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The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey To Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) 2nd Edition
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“Twenty years ago, the first edition of The Pragmatic Programmer completely changed the trajectory of my career. This new edition could do the same for yours.” —Mike Cohn, Author of Succeeding with Agile, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied
“. filled with practical advice, both technical and professional, that will serve you and your projects well for years to come.” —Andrea Goulet, CEO, Corgibytes, Founder, LegacyCode.Rocks
“. . . lightning does strike twice, and this book is proof.” —VM (Vicky) Brasseur, Director of Open Source Strategy, Juniper Networks
The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare tech books you’ll read, re-read, and read again over the years. Whether you’re new to the field or an experienced practitioner, you’ll come away with fresh insights each and every time.
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development, independent of any particular language, framework, or methodology, and the Pragmatic philosophy has spawned hundreds of books, screencasts, and audio books, as well as thousands of careers and success stories.
Now, twenty years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you’ll learn how to:
- Fight software rot
- Learn continuously
- Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge
- Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code
- Harness the power of basic tools
- Avoid programming by coincidence
- Learn real requirements
- Solve the underlying problems of concurrent code
- Guard against security vulnerabilities
- Build teams of Pragmatic Programmers
- Take responsibility for your work and career
- Test ruthlessly and effectively, including property-based testing
- Implement the Pragmatic Starter Kit
- Delight your users
You’ll become a Pragmatic Programmer.
Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.
- ISBN-100135957052
- ISBN-13978-0135957059
- Edition2nd
- PublisherAddison-Wesley Professional
- Publication date
2019
September 13
- Language
EN
English
- Dimensions
7.7 x 1.1 x 9.4
inches
- Length
352
Pages
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From the Publisher
A Pragmatic Philosophy
Make no mistake, it is your career, and more importantly, Topic 1, It's Your Life. You own it. You're here because you know you can become a better developer and help others become better as well. You can become a Pragmatic Programmer.
What distinguishes Pragmatic Programmers? We feel it's an attitude, a style, a philosophy of approaching problems and their solutions. They think beyond the immediate problem, placing it in its larger context and seeking out the bigger picture. After all, without this larger context, how can you be pragmatic? How can you make intelligent compromises and informed decisions?
A Pragmatic Approach
There are certain tips and tricks that apply at all levels of software development, processes that are virtually universal, and ideas that are almost axiomatic. However, these approaches are rarely documented as such; you'll mostly find them written down as odd sentences in discussions of design, project management, or coding. But for your convenience, we'll bring these ideas and processes together here.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"To participate in the next generation of professional product delivery you have to be pragmatic but disciplined. Otherwise, you are fated to be ungrounded dreamers whose products endanger people and whose ideas never become successfully integrated into the world. Andy and Dave described a pragmatic but disciplined approach which is a key step towards professionalism."
–Ken Schwaber, co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum.org, agile manifesto signatory, and author of Software in 30 Days.
"Picking adjectives is hard work. In The Pragmatic Programmer, Dave and Andy set the tone for their work–thoughtful, expert, aspirational, and full of care for themselves and those they touch through their programs. From its publication, this was the book to read if you wanted to work to improve."
–Kent Beck, Gusto, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Test-Driven Development: By Example, and The Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns
"Some say that with The Pragmatic Programmer, Andy and Dave captured lightning in a bottle; that it’s unlikely anyone will soon write a book that can move an entire industry as it did. Sometimes, though, lightning does strike twice, and this book is proof. The updated content ensures that it will stay at the top of “best books in software development” lists for another 20 years, right where it belongs."
―VM (Vicky) Brasseur, Director of Open Source Strategy, Juniper Networks
"If you want your software to be easy to modernize and maintain, keep a copy of The Pragmatic Programmer close. It’s filled with practical advice, both technical and professional, that will serve you and your projects well for years to come."
―Andrea Goulet, CEO, Corgibytes; Founder, LegacyCode.Rocks
" The Pragmatic Programmer is the one book I can point to that completely dislodged the existing trajectory of my career in software and pointed me in the direction of success. Reading it opened my mind to the possibilities of being a craftsman, not just a cog in a big machine. One of the most significant books in my life."
―Obie Fernandez, Author, The Rails Way
"First-time readers can look forward to an enthralling induction into the modern world of software practice, a world that the first edition played a major role in shaping. Readers of the first edition will rediscover here the insights and practical wisdom that made the book so significant in the first place, expertly curated and updated, along with much that’s new."
