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by peakaboo 1729 days ago
If anyone has a good book about writing as simple programs as possible instead of as flexible as possible, I would appriciate it.

Because the problem today is complexity and abstractions. It prevents us from changing code easily, deleting code easily, and understanding the full program flow easily.
2 comments
atsaloli 1729 days ago
Sounds like "Understanding Software" by Max Kanat-Alexander.

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Software-Kanat-Alexande...

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peakaboo 1729 days ago
That looks like a great read. I feel tempted to buy it right away. So few books about this topic our there. Huge thanks for letting me know!
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atsaloli 1727 days ago
You are welcome!! The author also blogs at https://www.codesimplicity.com/
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sethammons 1729 days ago
Totally agree. Premature abstraction is just another way to say premature optimization and it is the root of so many problems. YAGNI (you aint gonna need it).
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gompertz 1729 days ago
If that's what your looking for, I find books that are adopted as university textbooks are best. i.e. C Programming Modern Approach by KN King, Object Pascal Handbook by Marco Cantu. Generally I'm staying away from O'Reilly, No Starch Press etc.. They all feel like books created by pasting a bunch of blog posts together. University texts are usually twice the price, but IMHO worth it - they are made for teaching knowledge, not just sharing it.
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the_only_law 1729 days ago
> University texts are usually twice the price

Yeah I find these are normally the books I want now, but it doesn’t take that many to suddenly turn my cart into $1k.

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