Preface to the Second Edition

Back in the 1990s, we worked with companies whose projects were having problems. We found ourselves saying the same things to each: maybe you should test that before you ship it; why does the code only build on Mary’s machine? Why didn’t anyone ask the users?

To save time with new clients, we started jotting down notes. And those notes became The Pragmatic Programmer. To our surprise the book seemed to strike a chord, and it has continued to be popular these last 20 years.

But 20 years is many lifetimes in terms of software. Take a developer from 1999 and drop them into a team today, and they’d struggle in this strange new world. But the world of the 1990s is equally foreign to today’s developer. The book’s references to things such as CORBA, CASE tools, and indexed loops were at best quaint and more likely confusing.

At the same time, 20 years has had no impact whatsoever on common sense. Technology may have changed, but people haven’t. Practices and approaches that were a good idea then remain a good idea now. Those aspects of the book aged well.