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Ask HN: Is "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell still a recommended read?
This book is considered a classic but the latest edition was published almost 20 years ago. Is it still relevant? Does it still succeed in its stated goal of bridging the gap between research and commercial software development?
- wila 3y agoGood coding practices don't change much, so yes it is still relevant.
- it_citizen 3y agoAgree, but sometimes looking for recent books with the same underlying message is better than going through the classic. I read the mythical man month recently and the examples often involving OS/360 development are brutally outdated. I couldn't relate and I had to force myself to finish.
- _0xik 3y agoThe Mythical Man Month is also super anti-feminist, which I wish people talked about more if they're going to recommend that book.
- pydry 3y agoIt is not.
- racktash 3y agoIt's been about ten years since I read it, but I don't remember anything particularly "anti-feminist" in it. Or anything political at all. I'm curious why you think so.
- raincole 3y agolmao
- hermitcrab 3y agoI don't remember that. But I read it a long time ago. Can you supply a quote to back this up?
- hermitcrab 3y agoI found this: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1461289590 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1461289590 "A team of two, with one leader , is often the best use of minds. [Note God's plan for marriage.]'" That is only sexist if he is saying that the man is naturally the leader. Did he say that?
- actionfromafar 3y agoAt the time, it must have been the straight reading, right?
- hermitcrab 3y agoThat is quite an assumption. But I don't know the full context of the quote.
- 239847823971 3y agoThe author is only forwarding what the Bible says. So your beef is not with the author, but actually with all religions.
- drewcoo 3y agoThe book is at least a decade or two out of political fashion. For thousands of years, certainly in European culture, the default human entity, when not specified, was masculine in gender. By which I mean grammatical gender, not the current politically vogue meaning of "gender." We don't need to disregard thousands of years of knowledge because the authors were unaware of what would be PC in their future. That would be puerile. ("Childish," from the Latin word for "boy.")
- eesmith 3y ago
- blowski 3y agoI think "anti-feminist" implies it expressses some opinion about the feminist movement, which it doesn't, to my recollection. That said, it is somewhat sexist in its assumption that all programmers are men, which is not a surprise given when it was published. That lack of gender inclusivity is right there in the title. But it doesn't really take away from the value of the writing unless you're trying to be offended.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThe book's nearly 50 years old. Most books not written very recently are not going to adhere to contemporary values and mores. If you're not willing to offer generosity when reading them and pick the useful part and discard the parts that haven't aged well, then you're going to miss out on a lot of very worthwhile reading.
- _0xik 3y agoThat's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is: Why do we not *update* these books? This gets back into the question of copyright of course.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoBecause then we lose any sense of historical context. Old books at their essence lets us talk to people from the past. We won't always like what they have to say, but they will speak about themselves and highlight how we've changed. If we can't understand where we came from, then we can't hope to understand how we got where we are.
- _0xik 3y agoWhat? Tons of books get new editions. It happens constantly. For example, Strunk & White [0] has been updated in 1918, 1959, 1999, and 2009. Authors release different versions of their own books. I just wrote a review of a book [1] that had a 2nd edition released in 2022 after the first edition was released in 2014. J.R.R. Tolkein retconned The Hobbit after publication of Lord of the Rings. [2] (I realize this isn't really the same thing but I wanted to give an example in fiction) Anyway, point is, tons of books are changed after publication. I don't see why The Mythical Man Month shouldn't be; the technology is out of date and the gender issues are out of date. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style [1] https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Writes-Improved-Go-Ridiculously/dp/1119854164 https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Writes-Improved-Go-Ridiculo... [2] https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/12/13/how-jrr-tolkien-pulled-a-george-lucas-on-the-hobbit https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/12/13/how-jrr-tolkien-pull...
- Mike_12345 3y ago[flagged]
- 239847823971 3y ago[flagged]
- Mike_12345 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- it_citizen 3y ago[flagged]
- pipes 3y agoI haven't read it, but what does it say about feminism?
- warrenm 3y agoI find it surprising that you thought Mythical Man Month was "brutally outdated" Bentley's Programming Pearls, by that standard, is also "brutally outdated" - but the point of the book is not "how do I make this work in early 1980s technology" The point of PP is "ask the right question" The point of MMM is "add resources when necessary; be brutally minimalistic about how many resources are added"
- it_citizen 3y agoI said the examples are brutally outdated, not the message. The book is filled with acronyms and names I didn’t know because they are 60 years old. I’d rather read a 2023 version if I could.
- warrenm 3y agoThe acronyms and names are basically irrelevant to the point, though :) If anything, having "outdated" acronyms and names may actually make the message stronger - because you don't need to be distracted by what they "are", you can just accept they exist[ed] :)
- it_citizen 3y agoI get that it is a classic but arguing that understanding less words and examples in a book makes the message stronger is a tough sell.
