Zero Bugs and Program Faster

by Kate Thompson

A book about programming, improving skill, and avoiding mistakes.

The author spent two years researching every bug avoidance technique she could find. This book contains the best of them.

If you want to program faster, with fewer bugs, and write more secure code, buy this book!

Genres: Programming, Coding, Technology, Computer Science, Software, Technical, Computers

182 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2016

About the author

Kate has been programming since her family got a Commodore 64 computer when she was young. Her teaching career began shortly after when she taught her brothers the basics of programming. Kate has worked in the computer industry for decades. She's worked for Qualcomm, Amazon, AOL and Verizon, but she prefers the environment in smaller companies.

Reviews

[Jeanne Boyarsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw “Zero Bugs and Program Faster” at the public library. It caught my attention because the book cover is a maze. In fact, the author invites you to try it. I can't because the library puts stickers on that interfere with the path. But I believe that it works.

The book has two halves. One half is 1-4 pages chapters. Most are 2-3 pages so when I hit the four page chapter, it felt long!

The stories and analogies are good. I liked the one about programming being like plugging boat holes; it only takes one to sink your boat and the one about encapsulation being like dumping your mess in the closet. There's a great joke about what happens when a programmer encounters a zebra and edge cases.

I also like that chapter 1 points out you can learn faster if you learn from the mistakes of others. Each chapter begins with a quote.

There are a lot of code diagrams and pictures to keep things interesting. Some chapter shave code examples. Lots of concepts are covered including cyclomatic complexity. A few chapters begin with an exericse to look for certain aspects of the paragraph structure as you read.

The second half of the chapter is what appears to be a bunch of random examples. Much of the point of this went over my head.

[Lojicholia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting set of factoids and anecdotes about programming, with great references. I do wish there was a little more depth and a little bit more emphasis on tooling like property testing (vs unit testing) but all in all a great little survey book

[Jordan Carney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the brevity of this book. It exposes a different writing style than an ordinary technical book: Funny stories and dialogue between hypothetical people. The flow is great, but it seems to follow the standard blueprint of many catch-all programming books. I would recommend this over many of it’s predecessors though.

[Joe Heaukulani · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light philosophical look at programming that focuses on fixing bugs as soon as you find them and doing your best not to introduce bugs in the first place. Kate Thompson makes me want to dive into many of the book she references.

[Nils Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I have been looking for! Terse insights for working programmers - no history lesson, no "substring of k length from n...", just anecdotes and proverbs for real code. I cannot list another text with as much respect for your time and wallet as this one - so much info in such a small package.

Believe me - I like long-winded books, and fun math challenges - but what I need is a companion to help me take my hobby and professional projects to the next level. Something to reference when I am initializing a new git, and need a guiding star. Something to flit through as I scratch my head on a bug. Something to reinforce the buds of wisdom that practice had started to grow, but can blossom now that they are named.

Humorous, colorful writing server to make her lessons immediately memorable. The casual, fun tone allow you to swim through this book with ease.

That being said, I might've traded the low-level chapter for one on methodologies - when to lean functional vs OO, factories, ESV... And there must be dozens of other I don't know - which is the great gift of books like this - when they illuminate what you didn't know you didn't know.

But all in all, I cannot gush more about this book. If are an intermediate, looking to grow your skills, this book punches 10x above it's page count.

[Woody Rousseau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A big idea of this book is that we can create a culture where programmers aim at zero bugs by always questioning how they could have prevented the bug from being introduced in the first place. It has a few ideas which I never focused on and that are interesting : mostly proofs as a way to produce code that never breaks and contracts as a way to increase evolutivity of the code. It is also really quick to read.

However I had two big issues : I find the writing style really peculiar (that’s intended) which made it hard to read for me + most exemples are really low-level (C or assembly). The impact of the latest point is that it was hard for me to get into the code examples and I had issues relating to it.

[Vu Tran · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very quick read for anyone who codes for a living (or just for fun). Building software doesn't mean you're always writing optimal code for machines. The author renders many different areas in which you can approach maintaining your codebase in small to large scale projects. A great pick-up for anyone who has a weekend to spare.

[Osvaldo Santana Neto · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a collection of essays with different level of quality. Some chapters are amazing but most of them only summarize the content of other classic books (all of them are referenced).

The second part of the book shows some interesting pieces of code from different projects.

The fact that the book is not available in ebook format is also a bad thing.

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 1 out of 5]

All fluff, no stuff. A lot of name dropping (Dijkstra said this, von Neumann said that), a lot of drawings with no clear connection to the subject. Overall attitude as of (not very good) teacher to her students "read this book instead of watching TV" mentioned several times, etc.
Avoid.

[Joshua Isaac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved her non-traditional approach to writing a book on programming technique. I can't say that I'm writing zero bugs, but she shares some good practices and interesting examples.

[Khayet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perfect bedside reading for the passionate programmer. Funny, interesting, and extremely readable. This book makes you appreciate programming more. Also has a great Bibliography.

[Sloan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent and entertaining read. It's short but is packed full of critical information for anyone that has an interest in becoming a more effective programmer.

It's also hilarious.

[nitaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, beautiful homage to programming. Has examples and gems from the old days and illustrates some good practices in a very entertaining way.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very succinct book. Very readable. The advice isn't ground breaking, but is presented very well.

[David MacIver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely little book. I'm a little too part of the choir to have changed my behaviour on the basis of it, but I wish someone had handed it to me ten years ago. I'd have disagreed vehemently, but I might have come to agree vehemently a bit sooner. Would recommend to the person in your life who keeps breaking the build.

[Helge · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a short and entertaining read, touching briefly on a lot of topics from team communication to proof assistants. It's not so much for you to learn a lot about each of the topics as much as to provide orientation on what technologies and philosophies there are to help you improve your code.

[Ignacio Burgueño · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would pick "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell over this book any time. Lots of "trust me on this", nice stories, but little actual data to back things up. Yes, it is an easier read than Code Complete, but at the end, you'll have the feeling that you have wasted your time.

[Michael Dominick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. It has an entertaining flow that you don't often see in a technical book.

[Ninja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid, particularly interesting second half with plenty of famous code examples.