[Chris_Newton]

I’ve read both books. I consider Ousterhout’s to be one of the better recent books on software development, though as mentioned in my other comment, this is more because of the earlier content than the later chapters. I have been critical of Clean Code since before it was cool and I actively recommend against junior developers reading it.

I would have liked to see Ousterhout make a more thorough argument if he was going to criticise TDD. His central criticism — that TDD results in what he calls tactical programming, prioritising the implementation of specific features over good design — is certainly defensible. However, I think he was too superficial in what he actually wrote on the TDD section, and consequently I don’t think he made a particularly convincing connection with the ideas developed earlier in the book.

I think you’re slightly unfairly misrepresenting his position on large or small classes. He makes a solid case that what he calls deep modules are better for managing complexity than shallow ones. He also identifies a correlation with size because small modules tend to be shallow. That’s not the same as arguing for large classes or against small classes just because of their size, though.