Customer Reviews:
 A valuable text, but needs a clean-up November 30, 2008
John Chandler
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Clean Code is a valuable book for any programmer's bookshelf. Although a lot of the information can be found in other books on software development, particularly those covering "agile" techniques, the text brings everything into one place with a very readable and enjoyable style. I could've done with this about fifteen years ago, rather than learning many of the lessons the hard way over the years.
The book does have some minor issues though. As mentioned by a previous reviewer, it uses Java exclusively for the examples and assumes you are an experienced Java developer. Some of the examples can be heavy going for those unfamiliar with the language.
The book could also do with a bit more proof-reading. Ignoring a copyright of 2009, the words "it's" and "its" seem to have been swapped throughout the book, "an" replaces "and" in a handful of sentences, and there are even some words in the text that are completely wrong. A bit of shame considering.
Don't let the Java or proof-reading put you off though.
 Page turner November 28, 2008
P. Perhac (Brighton, UK)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is, believe it or not, a page turner! Yes, dear friends, you heard me. I know how boooorrriiing and dry can technical books of this sort be, but this one -- I actually read the whole of the Introduction chapter (which I do very rarely), then continued on to the first chapter, then the next, and next,... I read through the first 52 pages of the book in just a couple of hours!
The book is very reader-friendly, witty, interesting, and simply great!
I am now in the third year of a Software Engineering course and this book is certainly very helpful. With its help I hope to submit an extremely well readable and structured code to my final year project. I recommend this book to everyone!
Book title needs refactoring October 27, 2008
Dan Sumption (Sheffield, UK)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is a great book, and one which any developer will learn a great deal from. In most respects, it is a five-star book, but... the title is misleading. By rights it should be called "Clean Java Code".
Let me explain: I am an ActionScript developer, and bought this book to improve my code style and structure. For the most part, it has done that: the chapters on naming, comments, functions and classes are absolutely superb. But then, huge swathes of the book are devoted exclusively to Java, and use some fairly complex (and, in my opinion, not very well formatted) code to convey their intention.
I don't generally have a problem with using Java-oriented books to learn more general programming concepts (Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" and O'Reilly's Head-First Design Patterns are both books I would recommend to anyone, regardless of their language-of-choice), but around 1/3rd of Bob Martin's book is virtually impenetrable to anyone who does not already have significant Java experience.
That said, I should re-iterate that this book will be hugely valuable to any programmer. I just wish that they had tried to use a little more pseudo-code and a little less real-world examples, with all of the complexities entailed, and I think a lot could have been done to make the Java code more readable for users of other languages.
The bible for writing high quality software September 9, 2008
Mikkel T. Kristiansen (Denmark)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Uncle Bob (Robert C. Martin) is a recognized expert in todays world of software development. His books "Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices" and "Agile Principles, Patterns and Practices in C#" should by now be well known by the majority of serious java and C# developers. I read the latter last year, and I was blown away by Uncle Bob's insight into the process of writing software in a manner, that more or less guarantees success for both the customer and the development company.
When "Clean Code" was published I rushed to buy it, and again I am in awe!
This book book hits the nail on why so many software development projects ends up in pain for the developers as the code rots and becomes unmaintainable. Not only are the symptoms cleary described and analyzed, Uncle Bob also provides the remedy. By breaking down the process of cleaning up code into detecting very specific "smells" and heuristics, and by supplying the reader the tools to fix the problems in the software, the reader automatically becomes empowered, inspired and motivated to go and clean up his or her mess.
I strongly believe, that if all developers were to read this book and start living by the rules stated within, life would improve for every single developer, customers would be able to purchase very high quality software products a lot cheaper, and everyone would benefit.
My applause to Uncle Bob - Thank you for this fantastic work of art!
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