This is a very good book for providing high-level insight into both the technical and the procedural aspects of programming. By procedural I mean in general the software development lifecycle process. There are 97 chapters, each roughly a page in length on a topic every programmer should know. The short concise chapters actually made this a very easy and quick read.

The book did what I would want any book to do. It taught me a lot of things I didn’t know, and confirmed a lot of things I thought I knew. I enjoyed the chapters on tips for programmers interacting with and working with QA departments. I feel that it is very important for both teams to understand each others approach. I also felt like there was a lot of common sense in the book. The advice given in many cases was good practical tips that could be applied independently of organizational structure. Essentially, most of what I found could be practiced by both the cowboy coding freelancer and the programmer working within the confines of structured processes.

Lastly I’ll note that I thought it was pretty cool that some topics were covered multiple times from different perspectives. Not to the point of contradiction, but enough to indicate the context sensitivity of certain topics. Again, a good read. I certainly feel like I came out of the book a better programmer.