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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: $21.64
You Save: $18.35 (46%)
New (25) from $21.64
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 14176
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
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
EAN: 9780596519780
ASIN: 0596519788
Publication Date: July 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: All orders ship same business day via standard shipping (USPS Media Mail) if received by 1 PM CST.
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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:
 Advice, tips and tricks from a veteran developer August 18, 2008
Normally I'd skip a book with a title as pretentious a this one. But since I really enjoyed the NFJS and JavaOne presentations of Neal I decided to give it a go.
The book reads like a blog. Nothing new (if you know Ruby and Groovy) but lot's of short pieces of advice, tips and tricks which are clearly based on years of hands-on experience and thus really valuable.
On some parts I found the book a bit shallow, but overall I really enjoyed it: most of the time a tip or reference is enough to get you going. I've already automated a couple of 'chores' and told my team to do the same; using examples from the book as possible starting points!
The Mechanics of a Pragmatic Programmers daily work July 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've been reading Neal's blog for a while. So I've been looking forward to the book. (I even accidentally ordered it twice - one was the pre-buy at amazon, which I forgot about).
I spend the last two days reading the book and found it quite helpful. There are a lot of concrete tips and examples for immediate use and daily improvement of your mechanic skills. Many of the experiences regarding the effective use of the tools at hand that he describes are well known to me. I can't really understand how developers are not keen to improve their productivity.
Neal's book is a good addition to the PragProgs masterpiece. It concentrates more on the mechanics and on some principles of productive software development. So the triad of values-principles-patterns got a son named mechanics.
What I missed in the book was:
* a comprehensive list of the notes at the end.
* Christopher Alexanders appearance as one of the philosophers.
* the notion of cheat sheets/refcards
* references to Martin Odersky's Scala the scalable language
* references to Kent Becks "Implementation Patterns" (especially in the SLAP section)
As being a developer myself I was a bit disappointed by the quality of the examples (the solutions not the starting points) and a bit by the correctness of the text (typos). I spotted several errors, some bad designs and some uninformed choices even on the first read of the book. I'll post them to the errata page.
Neals suggestion of an online repository of productive programmers tools, tips and mechanics is a great idea. I'd really like to join this effort.
Michael
http://creating.passionate-developers.org
 Essential Reading for Every Developer July 25, 2008
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.)
A book I've been waiting for July 12, 2008
8 out of 10 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.
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