Writing Solid Code (Microsoft Programming Series)

Writing Solid Code (Microsoft Programming Series)
Steve Maguire | 1993-01-01 00:00:00 | Microsoft Press | 256 | Microsoft
"This book has useful things to say and an engaging way of saying them...a worthwhile addition to the shelves of any full-time programmer." - PC Week. Here, from a former Microsoft developer, are super secrets for developing bug-free C programs. Maguire provides examples of how bugs are caught at Microsoft (using actual case histories) and shows how readers can use these proven programming techniques to get products to market faster.
Any programmer worth their silicon knows that it is wiser to invest time preventing bugs from hatching than to try to exterminate them afterwards. And this is one of the best books for developing a proactive attitude towards electronic entomology. Follow Maguire's advice, and your testers, supervisors and customers will love you. Recommended.
Reviews
A classic that is dated in some respects (C language?) but still has much to offer. Should have a spot on every developer's and project manager's book shelf.

Deserves an update.
Reviews
"Writing Solid Code" contains a creative list of excellent ways to improve your software coding ability, with an emphasis on techniques that simplify and speed up the debugging process. The book is written toward the C language, but most of the advice can be generally applied to any language. I have both a Bachleors and a Masters Degree in Computer Science, and very few of these valuable techniques were mentioned anywhere in my undergraduate or graduate degree courses.



I strongly disagree with boastful reviewers who poo-poo the advice as "obvious." Most good advice is obvious once you have heard it. I highly doubt that these reviewers knew all or even most of these tricks before reading, or could enunciate supporting reasons for doing each. Likewise, sure, a rare few pieces of advice are outdated, and you probably hate Microsoft. So what? Avoiding this book for those reasons is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- short sighted.



This is an excellent book. I highly recommend it.
Reviews
Certainly no book can cover all the best practices to write best code but this book has done good attempt. Must read for all the fresh grads and developers before they start writing production code!
Reviews
This book quickly reminded me that the "old school" rules to software development will always apply, no matter how many new labels you put on it (e.g. Agile). It was recommended to me by a college professor aside from the regular classroom reading we had to complete. And I was more than happy I purchased it and added it to my bookshelf.
Reviews
This book has been recently recommended to me by Amazon based on my previous purchase habits and I decided to go take a look at its description. At first, I was little bit skeptic about the value of a book published in 1993 and prepared with Word for Windows 2.0 because software programming has changed a lot since then! However, it was a very low risk purchase because of its very low price tag so I decided to give it a try and I have been pleasantly surprised!



This book is the proof that that there are few things in programming that are timeless. Errors of the past still occur today. The programming language used for the examples is C but what is taught is also applicable to C++ programming as well. Topics discussed in the book are: assertions, integrity checks, stepping through code with a debugger, how to not design interfaces that are error prone, avoid language features that are error prone and finally the author conclude his book by describing the attitude that a programmer should have. Among other things, a programmer should prioritize safe code before micro-optimizations. All these concepts are written in a style easy to understand filled with anecdotes that make this book a pleasant read.



To conclude, I have not been blown away by the content of this book but I have learn one thing or two and I am glad that I have read it especially with its very low price tag.



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