Who Should Read This Book?

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This book is intended to be useful for both novice and experienced programmers. Knowledge of basic programming concepts in at least one language is assumed. Fancy jargon is avoided when possible, and most of the information is self-contained. This book is intended to be practical, and therefore focuses on ways that you can reduce these problems in your everyday work. Before you dismiss these illnesses as common knowledge, take a closer look at code you are actually working with and see how often these mistakes are made. Many of you will be surprised at how often this common knowledge is not applied.

What might also be surprising to you is that the majority of the principles and practices espoused in this book are language independent. I have done practical work in C, C++, and Java, as well as learning a number of other languages, and have seen most of the illnesses present in all of them. Some languages can make it easier to prevent and cure these illnesses, but they do not provide a guarantee. For example, inheritance is a useful feature that can help reduce cut-and-paste, but there is nothing to prevent the programmer from ignoring it and simply using cut-and-paste anyway. In the end, the programmer is responsible for being disciplined and using the tools and language features at his disposal to prevent these illnesses from taking hold. No matter what language you are working in, this book is for you.

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