Why Most Popular Programming Books Are Ruining Your Skills
If you’ve spent any time learning to code, you’ve probably come across the same programming books everyone seems to recommend — Clean Code, The Pragmatic Programmer, Design Patterns (which, despite claims, are often highly language-dependent and not as universal as they appear), and others. These books promise to make you a better developer, offering insights that seem valuable, especially for beginners. However, there’s an uncomfortable truth that many programmers only realize after years in the field: most of these books are setting you up for failure later on. Their examples rely on small, toy problems that don’t scale to real-world projects. It’s like trying to become a bridge engineer by practicing with cards and toothpicks
The reality is that the rigid principles and overly generalized advice in these books often lead to code that is messy, overly abstract, and difficult to maintain — not to mention inefficient. In this article, we’ll explore why following these books too closely can cause more harm than good, and why it’s essential to learn from real-world experience and solid software engineering…
