Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective [With CDROM]

by Diomidis Spinellis

Book Overview

This book is a unique and essential reference that focuses upon the reading and comprehension of existing software code. While code reading is an important task faced by the vast majority of students, it has been virtually ignored as a discipline by existing references. The book fills this need with a practical presentation of all important code concepts, form, structure, and syntax that a student is likely to encounter. The concepts are supported...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201799405
• ISBN13: 9780201799408
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Valuable resource of Information and good practices

A valuable resource for best practices, do's and don'ts, what works and why, what you should do in various situations of project, code, and architecture evaluation, and everything in between. In one phrase, this book depicts Software Engineering's best practices for the real world. No heavy-duty processes to follow, no reading of Software Engineering text books that are over a 1000+ pages. More importantly, everything in this book is REAL. References are given to open source projects where the author took the examples from, and the CD-Rom includes the complete code examples given in the text. The author starts off by giving a background on the most popular programming languages used in the open-source community such as C/C++ and Java. Some scripting languages such as a PHP and Perl are also covered, but the main focus of the book is on C and C++. Data types, data structures and control flow are covered respectively and various best practiced of "what to-do" is given for each topic. These topics are somewhat basic, and if you are an advanced programmer, you can read thru these chapters in an hour or so. Even though these chapters are basic, they contain valuable to-do's and best practices that everyone of us will surly benefit from. They style of the book and its structure is nothing like I have seen before and it takes a couple of chapter to get used to it. Chapter 4 is one of my favorite chapters in this book. It talks about C Data Structures. Towards the end of the chapter, the author talks about Graphs and Trees. These two rather complex topics (books have been written on these two topics) are covered so well that with about 20 pages, the reader can get a very good understanding of the topics at hand. Concrete examples from various open-source projects are used again to get the point across, and the source code that is on the CD-Rom is reusable with little effort.The fun begins with chapter 5, Advanced Control Flow. Recursion, exception handling, parallel programming and non-local jumps are the main topics covered in this section. Again, the sample codes really help the reader to understand the topic better, and they also can be refereed to in your next project - something I found very beneficial. Another interesting thing about this chapter is the part that compares the different thread implementation in various languages and platforms - Java, Win32 and POSIX. Example from each implementation is given to show the reader the difference in practices and to get the point across more clearly. If you have ever been bored to death by reading books on Software Engineering and Software Processes and just wanted to be able to have a very light and proven process to help you out with your next project, then Chapter 6 - Tackling Large Projects, is for you. The author starts the chapter by going over some of the design and implementation techniques used widely in large projects such as:· The need for a software process· Complex Archi

Easy to read, worth checking out for some

I stumbled upon this book when I was at the book store and picked it up without ever reading a review or seeing any kind of Internet press about it and was very surprised at what I found. Writing a book about disecting code and getting the most out of it could be very useful to some, invaluable to the novice programmer. Although some techniques in the book are a bit over emphasized, I felt that the writing and the organization of the book was excellent. This book leaned on C code and Unix/Linux environments quite heavily so if you are unfamiliar with them then you may find it difficult to understand. It's a book about the process of reading code and not so much a book about teaching you how to code. Which is probably why it's called Code Reading.

Imparts benefits from much experience with wisdom & humor

This book is exactly what I was looking for to lead a seminar in bioinformatics at UNC Chapel Hill that brings together bio-chem-phys students with computer science students to try to raise the level of programming sophistication of the former, and raise the level of biochem/biophys sophistication of the latter. It collects examples of why and how to read code, pointing out lessons about the idioms and pitfalls that can help you write, maintain, or evolve code under your control. Full of good ideas, drawn from a lot of experience, and written with humor. The only problem is that inexperienced programmers, who would benefit most from this book, are unlikely to pick up a book on how to read C programs unless someone tells them to. Experts will find that they have already learned most of these things from their experience, although they may still enjoy this book for confirming what they know. But I think that experts will also enjoy being able to loan this book to inexperienced programmers to transmit the wisdom distilled from experience.

Reading other people's code can teach you a lot

Those wishing to understand the various styles of programming and meta-programming that have become common in open source code, as well as those who seek to broaden (if not deepen) their understanding of software engineering, would be smart to pick this up. Not only will this book help you to understand the innards of your favorite or least favorite software, but it provides insight into why the creators made the choices they did. It's not going to teach you about computer science as well as a good textbook will, but it will give you an understanding of and appreciation for what programmers balance in their minds as they shape their complex creations. Think of it as The Story and its Writer (ISBN 0312397291) applied to software.

Unique and innovative read

This is the most interesting technical read I have had since the release of Dave Thomas and Andrew Hunt's "Pragmatic Programmer". Which isn't suprising, given that Dave appears to have been involved with this book as well.The conveys book experience as opposed to raw information. He gives pragmatic advice that will benefit both junior and senior engineers in their day-to-day code and project development.I've become bored with the usually 'foo in three weeks' style books. If you are in the same position and you are interested in books about proven techniques and the pragmatic approach, this book is for you.The first few chapters had me questioning my purchase but the closing chapters removed any doubt that I had spent my money well. There were helpful hints that will save me minutes and hours throughout the work-week which means that I will be working smarter rather than harder.It was only through random chance that I saw this book in the Palo Alto Borders. Great books like these need solid marketing. That being said, I applaud Addison-Wesley in their investment in a book like this which is a little outside of the norm, but is an incredibly valuable work for the software engineering community.