Working effectively with legacy code book review
The world of software moves with such a pace that this book written in 2004 looks like a relict from the distant past. However, it's still capable enough to teach the old dog new tricks.
These days most of the software is written with a great help from IDEs that have become much more than just text editors. Every IDE gives you hints on how to optimize your code, most have static analysis tools built-in and most code can be verified even before it gets compiled/interpreted.
Although, most IDE have capabilities to help you refactor your code, they usually run away in tears when they see hundreds of lines of smelly code in one class not covered by any tests.
And that's the situation where this book actually shines. It still can teach you a few trick how to keep yourself sane when you're thrown to the snake pit of filthy legacy code. And no matter how dated this book is, I'd still recommend it to anyone who finds himself in a situation where he has do maintain what he doesn't even want to touch.
My score is 3+/5 Every developer should read this book, but it desperately needs an update