, even before it starts? Haha. I suspect we have all been in that situation before....
115 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Evil Wizards
#begin Evil Wizards The next section starts of with a really great insight. David and Andrew say that:”There's no denying it—applications are getting harder and harder to write. User interfaces in particular are becoming increasingly sophisticated.” Hahaha this...
114 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Code That’s Easy to Test
#begin Code That’s Easy to Test David and Andrew start this new section of with a description of people comparing software to an integrated circuit. Software components should be combined just as such circuit and such components must be known to be...
113 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Refactoring
#begin Refactoring Refactoring, one of my favorite subjects since it always feels good to clean up the code. As your game evolves it will be necessary to clean up some junk you left behind. This is not necessarily about tech debt but simply has to do with the...
112 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Algorithm Speed
#begin Algorithm Speed Now, as we talked about in the introduction we will also discuss the topic of algorithm speed. This mostly boils down to being able to estimate with some level of precision your algorithm’s resources. Pragmatic programmers should be able...
111 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, While you are coding
#begin While You Are Coding David and Andrew start new this chapter (6) off with a very shitty and outdated way of thinking and I’ll quote: “Conventional wisdom says that once a project is in the coding phase, the work is mostly mechanical, transcribing the...
110 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Blackboards
#begin Blackboards So for the last section of this chapter we are going to dive into Blackboard architecture. Oh boy, who has nightmares about the Learning Management System in highschool!? All of these shitty tools were implemented with the blackboard architecture....
109 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, It’s just a view
#begin It’s just a view Next we will dive into a section called “It’s just a view”. In this section they mainly focus on creating architectural boundaries between presentation and business code. One, if not, the most well known pattern to achieve this is the...
107 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Temporal Coupling
#begin Temporal Coupling The next major section of this chapter is about temporal coupling. I think we have all heard this term before but what is it exactly. It’s about time being a design element of the software itself. Time is an often ignored aspect of software...
106 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Meta-programming
#begin Meta-Programming When I hear this term I think about static analysis. I’ve done some meta-programming in University to do static analysis on a Java project. It was SQLite if I remember correctly. But in The Pragmatic Programmer Andrew and David have a different...
105 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, The Law of Demeter
#begin Bend, or Break In this chapter we will cover lots of interesting topics that have stood the test of time. Many of these topics will already be known to you as they are ingrained in our industry over the past 30 years. Remember, this book was written in 1999!...
104 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, How to Balance Resources
#begin How to Balance Resources The next section of the book is about how you should or can balance resources. I think this concept is far more important in languages without garbage collection like c or c++ but David and Thomas will also talk about how to do...
103 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, When to Use Exceptions
#begin When to Use Exceptions Next up we get to the section I hinted at before and it’s about exceptions. We discussed the mindset of failing fast and the fact funny statement that dead programs tell no lies. David an Andrew rightfully admit that if you throw...
102 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Assertive Programming
#begin Assertive Programming Let's check out a section about assertive programming. We also talked about this earlier while discussing Design by Contract. Assertions allow you to use the compiler for certain conditions. Not just during testing, but also at runtime....
101 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Dead Programs Tell No Lies
#begin Dead Programs Tell no Lies The next section of the book is called Dead Programs Tell no Lies, haha. This refers back to something we talked about earlier. We need to fail fast in order to be able to pin down problems in he code properly. That’s what they...
100 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Design by Contract
#begin Design by Contract David and Thomas say that on of the best solutions for ensuring plain dealings is by contract. We have probably signed lots of contracts before like an employment contract, a mortgage or maybe a lease for a car. These contracts specify...
99 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Pragmatic Paranoia
#begin So in today’s blog we are going to start a new chapter in The Pragmatic Programmer with chapter 4 called Pragmatic Paranoia. Pragmatic Paranoia David and Thomas start this chapter straight of the bat with a tip and it’s a very realistic one which says:...
97 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Generators
#begin Code Generators The last section of the book is about code generators. This is indeed something we need to know as programmers since it will improve out work. Most likely, you are using code generators but maybe didn’t know. For example, if you are using some...
96 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Text Manipulation
#begin Text Manipulation As plain text is our most common means of building stuff it is really important to know how to manipulate it properly. Luckily there are languages that are really good at manipulating text like python, ruby or perl. David and Thomas...
95 – Review: The Pragmatic Programmer, Debugging
#begin Debugging The next section of the book is all about debugging. We have talked about debugging before in earlier episodes. As Uncle Bob puts it: “Debugging is not a skill to be desired!”. And I totally agree, however, you must be able to do it. And in...