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| The Productive Programmer (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) | 
 enlarge | Author: Neal Ford
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $21.97
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (12 reviews)
Sales Rank: 9338
Format: Illustrated
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 222
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0596519788
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.1
EAN: 9780596519780
ASIN: 0596519788
Publication Date: July 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
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 7 more reviews...
 Easy read full of helpful advice September 15, 2008
I've been a fan of Neal Ford's for several years now, both from his blog and his presentations at No Fluff, Just Stuff conferences around the country. He has an engaging, easy-going style that works extremely well in person. Along with all the advice, this book demonstrates how naturally his style translates into book form, too.
Neal's recommendations run from low-level, practical advice (like how to use wget to cache web sites locally) to mid-level, broader recommendations ("when coding, always prefer the keyboard to the mouse"), to high-level philosophy ("don't shave yaks"). Best of all, his irreverent humor comes through on nearly every page.
Neal obviously loves being a developer, and while he has the natural cynicism that comes from long years in the trenches, this book is much more about helping programmers become successful rather than lamenting the sad state we're in. It's a great "work-arounds" book that I expect to revisit over and over again.
I have to admit I was initially worried about this book. I'm much more of a Java/Eclipse/Windows person than a Ruby/IntelliJ/Mac person like Neal, and I was concerned that his advice would come across as disapproving or worse. That wasn't the case at all. There were recommendations for everybody, including many that I've already put into practice and many more that I'll be working through in the future, especially as I transition to becoming a more Groovy/IntelliJ/Cygwin individual. :)
This book is excellent, and more than that, it's fun. I highly recommend it.
 Solid concepts backed with slightly biased information September 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Overall this is a great book. Unfortunately the author is a little too concerned with proving his credability and frequently sites his consulting experiences and past development work. While this is fine, I really neither need to know nor care how many places the author has worked at and saved endless hassle with his preferred technologies. Outside of that one problem the book goes over a great many concepts to help a developer work smarter and goes to some length to incite the reader to stop using brute force approaches and seek tools that help rather than almost help.
Concise work for productive, common sense development September 13, 2008
3 out of 3 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.
Simply Briliant! September 9, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Simply brilliant - that's what this book is. Reading this book is like having Neal sitting next to you in a paired-programming session showing you exactly how to make your life as a developer more productive. The book is easy to read, conversational in tone, and very easy to follow. I recommend reading this book from start to finish to understand the concepts Neal is trying to get across. Then, starting over in front of your computer and rereading the book, directly applying his shortcuts and techniques. I applied this technique after giving up reading this book in the living room (too many dog-ear pages and "oh, I'll have to remember that one"). While Neal's examples are great, his concepts are even better. Live the concepts, find your own accelerators and focus techniques, and become a more productive programmer. Oh, and buy this book!
outstanding conversation with a mentor September 8, 2008
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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