michaelecrippa/thepragmaticprogrammer

Repository following the book The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

ThePragmaticProgrammer

Book following the book The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

What Makes a Pragmatic Programmer?

• Early adopter/fast adapter
• Inquisiive
• Critical thinker
• Realistic
• Jack of all trades

Tips:

• Care About Your Craft
• Think! About Your Work

Individual Pragmatists, Large Teams

It's a Continuous Process

Chapter 1 - A Pragmatic Philosophy

• It's Your Life
  Tip: You Have Agency

• The Cat Ate My Source Code

  • Team Trust
  • Take Responsibility
    Tip: Provide Options, Don't Make Lame Excuses

• Software Entropy
  Tip: Don't Live with Broken Windows

• First, Do No Harm

• Stone Soup and Boiled Frogs
  Tip: Be a Catalyst for a Change
Tip: Remember the Big Picture

• Good-Enough Software

  • Involve your users in the trade-off
    Tip: Make quality a requirement issue
  • Know when to stop

• Your Knowledge Portfolio
  An investement in knowledge always pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin

  1. Serious investors invest regularly - as a habit
  2. Diversification is the key to long-term success
  3. Smart investors balance their portfolios between conservatives and high-risk, high-reward investments
  4. Investors try to buy low and sell high for maximum return
  5. Portolios should be reviewed and rebalanced periodically
  • Building your portfolio
    • Invest regularly
    • Diversify
    • Manage risks
    • Buy low, sell high
    • Review and rebalance
      Tip: Invest Regularly in Your Portfolio
  • Opportunities for learning
  • Critical Thinking
    Tip: Critical Analyze What You Read and Hear
    • Who does this benefit?
    • What's the context?
    • When or Where would this work?
    • Why is this a problem?

• Communicate
  Quote: I believe that it is better to be looked over than it is to be overlooked. - Mae West

  • Know your audience
  • Know what you want to say
  • Choose your moment
  • Choose a style
  • Make it look good
  • Involve the audience
  • Be a listener
  • Get back to people
    Tip: It's both what you say and the way you say it
  • Documentation
    Tip: Build documentation in, don't bold it on

  Book recommendations about communications within teams

Chapter 2 - A Pragmatic Approach

The Essence of Good Design

Tip: Good design is easier to change than bad design

• ETC is a value, not a rule

DRY - The Evils of Duplication

Tip: DRY - Don't repeat yourself

DRY is More Than Code

Duplication in Code

• Not all code duplication is knowledge duplication
• Duplication in documentation
• DRY violation in data
• Representational duplication
• Duplication across internal APIs
• Duplication across external APIs
• Duplication with data sources
• Interdeveloper duplication
  Tip: Make it easy to reuse

Orthogonality

• What is orthogonality?
• A nonorthogonal system
• Benefits of orthogonality
  Tip: Eliminate effects between unrelated things
  • Gain productivity
  • Reduce risk
• Design
• Toolkit and libraries
• Coding
• Testing
• Documentation
• Living with orthogonality

Reversibility

Quote: Nothing is more dangerous than an idea if it's the only one you have. - Emil-Auguste Chartier

• Reversibility
  Tip: There are no final decisions
• Flexible Architecture
  Tip: Forgo following Fads

Tracer Bullets

• Code that glows in the dark
  Tip: Use tracer bullets to find the target
• Tracer bullets don't always hit their target
• Tracer code versus prototyping

Prototypes and Post-it Notes

• Things to prototype
  • Architecture
  • New functionality in an existing system
  • Structure or content of external data
  • Third-party tools or components
  • Performance issues
  • User interface design
    Tip: Prototype to learn
• How to use prototypes
  • Prototyping architecture
• How not to use prototypes

Domain Languages

Tip: Program close to the problem domain

• Some real-world domain languages
  • RSpec
  • Cucumber
  • Phoenix Routes
  • Ansible
• Chracteristics of domain languages
• Trade-offs between internal and external languages
• An internal domain language on the cheap

Estimating

Tips: Estimate to avoid surprises

• How acurate is acurate enough?
• Where do esitmates come from?
  • Understand what is being asked
  • Build a model of the system
  • Break th model into components
  • Give each parameter a value
  • Calculate the answear
  • Keep track of your estimation process
• Estimating project schedule
  • Painting the missile
  • Eating the elephant
    Tip: Iterate the schedule with the code
• What to say when asked for an extimate - I'll get back to you.

Chapter 3 - The Basic Tools

The power of plain text

• What is plain text?
  'Tip: Keep knowledge in plain text'
• The power of text
  • Insurance against obsolence
  • Leverage
  • Easier testing
• Lowest common denominator

Shell Games

Tip: Use the power of the command shell

• A shell of your own

Power Editing

Tip: Achieve editor fluency

• What does 'Fluent' mean?
• Moving towards fluency
  • Growing your editor

Version Control