Dev Juice: The Art of Readable Code

"The Art of Readable Code" by Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher is a fairly short work at under 200 pages, but it addresses a topic near and dear to many developers' hearts.

Littered with cartoons and code samples, it's meant to convey the basic philosophy of creating well-structured code that helps document itself. You can read about naming variables, laying out programmatic structures consistently, knowing what's worth commenting about, and more.

There's a lot of useful information scattered within, and many of the examples and illustrations are quite good. Unfortunately, the writing does not match up to the quality of the information on offer.

I wished the authors had slowed down a bit, better motivated the reader regarding points they were making, and spent time to explain the "why" in greater detail. The book feels rushed and offers a surfeit of passive voice and odd constructs. This is a shame, because the authors had a winning concept. A book about superior communication skills in code should have presented those same skills in its writing.

The material here will probably work well as a support to seminars, which can easily use the structure, examples, and illustrations independently of the written text.

"The Art of Readable Code" costs US$34.99 for a print version, $27.99 for ePub, and $38.49 combined. It is available from O'Reilly Books.