Have you ever faced a big chunk of code, and said “now what?”. Have you ever struggled to untangle thousands of lines of messy files trying to find the origin of an hard to explain bug? Have you ever wondered how to drill down a program to organize your discoveries in a simply and easy way? This is what I values most in this collection of books. They are hard to read and dense. but the ideas I found here have no price.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Martin Fowler
As developers we proudly define ourself as “Craftsmen” we struggle to polish our code and make it brillant trough applying an infinite number of small quick techniques groupable under the label of “refactoring”. This book is a comprehensive, deeply detailed catalog of these techniques where each one is explained with simple but realustic examples. Maybe is a not the funniest read but is a must read for any developer who wants to be proud of his code.
75
Readability
100
Applicability
100
Usefulness
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
Michael Feathers
Sooner or later all developers face a big piece of code and say “this is a mess, i cannot understand nothing and I have no idea about what it does or where to put my hands”. Legacy code is an unavoidable state of each piece of software. Languages evolves, old version support could be dropped, new features may appear. This book explores the most common cases of legacy code and teach some useful way to deal with it.
25
Readability
50
Applicability
33
Usefulness
The Mikado Method
Ola Ellnestam, Daniel Brolund
How to untangle a big mess of spaghetti code? What can be changed with safety? When we face a class of 2k lines which does dozen of differen things, is there any way to dismantle it without breaking all? The mikado method is a simple, clever set of techniques that can be used to survive to the messiest big ball of mud.
90
Readability
60
Applicability
45
Usefulness
Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement
Aaron Gustafson
Content is king, right? So why don’t start from it when building a website? A short dissertation about a simple but yet powerful workflow to build a content centered rich web experience.
90
Readability
10
Applicability
10
Usefulness
Design and Build Great Web APIs Robust, Reliable, and Resilient
Mike Amundsen
A simple but complete introductory handbook to the API world: where to start what to keep in mind, tools of trade and design technique to easily start designing and building great web APIs .
100
Readability
75
Applicability
70
Usefulness