The Practice of Programming or It Project Management

The Practice of Programming

Author: Brian W Kernighan

With the same insight and authority that made their book The Unix programming Environment a classic, Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike have written The Practice of Programming to help make individual programmers more effective and productive.

The practice of programming is more than just writing code. Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they must be concerned with issues like compatibility, robustness, and reliability, while meeting specifications.

The Practice of Programming covers all these topics, and more. This book is full of practical advice and real-world examples in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages. It includes chapters on:

• Debugging: finding bugs quickly and methodically
• Testing: guaranteeing that software works correctly and reliably
• Performance: making programs faster and more compact
• Portability: ensuring that programs run everywhere without change
• Design: balancing goals and constraints to decide which algorithms and data structures are best interfaces: using abstraction and information hiding to control the interactions between components
• Style: writing code that works well and is a pleasure to read
• Notation: choosing languages and tools that let the machine do more of the work

Kernighan and Pike have distilled years of experience writing programs, teaching, and working with other programmers to create this book. Anyone who writes software will profit from the principles and guidance in The Practice of Programming.

Dr Dobbs Journal

A great candidate to fill this widely perceived lack in the literature... Very solid and very educational, this manual is one I highly recommend to all programmers.

Association of C & C++ Users

This book is full of good common sense. In addition it is written in highly readable English. Pick up a copy, choose any chapter and start reading. I think you will then feel motivated to buy yourself a copy... Whatever language you program in, I think you will benefit from reading this book.

Sys Admin

An outstanding book... a readable and well-written style combined with their experience and valuable expertise.

Slashdot.org

Rating 9/10: Practical and enjoyable, this book captures its authors' considerable wisdom and experience.

Booknews

Offers practical advice and examples on programming in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages, with chapters on debugging, testing, performance, portability, design, interfaces, style, notation, and other topics. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

What People Are Saying

Paul McNamee
The book fills a critical need by providing insight into pragmatic designand coding issues so that programmers become better at their craft... Programmers just out of school should be given this book on their first day of work. It will save employers thousands of dollars due to lost productivity and "mindless" debugging. --Computer Scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Peter Memishian
The examples are just about right. Chapter 3's example (markov) is stellar; it is simple, thought-provoking, elegant, and most importantly, provides an opportunity to analyze good design... It is the most concise book of its kind and offers the most useful, no-nonsense treatment of how to program from authors who know a great deal about the topic. Member of Technical Staff, Sun Microsystems

Chris Cleeland
There is a tendency for many books to be in the high hundreds of pages long these days with very little justification. This text is well-written, and is not overly interdependent, thus allowing the reader to "skip around" as interests motivate.... I found [the examples] to be interesting. I like it when I don't have to spend time figuring out an example and I can concentrate on the lesson the example is trying to teach. Too many books have overly-complex examples, and this one doesn't. --Technical Lead, IONA Technologies, Inc.

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Style

Interesting book: WTO Appellate Body Repertory of Reports and Awards 1995 2004 or Operational Performance Measurement

It Project Management: On Track from Start to Finish, Second Edition

Author: Joseph Phillips

Renowned IT project management expert, Joseph Phillips, again delivers an authoritative, easy-to-understand guide that delves into all CompTIA IT Project+ certification objectives. The “Inside the Exam” sections focus on the necessary topics to pass the new CompTIA exam. Each chapter features an end-of-chapter review, and the CD-ROM includes an IT Project+ practice test, plus templates and worksheets to use when managing a project. The included real-world examples that provide on-the-job insight from practicing project management professionals, and tie discussed theory to practice, make this comprehensive reference a must-have for IT staff.