[fao_]

Does Code Complete and it's sibling not teach the aspects of programming involved in maintenance and cleanliness? Is that not a major aspect of programming? Just because none of the books teach you at-a-basic-level "This is a function" doesn't mean that they have nothing whatsoever to do with programming. Most of the difficulty with programming is structuring code correctly such that it is within the human grasp of complexity, while ensuring that it also does the job, and is maintainable.