The Pragmatic Programmer - Chapter 3: The Basic Tools

The Power of Plain Text

• Keep knowledge in plain text.
• All software becomes legacy as soon as it is written.
• Mind the difference between human readable and human understandable.

Shell Games

• Use the power of command shells.

Power Editing

• Achieve editor fluency.

Version Controll

• Always use version controll.
• Keep local configuration and important informations about local setup under a VCS. So, if your computer dies, you can put a new one quick and easy:
  • Shell configurations.
  • Installed softwares.
  • Editor configurations.
  • Aliases.
  • Etc.

Debugging

• Debugging is just problem solving.
• Fix the problem, not the blame.
• Don’t panic!
• Always look for the root cause.
• Fail test before fix the code.
• READ THE DAMN ERROR MESSAGE!
• Leverage Binary Search during debugging.
• Don’t assume it. Prove it!

Text Manipulation

• Learn a text manipulation language: perl, python, ruby, etc.

Keep an engineering day book!