The best book about the craft of programming I have ever seen. Maguire discusses the crucial human factors that are essential to producing good code—design clarity, source readability, and the self-discipline you need to steer yourself away from magical thinking when the debugging gets rough. Maguire's examples are all in C and heavily Microsoft-centric, but that shouldn't dissuade anyone, because the concepts are universal. You have to read this if you are going to program for a living. ( )

I skipped a lot of the C examples but the style of explaining a issue he has run into and the relevant rule for writing solid code was good. ( )