The Productive Programmer

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 in my classes.