Widely popular as one of the best books on software development and programming, Steve McConnell’s Code Complete (pdf) has been helping developers write efficient, flexible, and highly adaptable software code for over a decade. This classic book, which has had influence on many programmers and mentors, has been fully updated in the 2nd edition with the best practices to reflect modern software development and today’s best programming practices.
Steve McConnell is very often cited as one of the leading experts in software development and project engineering. In 1998, the Software Development magazine named him as one of the three most influential people in the software industry, along with Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates. Besides, Code Complete, McConnell is also the author of Software Estimation and Rapid Development.
The pdf version of Code Complete – 2nd edition is available here for download. You can also buy the book from Amazon following the referral link.
Buy from Amazon: Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
Book Review:
- Title: Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
- Author: Steve McConnell
- Edition: 2nd
- Publisher: Microsoft Press
- Pages: 931
- Format: pdf
- Size: 7.5MB
There is a very wide difference between the high quality software engineering and the average coding practice – likely bigger than two aspects in any other possible engineering discipline. The main goal of Code Complete – 2nd edition, was to shrink the gap between the knowledge and experience of industry gurus and academic professors on the one hand and usual commercial practice on the other.
The author, Steve McConnell, noticed that there are just a few books focusing on code construction in detail and decided to fill this gap with this book. In this edition, McConnell illustrates the science and principles of software construction with leading-edge techniques, some the best programming practices, and hundreds of new code samples.
The scientific research and practical programming experience collected into this book from both science and business approach will guide you how to create more matured software and to do your work quicker and more efficiently.
No matter what your experience level, programming education, or nature and size of project, this book can give you insights into effective programming practices, stimulating your thinking ability to help you develop the highest quality code.
Code Complete is really like a library discussing common aspects of construction such as good quality software and different ways to think about software development and programming. It goes into very tiny details of construction process such as steps in building new classes, pros and cons of using data and control structures, debugging, code tuning ideas, refactoring, and many more.
This book gives attention to techniques you can benefit from to get the most out of whatever programming language you’re using. It contains about 500 examples of good quality code and and bad quality code – examples of code recommended and to be avoided. Also, the book frequently features interesting and clever quotes of other authors which makes the overall reading experience very pleasant.
In the 2nd edition, Steve McConnell focuses on why construction is important. Depending on the size of the project, construction typically takes from 30 to 80 percent of the overall time spent on a project. With a focus on construction, the individual programmer’s productivity can improve enormously. Construction is directly related to coding and debugging or programming.
Code Complete 2 is divided seven main parts: Laying the Foundation, Creating High-Quality Code, Variables, Statements, Code improvements, System Considerations, and Software Craftsmanship. All these are covered in 35 chapters in over 900 pages of the book, which is quite long but shouldn’t hamper your reading experience.
One of the chapters discusses why preparation before programming is needed and how it’s related to the final cost of the project — mentioning all the phases of the prerequisites needed like: getting requirements, defining the problem, creating architecture, and then choosing construction approach.
Key construction decisions to be made are explained in details. For example – the choice of programming languages has to be made. To help with this decision, the author describes commonly used languages like Ada, Assembly Language, C, C++, C#, COBOL, FORTRAN, Java, JavaScript, PERL, PHP, Python, SQL, Visual Basic, etc.
This book was put together to be read either cover to cover or by finding only the topics that you need. It summarizes many external resources and best practices, so it provides the readers with references to many books written by other authors.
Code Complete has affected the way I think about developing software like no other book has. I know it’s trite, but if ever a technical book deserved to be an ‘instant classic’, this is it. I applaud McConnell not only for codifying the knowledge–writing it down–but for including key points and check lists.
— Ed Schaefer, Unix Review
Buy from Amazon: Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Second Edition
In conclusion, Code Complete is the ideal book for you if software construction is your interest and is something you need to know in depth. Also, the book would make a great guide for those who need to know some versatile software design principles and techniques which are supposed to be used for many years in the future.
You can find more software development books/pdf here.
