Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship 1st Edition

by Robert C. Martin (Author)

3,297 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0132350884

ISBN-10: 9780132350884

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Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin, presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin, who has helped bring agile principles from a practitioner’s point of view to tens of thousands of programmers, has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of software craftsman, and make you a better programmer―but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code―lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code―of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding

How to tell the difference between good and bad code
How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
How to format code for maximum readability
How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
How to unit test and practice test-driven development
What “smells” and heuristics can help you identify bad code

This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.

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From the Publisher


	Best agile practices of cleaning code “on the fly” Software Craftsmanship	Endure and succeed amidst swirling uncertainty and nonstop pressure	Direct, no-nonsense answers to key architecture and design questions	There are no shortcuts for Agile’s true benefits: You need to do Agile right.	Deliver robust, effective code and to be proud of all the software you write
Title	Clean Code	Clean Coder	Clean Architecture	Clean Agile	Clean Craftsmanship
Core Concept	Presents a revolutionary paradigm that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer—but only if you work at it.	Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. This book is packed with practical advice–about everything from estimating and coding to refactoring and testing.	Uncle Bob presents the universal rules of software architecture that will help you dramatically improve developer productivity throughout the life of any software system.	Uncle Bob describes what Agile is in no uncertain terms, stripping away misunderstandings and distractions that have made it harder to use than was originally intended, and how Agile can help you bring true professionalism to software development.	Provides a pragmatic, technical, and prescriptive guide to the foundational disciplines of software craftsmanship and a discussion of the standard and ethics developers and programmers should be following.
Endoresement	"It is the best pragmatic application of Lean principles to software I have ever seen in print." —James O. Coplien, Founder of the Pasteur Organizational Patterns project	“Some technical books inspire and teach; some delight and amuse. Rarely does a technical book do all four of these things.”—George Bullock Senior Program Manager Microsoft Corp.	"A good architecture comes from understanding it more as a journey than as a destination, more as an ongoing process of enquiry than as a frozen artifact." -- Kevlin Henney	“What is in the world of Agile development is nothing compared to what could be. This book is Bob’s perspective on what to focus on to get to that ‘what could be.’ And he’s been there, so it’s worth listening.” –Kent Beck	". . . [A] timely and humble reminder of the ever-increasing complexity of our programmatic world and how we owe it to the legacy of humankind--and to ourselves--to practice ethical development.” -- Stacia Heimgartner Viscardi, CST & Agile Mentor

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Noted software expert Robert C. Martin presents a revolutionary paradigm with Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Martin has teamed up with his colleagues from Object Mentor to distill their best agile practice of cleaning code “on the fly” into a book that will instill within you the values of a software craftsman and make you a better programmer―but only if you work at it.

What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code―lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft.

Clean Code is divided into three parts. The first describes the principles, patterns, and practices of writing clean code. The second part consists of several case studies of increasing complexity. Each case study is an exercise in cleaning up code―of transforming a code base that has some problems into one that is sound and efficient. The third part is the payoff: a single chapter containing a list of heuristics and “smells” gathered while creating the case studies. The result is a knowledge base that describes the way we think when we write, read, and clean code.

Readers will come away from this book understanding

How to tell the difference between good and bad code
How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code
How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes
How to format code for maximum readability
How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic
How to unit test and practice test-driven development

This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.

About the Author

Robert C. “Uncle Bob” Martin has been a software professional since 1970 and an international software consultant since 1990. He is founder and president of Object Mentor, Inc., a team of experienced consultants who mentor their clients worldwide in the fields of C++, Java, C#, Ruby, OO, Design Patterns, UML, Agile Methodologies, and eXtreme programming.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0132350882
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pearson; 1st edition (August 1, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780132350884
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0132350884
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.54 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.05 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Software Testing
- #4 in Software Design & Engineering
- #5 in Computer Programming Languages

Customer Reviews:
3,297 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		81%
4 star		11%
3 star		3%
2 star		2%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Jim

Good, but tightly coupled to Java and starting to age poorly

Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

3.5 stars. I'm rounding up.

Much of the information in this books is eye opening, particularly the chapters on functions, classes, and code smells. However, a serious problem is that this book is very, very Java-centric, and it is clearly a product of its 2009 copyright date. Many of the chapters have been made moot (PEP8 and Prettier making the formatting chapter largely obsolete, for example), and a few aren't totally applicable to any other language.

Note about buying a new, physical version from Amazon: don't. The book will be damaged in shipping as it just comes in a padded envelope and will be dog-eared like a used book before you receive it. See my picture.

108 people found this helpful

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Deal Stealer

Swallowed My Pride and bought this book

Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2016

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I've been programming about 17 years and consider myself above average programmer. Yet, this book made me feel like I'm actually horrible coder. I've always gotten my tasks done but I didn't pay attention on refactoring to clean up the code. I'm already behind and got a demo coming up in few days. As I'm reading my guilty verdicts on all his 'bad code' examples, it inspire me to care about 'coding' yet again. It can be fun and it's not all about getting the job done. What's sad about the reality is that 'bad code' will continually increase over time because people don't realize what 'bad code' can do in the long run.

Every programmer regardless of experience should read this book. Thanks!

247 people found this helpful

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Juan M. Paulino

It's fake.

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

This books is a fake. Don't buy it. Look at the images I posted.

110 people found this helpful

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Mark Jones

Java & OOP centered

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

Stay far away from this book of you are not an OOP programmer. All examples are in Java but most C++ programmers should be able to mentally translate the ideas. There is also too much focus on Java specific tooling. While there are some good points this book makes, it disregards many good programming techniques used in standard imperative languages without objects. It completely disregards functional languages and given gives some terrible advice when it comes to writing good code in a functional style. Overall it's pretty good up to about chapter 7. After that it's pretty much downhill.

