The Pragmatic Craftsman :: Simplicity from complexity ::

Programming Pearls
by Jon Bentley
ISBN 0201657880
Date Read 7/2006

My Rating

This is an important book, no doubt about that. For me, however, this was not an easy read. I never got into the book. Maybe my approach was wrong, maybe if the examples were written in a different language than C, maybe… I don’t know.

What I liked about the book is the principles that usually followed at the end of chapters. Those had the most value for me and those alone are worth reading the book.

Why do others give this book such a high rating? I think the real benefit is in trying to actually do the problems at the end of each chapter. I did not do them (and thus I probably did not gain too much out of it). Personally, I think they’re a little bit too low level. They’re very good if you’re trying to learn data structures and algorithms.