--- title: "Code Complete 2. Good, but not a silver bullet" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/14/code-complete-2-good-but-not-a-silver-bullet.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/14/code-complete-2-good-but-not-a-silver-bullet.html" published: "2004-01-14T18:45:00" updated: "2004-01-14T18:45:00" tags: ["Free book chapters"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Oh goodie!, Code Complete 2 is on the horizon(via Shawn ). While many consider this book to be the \"bible of coding\", I can't help but feel overwhelmed by such a response. I read it, it is definitely good and has great…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Code Complete 2. Good, but not a silver bullet By Roy Osherove January 14, 2004 In [Free book chapters](https://osherove.com/blog/category/free-book-chapters) **Historical article** · Originally published January 14, 2004; technical details may be outdated. Oh goodie!, [Code Complete 2](http://www.stevemcconnell.com/cc2/cc.htm) is on the horizon(via [Shawn](http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnmor/archive/2004/01/14/58691.aspx)). While many consider this book to be the "bible of coding", I can't help but feel overwhelmed by such a response. I read it, it is definitely good and has great information and advice, but to some extent I found it rather dry. The fact that I only knew VB when I read it might have helped this situation but, forget that for now. Say a new coder comes to my company. I slap them with this thickie and then what? can I actually expect a dev to read all this (assuming most everything there is news to them) and : - Remember everything? - Change all their habits\`? - See the light? Hardly. Changing habits (even new ones) comes only in one way that I know of: working on it. Not only that, to change a dev's ways one would have to mentor that dev into "seeing the light" and it would still be a slow,hard process for everyone involved. Like it or not, The amount of skill that a senior developer has in writing clean code, the stuff they take for granted as standard writing style, readable code, unit testing, and all those things which we praise day in and day out, that is a friggin' lot to learn for any person. And it takes a **lot of time**. I don't see myself ,during my junior developer days, getting to a point where I need to stop and ask myself "_Wait, how would a loop be written using Code Complete way?_". Not because I wouldn't want to, but because I would need someone to remind me to do that. Someone more experienced than I am, because I will not be able to see my mistakes. Anyway, [Code Complete](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1556154844/iserializable-20) is still a great book and , looking at the manuscript for the next version, there's a lot that looks very useful. I especially liked the parts about testing and developer testing(Test Driven Development) ## More in Free book chapters [All posts in Free book chapters](https://osherove.com/blog/category/free-book-chapters) - Mar 5, 2004 ### [Book of the month](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/3/5/book-of-the-month.html) - Jan 16, 2004 ### [Three free recipes from "ADO.NET Cookbook"](https://osherove.com/blog/2004/1/16/three-free-recipes-from-quotadonet-cookbookquot.html) - Nov 20, 2003 ### [\[online book\] A .NET Developer's Guide to Windows Security](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/11/20/online-book-a-net-developers-guide-to-windows-security.html) - Oct 6, 2003 ### [More than 500 sample chapters](https://osherove.com/blog/2003/10/6/more-than-500-sample-chapters.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/