Code Simplicity by Max Kanat-Alexander, O'Reilly

 April 24, 2012

This is not the typical O’Reilly programming book and you can find it out very easily when you have the book in your hands, since it does not have any code inside The author, in fact, tries to create a software development science. This left me very puzzled since:

• I think this kind of stuff has to be said by people after you, not buy the author himself
• The author mainly collect ideas and principles that are already explained in a lot of other books
• The author suggests the DRY and the don’t fix if it isn’t broken principles and I think these will not always bring you to good code
• The book only says what to do, it does not cover how to do it
• Re-factoring and single responsibility principle are not covered

Apart of these five points, I think that the book has reasons to live. It is a really fast and superficial presentation of the subject. I think it would be appropriate for students who are approaching for the first time the subject or for people that for working reasons have to deal with the subject but not in first person (like a project manager). I would not suggest this book to people with real world programming experience or necessity.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program