Programmers Have a Lot on Their Minds

Preface to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.

— Edwin R Murrow

Programmers have a lot on their minds. Programming languages, programming techniques, development environments, coding style, tools, development process, deadlines, meetings, software architecture, design patterns, team dynamics, code, requirements, bugs, code quality. And more. A lot.

There is an art, craft, and science to programming that extends far beyond the program. The act of programming marries the discrete world of computers with the fluid world of human affairs. Programmers mediate between the negotiated and uncertain truths of business and the crisp, uncompromising domain of bits and bytes and higher constructed types.

With so much to know, so much to do, and so many ways of doing so, no single person or single source can lay claim to “the one true way.” Instead, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know draws on the wisdom of crowds and the voices of experience to offer not so much a coordinated big picture as a crowdsourced mosaic of what every programmer should know. This ranges from code-focused advice to culture, from algorithm usage to agile thinking, from implementation know-how to professionalism, from style to substance.

The contributions do not dovetail like modular parts, and there is no intent that they should — if anything, the opposite is true. The value of each contribution comes from its distinctiveness. The value of the collection lies in how the contributions complement, confirm, and even contradict one another. There is no overarching narrative: it is for you to respond to, reflect on, and connect together what you read, weighing it against your own context, knowledge, and experience.

The contributions to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know were made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Although the original Wiki for the book project is no longer online, the contributions can be found archived elsewhere.