Oops. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was disappointed with your review. I think you did a really good write up. Sorry if it came off sounding that way.

I actually had the same reaction the first time I read it a few years ago. I kinda thought to myself “this stuff is just common sense”. It took reading the book a 2nd time as part of a ‘tech book group’ program that I was running at a previous employer with a few junior guys to see how valuable it was to those guys who hadn’t picked the stuff up yet through their experiences.

Good points. I can’t argue with what you said. Maybe I was a bit harsh on the book. I actually think it is an excellent book. It was one of the classics that I had never gotten around to reading.

I’m not so sure that the knowledge in the book is outdated or common knowledge to most programmers now, as you seem to hint at. I think it’s common knowledge to you and many other programmers who have spent years in the field and gathered the knowledge organically with experience.

And that’s really where I think the book shines. I think it’s a great read for a green developer. As you said “years of experience packed into a small package”. This is a book with so much good advice that you can either spend years slowly picking up through your own experiences, or you can read it as a young developer and be ready to pretty much hit the ground running.

It’s also valuable to experienced developers as a refresher. It may not contain anything you don’t already know, but it is sometimes nice to re-focus your efforts on things that you may have sort of lost focus on as part of your day in and day out work.