Code Complete
by Steve McConnell · first published 1993
58% recommend34% neutral8% critical
Why HN recommends it
A broad, in-depth guide to everyday coding craft: style, code quality, and working with others' code. Suits early-career developers building a baseline; best read in pieces and reread alongside The Pragmatic Programmer.
Common criticism: Long and dense, with some parts feeling dated
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Take a strategic approach to software construction—and produce superior products—with this fully updated edition of Steve McConnell's critically praised and award-winning guide to software development best practices. Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of kn
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Never been good at estimation. Software Estimation from Steve McConnell is in my reading list for a long time now. From the little I have seen from it, it look good (I already read Code Complete from him and recommend it). Do you guys have any tips for estimation?
on “Guide to Software Project Estimation” ↗I loved reading Steve McConnell's books when I was starting out, especially Code Complete and I feel that book made me a better programmer. Having read it a few times since I think it falls into the same group of books as Mythical Man Month, Peopleware, and the Pragmatic Programmer where…
on “Steve McConnell” ↗I really like: - Code Complete by Steve McConnell - The Effective Engineer by Edmond Lau - The Pragmatic Programmer by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas
on “Ask HN: What language-agnostic programming books should I read?” ↗…Figure out what they look like and are called in your paradigm. Get on with life and solve real problems. Let me give a concrete example. I learned more about good OO design from the first edition of Code Complete than any other book that I ever read. Even though it was entirely about procedural programming. Because the principles that it discussed, from how to name functions to the value of abstract data types…
on “Why Class?” ↗…it is mine, for better or worse. It took me from understanding OO to understanding how to build large systems with OO, writing maintainable code and using proper encapsulation. A much deeper work than Code Complete (though the latter is worth reading too). I have used functional languages as well (ML, Lisp; not Haskell yet though I think I get what monads are; plus I write a lot of Python, C++, JS in functional…
on “Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?” ↗Three boks I'll recommend you read as soon as possible. 1) The Mythical Man month 3) The Pragmatic Programmer 3) Code Complete. The thing about these books, well atleast 1 and 3 is that when they were written they broke new ground. Or if that phrase bother you, they were the first mainstream publications that brought their…
on “Ask HN: Books you should have read when you start a career in SE / CS?” ↗A selection of meditation resources for hackers: OpenEEG (http://openeeg.sourceforge.net/doc/) OpenSensors (http://sourceforge.net/p/opensensors/home/Home/) Brain Refactoring (http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Const...)
on “100 Hours of Meditation in 10 Days” ↗I'm nearing 50 so I'm hardly a youth. http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=133399 does a very good job of explaining why Design Patterns is a book to be careful with. By contrast Code Complete won't steer people wrong. See https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo... for a cautionary tale about how a pursuit of OO purity can result in great verbosity, hiding intent behind…
on “Ask HN: What books had the greatest effect on how you structure your code?” ↗…recommended so far in the thread: Robert C. Martin, Clean code: https://www.amazon.com/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsma... Vaughn Vernon, various: https://vaughnvernon.co/?page_id=168 Steve McConnell, Code Complete: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Cons... 2 Clean coder: https://cleancoders.com/ videos Hunt and Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer: https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Maste...…
on “Ask HN: How to transition from academic programming to software engineering?” ↗If you want to see how a properly referenced text looks like, pick any of the following: * Code Complete - McConnell * The Economics of Software Quality - Capers Jones * Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering - Robert Glass * Making Software - Oram & Wilson ... and there are many others. Not all…
on “Software Architecture Guide” ↗Unlike most here I began learning programming in my late 20s. On the recommend of my first mentor, the second programming book I picked up was Code Complete by Steve McConnell. It did a LOT to improve the quality of my code, and enable me to write better code. Be warned that it is a fairly heavy tome. And it is the kind of book which you want to not just…
on “I'm 19 and I need advice” ↗For the software industry at least Steve McConnell's classic Code Complete cites several studies showing that total productivity (not just per hour productivity) is maximized at just slightly above 40 hours per week, and bouts of prolonged overtime don't generally translate…
on “I own you, and you're easily replaceable.” ↗…syntax error, thinko, etc. The key is to set things up such that these mistakes are caught and fixed before they hurt anyone. If you want to learn a lot about how to do this, I highly recommend reading Code Complete. Yes, I'm aware that it is a tome. However it is a worthwhile tome that is worth reading and re-reading until you've incorporated it as practice.
on “Ask HN: Coding Mistakes = Bad Coder?” ↗…is very readable. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is the classic intro text. The C Programming Language The C++ Programming Language On Lisp by Paul Graham. Algorithms by Baase Code Complete by McConnell. AI by Norvig. This list isn't about the latest sexy languages or technologies. This is about timeless principles and how things really work... Yet there is much more to be said after the…
on “The Hacker's Path” ↗…function is below 200 lines, the length of functions is not significantly correlated with maintenance cost. (However a high density of logic within the function is associated with maintenance cost.) Read Code Complete if you don't believe me.
on “Your code should be as boring as possible” ↗