Book · 352 pages

The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery

Andrew Hunt and David Thomas · The Pragmatic Bookshelf Paid Intermediate

The classic on what professional, maintainable code and habits look like, the standard your reviewer is measuring against. Even skimming the free tips list gives you a vocabulary for the qualities that make code a foundation rather than a liability. A worthwhile long-term investment if you keep building software products.

  • Defines the habits of professional, careful engineering
  • Readability and low duplication signal a healthy codebase
  • Sets the bar a good reviewer holds the work to

It answers 2 questions

  1. We ship fast but our codebase is turning into a mess. How much should a two-person startup care about tech debt?
  2. How do I evaluate the code quality of a build I inherited from an agency?

Read with it

  1. This is the canonical framing for exactly your question: not all messy code is the same. Fowler splits debt on two axes,... martinfowler.com Essay · About a 5 minute read Technical Debt Quadrant Martin Fowler
  2. The CTO of India's largest broker explains how a tiny team scales huge load by optimizing the application before touching... Zerodha Tech Blog Article · 15 min read Scaling with common sense Kailash Nadh
  3. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  4. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  5. Directly answers the scoping question non-technical founders wrestle with, build in-house vs. outsource, backed by patterns... YC Startup Library Article · ~10 min read Does Your Tech Startup Really Need a Technical Co-Founder? (Yes) Y Combinator
  6. A leading early-stage Indian VC firm answering the questions founders wish they could ask a VC face-to-face, including how they... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · 30-50 min per episode Prime Venture Partners Podcast: Fundraising Masterclass for Founders Prime Venture Partners
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