The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers [Anglais] [Broché]

This book is good at providing a general overview of what it means to be a software professional. Lots of good advice and provides many resources and a general framework for thinking about the subjects he presents.

Sometimes the author presents strategies very specific to him that wouldn't work for me. For example, I tried the pomodoro method before and had mixed results. I think readers would benefit more looking at the goal (better time management) and finding a methodology that works for them to accomplish that goal.

He is very bullish on unit tests, stating that there is no longer and controversy over TDD. As a huge fan of unit tests, I find many places I have worked at have very little interest in unit testing or don't see any real benefit.

The book is also very strongly against being in the Flow to program which I found interesting. This is pretty much 100% the opposite of everything else I have ever heard/read.

He is also against listening to music while programming. He provides a weird example where while listening to Pink Floyd his code comments had Pink Floyd references. The author has a tendency to confuse something that is true for him ("I don't listen to music while programming") to a general universal rule ("Programmers shouldn't listen to music while programming").

Most programmers I know who listen to music do so as white noise. For instance, I listen to techno many times while programming. I don't like techno but the droning drum servies to drown out the office chitter chatter at my current gig.

Like Clean Code, I don't always agree with the author but provides good food for thought and is worth the read!

Overall, I would say this book was disappointing. Admittedly, I had high expectation after reading "Clean Code". Perhaps it was the rather too personal anecdotes that initially turned me off. I would say you are better of reading "Pragmatic Programmer" and a book on Scrum XP and software project estimation.
As other reviews have said, it feels like a collection of blog articles published in a book.

Chapter 1. Professionalism
The book got off to a bad start for me... the first chapter on professionalism:
"Do the math. In a week there are 168 hours. Give your employer 40, and your career another 20. That leaves 108. Another 56 for sleep leaves 52 for everything else.

Perhaps you don't want to make that kind of commitment, That's fine, but should not think of yourself as a professional. Professionals spend time caring for their profession."

Really? 20 hours per week; so if you spend 10 per week reading blogs, listening to podcasts, doing kata's etc... you are no longer a professional? While I agree, you have to take personal responsibility for your career, asserting that you have to spend 20 hours a week seems over the top to me. Perhaps the author wishes to be controversial and overly opinionated to provoke debate?

Chapter 4. Coding.
The section on listening to music while coding has a truly bizarre anecdote:
"One day I went back into a module that I been editing while listening to the opening sequence of The Wall. The comments in that code contained lyrics from the piece, and editorial notations about dive bombers and crying babies."

I'm guessing lots of people listen to music while coding without a problem. I can imagine, if I had been working 80 hour weeks for the last month, I would something similar, but surely that is a symptom of being on a death march?

I liked the section on false delivery. It can sometimes be difficult for everyone to have a shared understanding of 'done'. A former Scrum Master used to have a short meeting whenever a new team member joined us to cover the "definition of done".

6. Practicing
I'm a little skeptical of repeatedly doing the same kata; yes create side projects to spike a new technology that you wish to learn about - but I'm not convinced that continued repetition of kata helps.

9. Time Management
I was glad to read, that it is OK to decline a meeting. It validates my practice of declining meetings without an agenda/ goal/ deliverable.

I liked the advice, on how to leave a meeting that you are not adding value to and from which you are receiving no value.

Focus-Manna
I thought this section contradicted what the author mentioned about 'The Flow Zone' in chapter 4.

"We write code when our focus-manna is high; and we do no other, less productive things when it's not.".

On the Zone - "It is the highly focused, tunnel-vision state of consciousness that programmers can get into while they write code.".

10. Estimation.
The following excerpt I found very peculiar - "I've only been drunk two times in my life, and only really drunk once. It was at the Teradyne Christmas party in 1978. I was 26 years old.".

14. Mentoring, apprenticeships and Craftsmanship.
I felt this chapter could have been longer, with more depth and more concrete proposals; this chapter should of been the highlight of the book - as the most of the themes of the book are either covered in depth elsewhere or are part of best practices/ agile bandwagon (TDD, unit tests, acceptance tests). It would have been nice to provide more information about efforts the IEEE or the ACM are doing to promote the idea of software professionals. A discussion on certifications may have been useful.

It felt like the book ended rather abruptly with on Tools. It seems this chapter is going to make the book dated very quickly; whereas a book on titled "The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for professional programmers" should be timeless.

In "The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers," Uncle Bob Martin is his usual, controversial self, but he is often convincing. One upshot is that I will never again tell a manager that "I'll try" to hit an overly ambitious deadline: I will either commit or refuse to commit, or offer an estimate of the odds of success. On the topic of deadlines, Martin observes that project managers and "suits" regard completion dates as commitments, while programmers tend to regard them as estimates, usually overly optimistic estimates. He makes the case that it is the professional duty of programmers to come up with realistic estimates and then stick to their guns.

Another good point Martin makes is that a professional programmer should take the responsibility to hone his or her skills outside working hours. He recommends working a focused and productive 40 hours a week, and then spending 20 hours a week on career development: reading, learning other languages, even practicing programming "katas".

One of the most controversial claims Martin makes is that getting into "the zone" - that mental state of total concentration for which programmers strive - is a bad idea, because it results in too narrow a focus. Personally, I'm not convinced. I think that the problems of focused programming can be remedied by being sure to take a big-picture view from time to time, and also by code reviews.

A problem with this book is Martin's use of overstatement to indicate emphasis. So when he says "never, never, never" agree to meet a deadline by working extra hard and long, he means "hardly ever". His insistence that agreeing to accelerate effort inevitably result in low quality code just does not wash. Not that it can go on forever, but my own experience is that a brief and intense push can often get things done faster without sacrificing quality. Even Martin's suggested regimen suggests that there is slack in the schedule: surely the 20 per week of career development could be sacrificed from time to time. I shudder to think of a mid-level programmer, influenced by Martin's rhetoric, refusing to work extra hours "on principle", thus harming both his own career and the prospects of his company.

With that caveat, however, the book has much sound advice, and is an excellent read to boot.