How to Become a Better Programmer in 90 Days

In this brief talk I present highlights from three books on my required reading list that (I believe) will help make you a better programmer:

• The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler
• Clean Code by Robert C. Martin
• Refactoring by Martin Fowler

Thanks to Derek Olson for taping and editing, and thanks again to Marty Haught for organizing the conference!

@rands, 1/11/2010: “Be productive, be fantastically clever when necessary, speak truth to power, hit your dates, and don’t ship crap.”

By the way, if you’re a programmer or a manager of programmers and you’re not reading everything that Michael Lopp, a.k.a. Rands in Repose has to say, you’re missing out big time.

Then I thought: Why should LinkedIn have all the fun? So I’ve added a new page to my site called Reading where I’ve posted the reviews.

“What are you reading?” is one of my standard interview questions. And despite never having enough time for anything I do try to read a few new books on programming, management, and business every year.

Let’s see if I can keep this up.

“Interested in learning Ruby, the open-source, object-oriented programming language? Start with Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book, a new e-book that teaches the basics and then some.”

In addition to Mr. Neighborly’s slim volume, my growing Ruby library now includes:

• Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, by Dave Thomas (the “pickaxe” book)
• Agile Web Development with Rails, by Dave Thomas and David Hansson (the long-awaited 2nd edition, no less)
• Ruby Cookbook, by Carlson and Richardson (O’Reilly)

Most programming gurus recommend learning at least one new programming language per year. Looks like in 2007 it’s going to be Ruby for me assuming I find time to do something I only rarely managed to do in grad school: Actually read the books I buy.

Key is a quote by Tom Lister (I just posted this over at CodeQuotes):

People under time pressure don’t think faster.

More on this topic to come, but let’s just say that I’ve bought a couple of copies of this book for some colleagues and executives at my current place of employment.