The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) | 
 enlarge | Author: Neal Ford
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 10888
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 222
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0596519788
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.1
EAN: 9780596519780
Publication Date: July 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Anyone who develops software for a living needs a proven way to produce it better, faster, and cheaper. The Productive Programmer offers critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use. Master developer Neal Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity-how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer, and avoid repetition-he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code, and become more valuable to your team. You'll learn to: Write the test before you write the code Manage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiously Build only what you need now, not what you might need later Apply ancient philosophies to software development Question authority, rather than blindly adhere to standards Make hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programming Be sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstraction Pick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job This isn't theory, but the fruits of Ford's real-world experience as an Application Architect at the global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks. Whether you're a beginner or a pro with years of experience, you'll improve your work and your career with the simple and straightforward principles in The Productive Programmer.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Concise work for productive, common sense development September 13, 2008
James Holmes (South Central Ohio)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a terrific book for boosting your productivity in two areas: how you work, and how you code.
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]
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.
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.
The book's concise, amazingly well written, and a definite must-have for your bookshelf.
A book I've been waiting for July 12, 2008
Venkat Subramaniam
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Disclaimer: I was one of the technical reviewers for this book and I have known Neal for several years now as a fellow speaker on NFJS conference circuit.
I have been waiting for this book since I saw my friend Neal Ford give a talk on being a Productive Programmer. Now, I have it in my hands. When I found out Neal was writing this book, I selfishly volunteered to be a reviewer--yes I wanted to contribute in a small way to the creation of this book, but more important, I wanted to be one of the first to gain from it. I was thrilled earlier this year when I had opportunity to review the book.
Many of us strive to be a craftsman--we don't simply want to get by; we want to do what we do at its best. For most people I interact with, that is developing software, working with computers, and languages and frameworks.
There are two things we need to focus on--How we do things, and What we do.
How can you get better at working with your computers? Neal answers this question in the first part--Mechanics--of the book. He shows us how to improve the hows when we interact with the computers and write software.
In the second part of the book--Practice--he shows what practices we can follow to improve our ability to succeed as programmers.
There are several gems in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and his examples are so darn good that I already stole (with acknowledgment) some examples from this book for my classes.
pragmatic micro efficiencies & tools August 30, 2008
James D. Peckham
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a great book about micro efficiencies and tools. It's a great source of information for analytical tools as well! (like coverage tools, bug finding tools, code analysis tools).
All in all, i loved it because there's no other book like it. A "must have" for any programmer's library right along side refactoring, legacy code, and 'the pragmatic programmer'.
Essential Reading for Every Developer July 25, 2008
Shawn Wildermuth (Atlanta, GA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been reading Neal's blog for a while so when this book was launched I wanted to get a copy. I expected a more esoteric book from Neal, but this book was exceptionally applicable. His advice on the nature of being productive including links to specific tools impressed me a lot. I also admired his even handedness in his treatment of operating systems. Its hard to find someone that will talk about Microsoft and Apple technologies without religiocity. When it was good in Windows, he mentioned it. When it was good in OSX, he mentions it.
On the writing side, his prose is well thought out and exceptionally readable. You can get through the book pretty quickly but I found my self post-it noting a bunch of pages to revisit.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to every developer, no matter your technology (Windows, OSX, .NET, Java, RoR, etc.)
outstanding conversation with a mentor September 8, 2008
Michael R. Lauer (Marietta, GA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I loved this book. At first, I wasn't too impressed since I could summarize the book as I went along into simple phrases (use command line, use scripting languages,...). But after a while, as I stacked cogent advice atop cogent advice, the stack became too big and suddenly I was buried in an avalanche of experience and wisdom.
I am a well-educated, experienced software engineer, and I was already familiar with maybe half to three-quarters of what Neal discusses, but seeing this all together in a seamless weave of hard-won, practical experience was a revelation to me. Reading this book was like pair-programming with the mentor I had always hoped to have but never met.
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