The Passionate Programmer - Book review.

Last week I was reading Alistair’s post about the Toronto Code Retreat. I was planning to attend but I had plane tickets for the same day so I miss the opportunity, what I regret. In that post Alistair refers to the book The Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler. Next thing you know, I was ordering the book online.

On Saturday I pick it up from the post office and next day I was sitting in the backyard going through the pages while preparing a BBQ. The book reads fast. Its divided in Five sections and each section consist of a series of very short chapters that, most of the time, are no more than two or three pages .

I found that I’m doing a lot of the things that Fowler recommends and I identify myself with some of the situations he mentions in the book. I particularly enjoyed the section about marketing yourself something I’m not good at doing.

There are a few chapters that I market down to re-read later on, not because they are so deep that need a re-write, but mostly because are the ones that talk to my weakness and the stuff that I need to remind myself to work on to improve.

Sparkled along the book there are easies from some renowned programmers on how they build their careers. They make for an enjoyable and fun read, and provide a break from the more “to the point” writing that Chad uses.

All in all a very enjoyable book that can provide some help on achieving exactly what the tag line for the book is “creating a remarkable career in software development”.