Programmer Musings

Review of Programming Pearls

Programming Pearls, Second Edition
Jon Bentley
ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, 2000

One of my favorite programming books of all time now has a second edition. I've got to say it's as good as the original. Many years ago, I stumbled across Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls. It is a great book on programming. It did not focus on the methodology or programming language of the day. Instead Bentley gave solid, fundamental information about programming. He explained that solving programming problems is about thinking and gave lots of problems to help you think about what you do. After reading Programming Pearls, I found More Programming Pearls, and read that one as well. These books really highlight the difference between a programmer and someone who just slaps code in place to get a paycheck.

The new edition carries on in that tradition. Most of the columns are updated. A few examples have been changed to make sense for today's computing. Most of the code examples are now in C++. But the core of the original information and the thrust of the book remain the same. Bentley's writing style is very entertaining and clear, and his insights are fundamental to the work we do. The examples and problems in the book provide a great opportunity to sharpen your skills.

Every programmer should read this book.