Pragmatic wisdom

Just finished The Pragmatic Programmer, filled with wisdom about our work. Another must read, although you probably need some previous experience and failed projects to fully grasp it.

In addition to lots of helpful advice and many real-life horror or success stories, it contains a lot of memorable quotes. My favorite is the first one, the greatest of all weaknesses is the fear of appearing weak (from french priest Bossuet) , which explains a lot of the problems that I'm seeing in programming teams today.

A big part of the book's suggestions base on recognizing the weaknesses in our ways of working and working defensively against them. Parallels again: if you're a motorcyclist, trust no one on the road, not even yourself. If you're a programmer, trust no one to write perfect code, not even yourself.