―David A. Black, Author, The Well-Grounded Rubyist
"I have an old paper copy of the original Pragmatic Programmer on my bookshelf. It has been read and re-read and a long time ago it changed everything about how I approached my job as a programmer. In the new edition everything and nothing has changed: I now read it on my iPad and the code examples use modern programming languages―but the underlying concepts, ideas, and attitudes are timeless and universally applicable. Twenty years later, the book is as relevant as ever. It makes me happy to know that current and future developers will have the same opportunity to learn from Andy and Dave’s profound insights as I did back in the day."
―Sandy Mamoli, Agile coach; Author of How Self-Selection Lets People Excel
From the Back Cover
- Today’s best approaches to transforming requirements into working, maintainable code that delights users
- Thoroughly revised with 10 new sections, extensive new coverage, new examples throughout – and future-proofed with greater technology-independence
- Brings together pragmatic advice on everything from personal career fulfillment to more effective architecture
“One of the most significant books in my life.” ―Obie Fernandez, Author, The Rails Way
“Twenty years ago, the first edition of The Pragmatic Programmer completely changed the trajectory of my career. This new edition could do the same for yours.” ―Mike Cohn, Author of Succeeding with Agile, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied
“. . . filled with practical advice, both technical and professional, that will serve you and your projects well for years to come.” ―Andrea Goulet, CEO, Corgibytes, Founder, LegacyCode.Rocks
“. . . lightning does strike twice, and this book is proof.” ―VM (Vicky) Brasseur, Director of Open Source Strategy, Juniper Networks
About the Author
Dave currently teaches college, turns wood, and plays with new technology and paradigms. Andy writes science fiction, is an active musician, and loves to tinker with technology. But, most of all, they’re both driven to keep learning.
Product details
- Publisher : Addison-Wesley Professional; 2nd edition (September 13, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0135957052
- ISBN-13 : 978-0135957059
- Item Weight : 1.98 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.7 x 1.1 x 9.35 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Software Design & Engineering
- #2 in Software Testing
- #4 in Software Development (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors

Andy Hunt is a writer of books on software development and chill scifi. Hunt co-authored the seminal text "The Pragmatic Programmer," the popular "Pragmatic Thinking & Learning", award-winning "Practices of an Agile Developer", a half-dozen other books and many articles. Andy was one of the 17 original authors of the Agile Manifesto. He and co-author Dave Thomas founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing house, specializing in books for for software developers, testers, and managers.

Andy Hunt is an author and publisher. He's authored and co-authored the best-selling classic The Pragmatic Programmer, the popular Pragmatic Thinking & Learning, award-winning Practices of an Agile Developer, Learn to Program with Minecraft Plugins: Create Flying Creepers and Flaming Cows in Java for the kids, many articles, and the novels in the Conglommora series. Andy was one of the 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto and founders of the Agile software movement, columnist for IEEE Software Magazine, and co-founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf, publishing award-winning and critically acclaimed books. He's currently experimenting with software development and learning, writing books, and performing music with his friends.
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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As for the book itself, it's a fairly encouraging look at software engineering from two veterans. Worth your attention.
However, while some of the wisdom and knowledge might cross over in a Venn diagram with 'Clean Code'; there's some great advice here that's worth putting into practice. I don't necessarily agree with all of it. To each his own. But, I've found much that makes this book worth owning.
Before reading this book, I didn't know where I stood as a developer after 15 years of doing it. I'm self-taught, and also learned from my surroundings, assuming that people in higher positions than me must know better - now I never assume anything about anyone or anything. I never got much (useful) feedback but I wanted to be as good as I could be in my field. Reading this book and applying what I learned from it eventually lead to a great confidence in my way of problem solving and coding, and this confidence naturally caused me to be happier, and that's when I realized that when I'm confident and happy I produce my best work that I'm proud of. Not only do I feel like I have leveled up as a software engineer, but I also feel like I leveled up as a person. I also feel validated for a few things I was already doing, and learned that soft skills (communication, accountability, etc) are just as important as hard skills (coding).
I've already convinced at least 3 developers to buy their own copy, and I'm about to suggest it to a few more, so I think I need to look up some kind of referral/commission program.
This book is worth every penny and has me going back to it for reference all the time.
Top reviews from other countries
But some of the tips have been removed, updated or changed (gasp). In particular, having taken a really hard line on programmer's editors ("learn a single editor well") in the first edition, I was shocked to see that the second edition waters that down to "learn as many editors as you like, as thoroughly as you can". (I paraphase because I don't have the book to hand). My favourite programming language Perl appears to have been surgically removed from the book and index, previously it was recommended (in another tip) to "learn a text manipulation language" and Perl was used as the main example of that. Not any more.
Generally, it seemed to have grown in bulk, while not covering as much useful material for me as before. As a result, while the first edition was brilliant and incisive book, the second edition seemed a bit flabby to me.






















