Last weekend I finished the book “Code Complete 2” by. It was a book which I was interested in for a long. Luckily I found it on the bookshelf of my new employer. It is not the kind of book to finish in a weekend, it took me 2 month ( besides work and my family ). Most of the book is fun to read and well written, mainly because the content of the book is realistic and highly recognizable.
The beginning of the book starts is about the principle “measure twice, cut once”. Make sure you understand the requirements and that they are realistic.
The middle and the largest part provides us with a ton of coding best practices for any language, how to write logic, readable and performing code. During the whole book best practices are funded with (scientific) research data, which made it harder for me to ignore en neglect the best practices, which is a good thing.

The last main section of the book describes best practices to improve just written or existing applications. How the debug and refactor and a major requirement how to development collaborative. The last part of this section is not the least, is describes what the developers/ programmers personality and attitude should be to keep yourself motivated and highly skilled. It also discusses how to deal with managers, and how to keep your cost estimations to stand strong. instead of pleasing the client at first with a low price but begging for more budget to complete the project in the end.

Overall the best ( 6 year old! ) book I have read to increase my knowledge on software development. I would recommend it to ( front-end )webdevelopers who get involved in an increasing codebase as well as experienced programmers.

Book Details

• Book: Code Complete 2
• Author: Steve McConnel
• publisher: Microsoft Press
• pages: 860