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Understanding Software

You're reading from Understanding Software Max Kanat-Alexander on simplicity, coding, and how to suck less as a programmer

Product type Paperback

Published in Sep 2017

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781788628815

Length 278 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Concepts

Application Development

Author (1):

Max Kanat-Alexander

View More author details

Table of Contents (50) Chapters

Understanding Software

Credits

About the Author

www.PacktPub.com

Customer Feedback

Foreword

1. Before You Begin… FREE CHAPTER

If You're Going To Do It Then Do it Well

2. The Engineer Attitude

3. The Singular Secret of the Rockstar Programmer

4. Software Design, in Two Sentences

5. Clues to Complexity

6. Ways To Create Complexity: Break Your API

7. When Is Backwards-Compatibility Not Worth It?

8. Complexity is a Prison

9. Design from the Start

Starting the Right Way

10. The Accuracy of Future Predictions

11. Simplicity and Strictness

12. Two is Too Many

Refactoring

13. Sane Software Design

14. What is a Bug?

Hardware

15. The Source of Bugs

Compounding Complexity

16. Make It Never Come Back

17. The Fundamental Philosophy of Debugging

18. Effective Engineering Productivity

19. Measuring Developer Productivity

20. How to Handle Code Complexity in a Software Company

21. Refactoring is about Features

22. Kindness and Code

Software is about People

23. Open Source Community, Simplified

24. What is a Computer?

25. The Components of Software: Structure, Action, and Results

26. Software Revisited: (I)SAR Clarified

27. Software as Knowledge

28. The Purpose of Technology

29. Privacy, Simplified

30. Simplicity and Security

31. Test-Driven Development and the Cycle of Observation

32. The Philosophy of Testing

33. The Secret of Success: Suck Less

Why is it that this worked?

34. How We Figured Out What Sucked

35. The Power of No

36. Why Programmers Suck

What to Study

37. The Secret of Fast Programming: Stop Thinking

38. Developer Hubris

39. "Consistency" Does Not Mean "Uniformity"

40. Users Have Problems, Developers Have Solutions

41. Instant Gratification = Instant Failure

42. Success Comes from Execution, Not Innovation

43. Excellent Software

Index

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Authors (1)

Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander

Max Kanat-Alexander is the Technical Lead for Code Health at Google, where he does various work that helps other software engineers be more productive, including writing developer tools, creating educational programs, guiding refactoring efforts, and more. His roles at Google have included Tech Lead for YouTube on the Xbox, work on the Java JDK, JVM, and other aspects of Java for Google, and Technical Lead for Engineering Practices for YouTube, where he's supported developers across all of YouTube in best practices and engineering productivity. Max is a former Chief Architect of the Bugzilla Project, where he was one of the two main developers of the well-known Bugzilla Bug-Tracking System, used by thousands of organizations worldwide. Max also writes the legendary programming industry blog, Code Simplicity, where he challenges Complexity and embraces Simplicity for the programming industry. Max has been involved for several years at Google with enabling developers to work more effectively and helping shape engineering practice, and in this highly readable collection of essays you can share the best of his experience.

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