"Implementation Patterns"
I just finished reading this book. Basically, it's a guide for junior-level developers [1] to help them out with their implementations. Beck covers classes, methods, behaviors, etc. - things that you'd expect a book like this to address. I'll be honest...I really didn't get a lot out of this book. I mostly found myself nodding in agreement with a majority of statements Beck made, especially with Chapter 10, "Evolving Frameworks", but nothing made my head snap around and go, "whoa! I never thought of that!". That doesn't mean I think it's a bad book; on the contrary, I think this is a great book for those developers who need to understand what it takes to write good code. It's not a long book, and the concepts are stated clearly, which makes it ideal to plow through in a relatively short amount of time.
There was one statement that Beck made that really stuck out - it's in the Preface:
...this book is built on a rather fragile premise: that good code matters. I have seen too much ugly code make too much money to believe that quality of code is either necessary or sufficient for commercial success or widespread use. However, I still believe that quality of code matters even if it doesn't provide control over the future...Even if there was no long-term economic impact from careful coding I would still choose to write the best code I could. A seventy-year lifespan contains just over two billion seconds. That's not enough seconds to waste on work I'm not proud of.
Well said!
[1] I don't necessarily mean 20-ish-year-old people straight out of college. I mean people who are very green to good software development techniques and practices.