My opinion about 'The Clean Coder'

There are already several reviews of Robert C. Martin's book 'The Clean Coder' out there, but I couldn't resist to write my own comments / thoughts about that book.

It is a very important book for software developers, even if it does not contain any new ideas at all.

The important point is that Mr. Martin emphasizes "professional" software development, and he wants us to behave and sell ourselves as professionals. That's quite OK for me, I like that, but I don't need to read a complete book for figuring this out:-)


Mr. Martin touches several topics about so-called professional software development like testing, estimating, collaborating, and so on.

A typical chapter consists of some stories of Mr. Martin's own experience as a programmer. Those stories usually show what went wrong, so that one can learn from them. After having read so many bad stories I started to wonder, if Mr. Martin ever had a successful software project, but let's assume so...

Then there are some instructions for developers what to do and what not.


If you are a not so much experienced software developer:

• Read it, learn it, try it, code it, quote it.

If you are an experienced software developer:

• This book  probably does not help you, it does not contain anything new, just old stuff, extended by unnecessary personal stories by Mr. Martin.

A ridiculously poor (aka uninformative) appendix mentions some 'tools' like continuous integration software.