Buy this book now!  Don't buy it because it's well-written and full of great advice.  Don't buy it because it's Dave Thomas' greatest creation since the Spicy Chicken Sandwich.  No, buy this book because you'll be paying a paltry $30 US for at least *two months* worth of blog content you can repurpose!   That's *50 cents US* per blog post! Heck, write your own book, swipe most of its topics, and make even *more* money!  You've seen how lucrative the book industry is!!  Have you wanted to look like an expert in your field after a paltry 1/6th of a year?  Then this book is for you!

I wasn't half this enthused when I first read The Pragmatic Programmer.  The book itself is a quick read with approximately 70 tips for becoming or continuing to be a successful software developer.  However, if you've read technical blogs for at least 3 months or taken a look at similar books in the field, you'll quickly realize you've read it *all* before.    How many posts have *you* read about "No Broken Windows"?  "Refactor Early, Refactor Often"?  Heck, "Care About Your Craft"?  Pretty much every blog posts something along these lines at least once in their lifetimes, and *this* blog will be no exception, except when I do you will *know* I'm liberally lifting from them and simply putting it in a sexier, sleeker, metrosexualler package! 

See, originally I thought that the Pragmatic Programmer was a waste of my money.  "Why does everyone love this book when all it does is regurgitate a bunch of blog posts I've read over the last couple of years?"  And then I found out why...because it was written in 2000!!  The Pragmatic Programmer is not the regurgitator, my friends...no, the Pragmatic Progammer is the regurgitee.  Blogs have been getting inspiration or outright *stealing* from this book for more than half a decade!  Why should *you* be left out? 

Regardless, the book is enthralling and you could pretty much read it in a day or even a couple of hours, if you are so inspired to do so.  My only complaint with the book: there's no easy reference to scan all 70 of the tips at a glance. the pull-out reference guide for the 70 tips is *buried* in the back cover of the book!!  Who's going to read through *indicia* and advertisements to get to that??  Who even *opens* back covers of books anyway, except for the admirable Avonelle Lovhauq?  Thumbs *down* for that!!

I'll warn you though, although you'll likely appreciate the advice (even if you do have a feeling of deja vu when reading), you'll likely get just as angry as I did when I read Martin Fowler's "Refactoring".  If this advice is pretty much common-sense *and* it's been around for 7 years, why the hell is the field of software development still in such a sad state on average 7 years later??   I've seen companies that were lucky if just *one* of the 70 different tips were things that their team took to heart.  

In the end, this book gets a 4/5 - for sure, I'd sleep with it at a moment's notice but reading the Pragmatic Progammer is more like sleeping with an aged, seasoned prostitute; you might've seen all the tricks before but likely they originated here.  Besides, you'll just take what you learn there, claim it as your own and then be hailed as the greatest lover in the world*! 

* Yours truly has never slept with a prostitute or *been* a prostitute, despite the fact women offer to pay him for sex ALL THE TIME**
** of course, yours truly is also happily married so put those $1000 bills away, ladies***