Kris’ Book Reviews

I came across this book by coincidence, looking for a computer developer book, that doesn’t emphasize certain language, but gives a slightly broader view on computer engineering, now lets go back to the book itself. The paperback is big, more than 800 pages almost completely filled with useful information.

Introductory chapters present how software should be constructed, how important is to have upstream prerequisites.

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Moreover there are tables that help you choose how should all your software development phases look like (e.g. no code inspections or formal code inspections) based on a kind of software that is being created. The reader is guided along problem definition, requirements and architecture prerequisites.

After that, there are the main construction processed presented : detailed design and coding. There are chapters about good class designs, routine (function or procedure) construction. One of the most interesting chapters is the one about Pseudocode Programming Process, a very good read, and makes you wonder why haven’t I tried that before.

Chapters that follow give a more detailed view of coding, how to write control statements and loops. There is also a chapter about table driven routines, I must say that’s the first time I read about them.

After the coding parts, the book presents processes that are near the coding phase like quality assurance and how it can reduce the cost of project (and even the development time!). Following is a discussion of Inspections and pair programming or as the author calls them Collaborative Development. This chapter gives ans answer why to inspect/pair program the code. Next are chapters about testing tips, how to debug and refactor code. Code tuning strategies and techniques are also presented. Further more McConnel discusses how to manage construction and integration, followed by the selection of good programming tools.

The last part is about craftsmanship, how to increase your programming abilities, like developing self-commenting code.

Almost every chapter in the book ends with a checklist that should help to include the material presented to the readers programming toolbox. Chapters contain some amount of hard data from the industry statistics, to help you understand how important a certain topic is. Also a big plus goes to McConnel for “key points” at the and of each chapter, it really helps to review the material that was read.

Overall, the book is a must buy for every programmer who thinks seriously about his job. Surely it’s quite a big read, but knowledge that can be obtained from this book is almost overwhelming. I recommend also to check “The Pragmatic Programmer” as it complements “Code Complete”. You might also check out Test Driven Development for other interesting design subjects.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Buy now the Code Complete, Second Edition

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 8:56 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Programming, Steven McConnel . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.