- hardware2win 3y agoThe "Good practices^TM" is a giant bag of mix of good practices, "clean coders", software evangelists and architect's fantasies being collected over various technologies
- muzani 3y ago"Clean code" does change a lot based on IDEs and programming language. For example, we don't use variable names like mIntScore anymore. And we're finding that Javadocs might add little value and go out of date. Architecture can change quite a bit too - all the async webs make things difficult. Most of the bug reports we get on mobile are not test coverable. e.g. some jankiness when going back to a page, or something like liking a post three levels down and finding that your like was not registered when you go back towards the home screen. We had some bugs like an OS modding text animations, making the text invisible in very niche situations. Then you have combos of ltr and rtl languages and layouts. Adding test coverage can be 4x the effort of writing the code once with no tests, not to mention the architecture for test support making things exponentially more complex. Maybe we have to rethink what complete code really means.
- sokoloff 3y agoIt's absolutely still relevant, but it might not be as dominant as it was when first released. By that I mean that the landscape of software development has changed significantly with much more community-driven ecosystems (no longer ~just CPAN) and much more programming is figuring out how to think about choosing the right off-the-shelf architectural components. So, it's relevant and still excellent in guiding you how to write and manage code, but make sure you don't let it lead you to a conclusion that you should write your own code for all aspects of your system.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI'd say it's still a good resource to have; it's not just about programming but about project management, planning, etc. I'd take their recommendations about code style and documentation and whatnot with a grain of salt though, languages, tools and styles have changed since then. Don't skip them, but don't adhere to them religiously; add them to your arsenal of knowledge. It's also a bit of a slog to read front to back, so consider picking one chapter at a time or only looking up a subject you're curious about; I'd consider it more of a reference.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago> I'd take their recommendations about code style ... with a grain of salt though IIRC, this book started me on the "meta-rules" of code style, the "what makes good rules", specifically * aim for readability * the role that "mere familiarity" plays in readability * Team style over individual style, org over team, industry over org. * the small amount (but not zero) of actual data i.e. studies here.
- gjadi 3y agoI read it last year and I think it's still relevant. I had planned to write on the topic. In his book, Steve McConnell advocates for PPP = Pseudocode Programming Process Basically, he says you should outlines the structure of your code first, before writing your actual code. IMHO this is even more relevant in the age of AI assisted programming. Pseudocode Programming Process is becoming Prompt Programming Process. The process is the same, it's just the tooling around it that has evolved.
- pharmakom 3y agoThis is why expressive programming languages matter. If your language is expressive enough, the sketch will be executable.
- ptero 3y agoExpressive languages help, but for anything larger than a homework problem I would still sketch up the system elements and how they communicate on a piece of paper, then write the implementation in a high level pseudocode. My 2c.
- radicalbyte 3y agoIt's good advise and has helped me a lot over my 32 years of writing code (you pretty much had to pseudocode when I started as assembly isn't exactly expressive, especially for a young kid).
- fooker 3y agoDoes anyone actually do this? I have never seen people write pseudo code as part of the programming process. Diagrams, comments, tests, stubs sure, but never really pseudo code.
- warrenm 3y ago>Diagrams, comments, tests, stubs sure, but never really pseudo code. Hate to break it to you ... but those are all forms of pseudocode (or verification of your process (which is nearly the same thing)) :)
- shubhamjain 3y agoMost likely no! Do you really need to read a 900 page book to understand how to write good code? There might be nuggets of wisdom here and there, but you'll most likely pick them on your own as you code and grow. Problem with these books is that you tend to over-apply whatever you read. You read the fact that configurations are good, so you create a nest of abstractions to make code configurable, even when it doesn't make sense. This is the stuff that I have seen happen over and over again. Over-engineered crap resulting from programmers trying to make future-proof code. The best way is still, reading and writing lots of code. You'll pick the right way quite naturally.
- blowski 3y agoI agree that you don't need to have read it to be a good programmer. Yet, in my experience, there is a large overlap between those who are good programmers and those who have read it. With such a heavy use of anecdata, it's hard to say how much is causation or just correlation.
- jve 3y agoHave you read the book? I'm not done, but many ideas I got from the book made me a better programmer.
- jenscow 3y agoI know what you mean, but that's not really the fault of a book.
- 000ooo000 3y agoYou have confused the book and its content with its application. One still needs to use their brain, and one blindly applying patterns from a book where it doesn't make sense doesn't make the book bad.
