Book Review: Clean Craftsmanship: Disciplines, Standards, and Ethics

What is software craftsmanship?

Craftsmanship is the state of knowing, how to do something well and is the outcome of good tutelage and lots of experience.

– Robert C. Martin, Clean Craftsmanship

Clean Craftsmanship: Disciplines, Standards, and Ethics

As the subtitle indicates, this book is divided into three parts: disciplines, standards, and ethics.

Everyone who knows Uncle Bob knows he has a strong focus on testing, specifically TDD. So it’s no surprise that a book by him about craftsmanship is heavily focused on testing. He provides several practical examples to demonstrate how to apply TDD. Honestly, I didn’t learn much new in that part of the book, so I went through it rather quickly.

The chapters on refactoring and (test) design don’t offer any groundbreaking insights if you’ve already read Martin Fowler’s “Refactoring” and Uncle Bob’s “Clean Architecture.”

The last two parts, “Standards” and “Ethics,” I enjoyed reading a lot. These chapters cover aspects of software development that you rarely find in other books but every software craftsman should revisit from time to time to remember what software development is really about.

In summary, if you haven’t read much about TDD and refactoring, the book is definitely worth reading. Even if you have, I still recommend reading parts 2 and 3.