Code complete electronic version ?

[Jim Dabell]

post400 wrote:

> apparently there is a very famous book that every developer should
> read: Code complete by Steve McConnell !
> 
> Is there an electronic version freely downloadable ?

Not that I've heard.


> After all, the book was released in 1993 , it should have been public
> domain by now !

Works don't pass into the public domain for a hell of a lot longer than a
single decade, although I agree that for fast-moving industries like this,
copyright terms should be closer to ten years than 75, or whatever the
current terms are.


> It would be nice to have a try before !

Use a library.


> 50€ is not exactly cheap !

Your newsreader is claiming to encode articles as ISO-8859-1, although it
appears it's actually sending out cp1250 (I'm guessing that was meant to be
a Euro sign).


> What do you think ? Is it worth the money or not ?

Well people value money differently.  A hard-up student might not think so,
but a professional programmer might.  In my opinion, £20 [1] for this book,
compared with the prices of other books in the field, is very good value. 
If it's too much, buy it second-hand.  It's a good book, and although
plenty of it is just common sense, it's the type of common sense that's
easy to miss :)

[1] I bought mine new for about £20 a couple of years ago, Amazon UK has it
for £19.72 new, or £13.75 used.

<URL:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556154844/>


-- 
Jim Dabell