52 people found this helpful

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Roman

The content is good, but the soft cover version of the book ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

The content is good, but the soft cover version of the book is of a poor print quality, it looks like it was printed from photocopies.
I've heard that originally, the print quality was ok, well, it's not anymore.
It's still readable, but I would never buy it if I new about the print quality.
Should've read other reviews.

47 people found this helpful

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Chris

Poor quality reprint

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

Bought the book due to a push at work to read this, the book was bought through Amazon.com Services, Inc. and like others have said I received a copy with huge margins on each page, a blurry cover, and no spine or back. I didn't have any of the problems of the binding falling apart yet, the text is readable its just the code samples are a bit hard to read.

40 people found this helpful

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Patulus

Dogmatic rehashing of outdated truisms

Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Stay away from this book. It's a one person ramble about his preferences in coding. Plus he turns everything into a moral issue about being a “professional”. You are a professional if you earn money with the craft, period. This is what “profession” means. The rest are dogmas of Bob's cult, akin to Pythagoreans abstaining eating beans. Go to his GitHub page and see for yourself if you like his “clean code”. I don't.

17 people found this helpful

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I've become a better and more mature developer

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2017

Verified Purchase

I've been reading this for the past few weeks and just by applying the principles and concepts I've learned so far, I've become a better and more mature developer. The lead dev on my team recently noticed and commented on the positive changes in my code as of late. He was also impressed when I used what I learned to refactor a bit of our code base. Even though it's Java-based and I am a Go developer with a background that is primarily JS, I've been able to use the ideas in this book to clean up my own code, both personally and professionally.

46 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Little Bobby Tables

I mean he calls himself Uncle Bob...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

I have worked in both legacy code bases and green field projects over a long career. I bought this book many years ago, since I always am willing to learn, and had ample time to reflect on it. It's advice is not too bad, mostly obvious, but rather shallow and focused on the details I can quickly teach graduates, rather than the real depth I want them to think about. Still I didn't think strongly about posting a negative review until I looked at one of the author's own codebases, FitNesse. It defies so many of the author's own principles it beggers belief, but moreover is has a dreadful design for important reasons he doesn't cover. In this I am looking throughout the project's history: it's a house of cards. And that is very telling. Because here is a mediocre book from an author who rather incredibly calls himself "Uncle Bob", as if he is some friendly elder dispensing wisdom. Why do we fall for it, in a field of engineering and science? He would be better to mend his own fences before teaching others how to paint them.

33 people found this helpful

bomfirit

Gedrucktes PDF!!!

Reviewed in Germany on November 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Das Buch sollte jeder Entwickler kennen. Pflichtlektüre! Aber, bitte nicht hier bestellen! Was man bekommt ist ein gedrucktes PDF, welches dummerweise in der falschen Papiergröße bedruckt ist. Man hat also an den Rändern riesige weiße Flächen. Das Buch ist daher unnötigerweise ca 25% größer als das Original. Zudem ist die verwendete Tinte sehr hell. Die Codebeispiele sind kaum zu lesen. Das Cover ist im Vergleich zum Original verwaschen. Das Buch geht sofort zurück und wird im Laden (zur Ansicht) bestellt. Jetzt weiß ich warum die Lieferzeit auch 3 Wochen betrug. Das Buch wird offensichtlich auf Anfrage gedruckt.

Bei den beigefügten Bildern sieht man das Original (von der Firma) und das hier bestellte Buch (PDF Druck)

183 people found this helpful

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Thomas

Leider eine billige Kopie, bitte nicht bestellen.

Reviewed in Germany on April 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

Meine Renzension bezieht sich ausschließlich auf das erhaltene Exemplar. Ich habe direkt bei Amazon bestellt (Verkauf & Versand durch Amazon), kein Marketplace.

Wie bereits von anderen Personen festgestellt, habe auch ich leider eine billige Kopie des Originals erhalten - vermutlich ein Druck der PDF-Version. Der Druck ist schlecht, das Format ist unnötigerweise sehr viel größer, das Cover ist verschwommen/verpixelt, kein bzw. weißer Buchrücken und -rückseite.

Hierfür über 29€ zu verlangen grenzt an Betrug. Ich habe das Exemplar unmittelbar zurückgeschickt. Schade.

73 people found this helpful

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randomboy93

This is a good book for beginner developers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 8, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a good book for beginner developers, or for whom who just want to review and refresh all the principles of the clean code. If you are an experienced programmer, I am sure that sometimes you will find this book obvious, and sometimes very illustrative.

Before reading this book, I recommend having a good understanding of Java and Object-Oriented programming. Don't forget Abstract classes, Interfaces, and Polymorphism.

In my opinion, it has more than 100 pages in excess.The appendixes and the chapter 14 (Refinement) don't contribute to anything. They are just boring. Also, I think that chapter 13 (Systems) could seem a little bit complex for beginners. It needs a very specific knowledge of Java, with concepts like EJB, JNDI, Proxies, and so on.

On the other hand, every concept is explained accurately with lots of examples. In addition, the "Smells and Heuristics" chapter summarizes the essence of this book very well.

15 people found this helpful

Murilo

Conteúdo Excelente!

Reviewed in Brazil on January 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

Sou estudante de Ciência da Computação e realmente esse livro contribuiu muito para a minha visão do que é o ato de programar. Acabei pegando a versão inglês, pois li alguns comentários que diziam que a tradução não estava bem feita. Até entendo o porquê, acho muito difícil traduzir os códigos do livro e alguns conceitos. Porém, já aviso de antemão, o livro demanda bastante da sua dedicação!

28 people found this helpful

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