I’m shocked this book has such a cult following. It does some things well: code snippets in multiple languages; a broad knowledge base; addressing personal and team development as well as software development. On the other hand, this is the ankle-deep paddling pool, rich-dad-poor-dad self-help book of programming texts. Nothing is covered in any great depth and while I’ve enjoyed 350 pages of namedropping concepts, I doubt I’ve learned anything, it feels incredibly superficial striving towards some ethereal ‘Pragmatic Programmer’ mentality.
Some parts are downright upsetting, the authors boast about refusing their editor’s pleas to write the book in a Word document (they wrote in Markdown and wrote software to compile it). As a result, they’ve managed to write unnecessary software and made a remarkably ugly book.
Taking time and care for what you create is supposedly a hallmark of a Pragmatic Programmer, but Andy and David’s book has glaring holes. This text is probably is a good overview for a beginner, but I would struggle to recommend it.