Cross-posted from Goodreads
If you are a software engineer and think, like so many others, that writing clean code is trivial and a skill that could be picked up anytime, this book will be a BIG eye-opener for you.
The book is written by a group of authors led by Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob). As you will find out yourself, they are highly skilled professionals who are very serious about their craft and do not take code smells lightly. They follow the Boy Scouts Rule and go out of the way to ensure they leave code in a better state than they find it. These are the folks who have helped establish modern software engineering practices & patterns such as Agile and SOLID. The chapters where they rip apart popular and highly respectable open-source software (JUnit and Apache JCommons) are especially enjoyable as you get to see how good code could still be bettered.
Being a software engineer myself for a while now, I had a hundred questions regarding code quality and structure. I found all the answers here. Some were a confirmation of my beliefs, while others were new lessons to be learned.
I wholeheartedly believe in the book’s central tenet — writing clean code is an art, a sign of a software craftsman. Overall, it’s a great read and a time investment with a multi-fold ROI.