97 pieces of advice, not less, not more. Several dozens of (more or less famed) developers were asked for their opinion on programming good practices, and their answers were compiled in this book.

Content and opinions

Each “thing” is explained by a two-pages article. The tone is different as each chapter is written by different authors. They are sorted alphabetically, and there is a table of contents sorted by topics.

The topics browse the modern/current approach to programming (in almost every aspect), emphasing the need for tests, automatic tools, good designs or personal enhancement. Of course, they cannot be deepened in so few words, so you have to get another book for more detailed explanations. This also means that for some pieces of advice, you may found them too obvious, as you need details to implement the approach.

Conclusion

This book is a great first approach to good practices. If you are used to reading good practices books, you may not need this one, but it tries efficiently to sum up the different faces of modern programming.