Good ideas, but needs refactoring

There are a lot of nuggets of wisdom in the book, especially in the pragmatic approach the author takes to refactoring and patterns. He admits that patterns can make code worse, or better, depending on the need and skill of the author. He also provides a number of clear examples. However, the style of the book is like the dull works I had to read in graduate school, unnecessarily littered with citations. He cites Fowler to such an obscene degree that it looks more like academic backslapping. Citations are fine when doing a review of literature or examining research, but when they are used for mere quotations, the style is intrusive. As a final complaint, I found that I could often read a whole page and reduce it to one or two sentences. Curiously, he cites an example of Benjamin Franklin trimming a long phrase down to a single person's name. I wish he would have refactored the book in the same way. Almost all programming practices books suffer in the same way: dull, ungodly verbose, academic, and making unnecessary deviations from the point at hand. My suggestion is to get good at skimming, and you will find this book to be worthwhile.

Other Reviews

• Good but not awesome
• Needed book for architect
• Good ideas, but needs refactoring
• The Joy of Clean Up Reaches the Design Level