TL;DL: good book about soft skills mostly, I recommend it to every programmer

I’ve read this book about month ago, so my thoughts on it is not very fresh.

Let’s review this book chapter by chapter

Professionalism

Really great material, makes you look at what you are doing from a different angle. I personally gained a lot from this chapter.

Saying No/Yes

Very good examples and useful behavioural patterns that makes you a real professional.

Coding

Arguable chapter. I didn’t agree with author on some points.

TDD

I dont’t use TDD in my present work due to some factors. And to be honest I didn’t think of this concept seriously. But author provides very strong arguments for using TDD, so I partly changed my opinion about this technique. Though he takes TDD to extreme, and I’m still not convinced to use TDD everywhere in work.

Practicing

This katas are stupid in my opinion. Not convinced at all. There are much better ways to practice your skills.

Acceptance Testing

Didn’t understand this chapter at all. It didn’t relate to me at all.

Testing Strategies

Read this chapter diagonally, not very useful and obvious.

Time management

Didn’t read anything new. Every thought is obvious and already learned.

Estimation

This chapter on the other hand is most useful of this book. I do estimations a lot at my present work and I sucked at it. This chapter helped me hugely.

Pressure, Collaboration, Teams and Projects

Same as with time management. Didn’t learn anything.

Mentoring

Very arguable stuff. I don’t believe in mentoring and recon it is stupid and waste of time.

In conclusion

Though book contains a lot of arguable and obvious thoughts, I enjoyed it. It is well-written and well-structured. Language is simple. It is also very concrete. I don’t think that time spend on this book is wasted, but I expected more from this author.

my first book review, and I know I suck at it, hope it will get better