Good Code, Bad Code

Practical techniques for writing code that is robust, reliable, and easy for team members to understand and adapt.

In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to:

• Think about code like an effective software engineer
• Write functions that read like well-structured sentences
• Ensure code is reliable and bug free
• Effectively unit test code
• Identify code that can cause problems and improve it
• Write code that is reusable and adaptable to new requirements
• Improve your medium and long-term productivity
• Save yourself and your team time

The difference between good code or bad code often comes down to how you apply the established practices of the software development community. In Good Code, Bad Code you’ll learn how to boost your productivity and effectiveness with code development insights normally only learned through careful mentorship and hundreds of code reviews.

About the technology:

Software development is a team sport. For an application to succeed, your code needs to be robust and easy for others to understand, maintain, and adapt. Whether you’re working on an enterprise team, contributing to an open source project, or bootstrapping a start-up, it pays to know the difference between good code and bad code.

About the book:

Good Code, Bad Code is a clear, practical introduction to writing code that’s a snap to listen to, apply, and remember. With dozens of instantly useful techniques, you’ll find coding insights that normally take years of experience to master. In this fast-paced guide, Google software engineer Tom Long teaches you a host of rules to apply, along with advice on when to break them!

About the audience:

For coders early in their careers who are familiar with an object-oriented language, such as Java or C#.

About the author:

Tom Long is a software engineer at Google where he works as a tech lead. Among other tasks, he regularly mentors new software engineers in professional coding best practices.