- radicalbyte 3y agoIt's in the same group as Pragmatic Programmer, Refactoring, Patterns of Application Architecture and the Gang-of-Four book for me. Still recommended for junior programmers as they're all teaching the core of good design. However seeing as the better frameworks/languages/IDEs have internalised a lot of the learnings and that the specific conventions may be outdated - so just follow the recommendations for your platform/framework.
- is_true 3y agoI feel like understanding why a framework does things in some way makes it easier to wrap my head around it. There's a book about modernizing PHP applications that when you read it you feel you are reading about symfony's architecture.
- johnson98 3y ago[dead]
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoHeck, I still use stuff I picked up from Writing Solid Code. That book hasn’t aged as well, but it had some parts that are still quite relevant, today. I always thought that Rapid Development was better than Code Complete. I’ve probably read all of McConnell’s stuff (and I’ve taken a lot of Construx courses). At one time, I was quite the fanboi. A lot of folks around here don’t seem to like him, which I find odd.
- kqr 3y agoI liked /Rapid Development/ too. It misses out on things like the Unix philosophy and worse-is-better, which are sort of previous incarnations of the agile/lean stuff that is very popular today. I would assume the author just hadn't had much exposure to those ideas so they weren't even considered for inclusion. (Besides, they tend to not be researched so actively because they don't leave as many paper trails.) Other than that gripe, though, I learned a lot from it!
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoMcConnell has never really been a fan of “purist” Agile. Construx eventually developed a curriculum around a fairly “corporate-friendly” version of Scrum, that I never found that appealing. The way I write code, these days, makes Agile look like Orthodox religion. However, it’s highly dependent upon me, being who I am, and a lifetime of habit and personal process. It would probably not scale well. McConnell has always been about introducing process, metrics, and rigor to software development. I don’t think he’d be thrilled with the way I do stuff. WFM. YMMV.
- kqr 3y agoI don't expect him to like it, just mention it in any way whatsoever!
- warrenm 3y agoRAD was written in 1996 "Agile Development" (under that name, at least) didn't really appear on the scene til nearly the end of the decade Precursors to it were there (spiral development, pair programming, etc) ... but kinda hard to write about something that didn't exist yet :)
- kqr 3y agoI think anything that makes you take a new perspective on (software) product development and reflect on your experiences and pay attention to patterns of outcomes is going to make you a better developer. Even if the book would be hopelessly outdated, that's usually informative too. It tells you which specific parts of the industry change slowly and which evolve rapidly. That will help you figure out where we are headed and what you can count on will be roughly the same for the next 25 years of your career. It's very hard to rank books precisely, because how much people get out of them also depends on past experiences. If you already have the book or can get free access to it -- why not try? Even just the preview on Amazon is usually good to give a sense of what it is like. Read a few chapters and see if it's something you think you want to continue with. But what's important is not that you pick The Right Book now, it's that you pick up another book when you are finished with this one.
- markus_zhang 3y agoRegarding coding practices: I work as a data engineer and I always wanted to enforce some rules for the team: 1. DAGs must have a section that describes what it does and have link to jira ticket and documentation if applicable. Stakeholders should be named too. 2. DAGs must have a created by and modified by section with a summary of what they did. Yes we can track changes in GitHub but if we do a lift and shift upgrade of Composer instances all trackable changes are gone. 3. Comment the sql queries wherever hacky. There is no way I know why the original author put up some conversions in the code. 4. Every etl should check source data before and check loaded data after. Put up some test cases there. For critical processes, failure should always trigger emails and slack message sent to at least two places: DE team and related stakeholder team. God there are SO MANY cases we can get rid the trouble to pick and clean the data because we did not reject obviously wrong source data. 5. Think about potential errors. If you have to SUM a column of large integers, watch for overflows. If your column is nullable, watch for unexpected nulls. Such and such.
- Cody_C 3y agoI would still recommend it. Well actually I would recommend Code Complete II as it is the be updated version. I met Steve McConnell in person and have read most of his books. I've found them to be gems. There is a lot of value in reading different things even if you aren't sure about the value to see what you pick up. Sometimes you will learn something or see a situation you never would have expected.
- warrenm 3y agoIn my opinion, it's as much a "recommended read" as a lot of other so-called "classics": - Rapid Application Development (also by McConnell) - Soul of a New Machine by Kidder - Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks - Programming Pearls by John Bentley - Applied Cryptography (2e) by Bruce Schneier - The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stohl - Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum & Todd - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, etc - A New Kind of Science by Wolfram And many more could be added to this list Sure, some of them use acronyms or reference technology that you've either never heard of or has been supplanted But you could [nearly] do a find-and-replace on those "outdated" terms with a "current" term, and the books would [effectively] be up-to-date Don't get hung-up on specific examples - they're just there to illustrate the problem domain