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As you may gather from the title, this book explains in detail many of the extreme and agile programming best practices. I think a more suitable name would be Common Practices of a Software Developer as I felt that some of the practices where just common sense advice for a experience developer. I mean, do you need to read two pages to understand to check in code into version control as soon as possible, as soon as you made a fix, every half day if possible but not every five minutes? Well if you do read practice 43, Share Code Only When Ready.

What I liked about this book was that each practice was introduced by a little programming devil that tried to influence the reader into ignoring the practice altogether. This little devil is the one makes us forget to comment our code, that likes to code rather than test. At the end of each practice there is a little angel that describes the benefits of incorporating the practice as a habit into your daily routine, a routine that should include stand up meetings, check out/ins, testing, continuous integration, mentoring, etc.

A book like this might be better suited for a junior developer that does not have experience with extreme programming or any other process for that matter.

Here are some pearls of common sense from Practices of an Agile Developer.

Fix the problem, not the symptom.

The best thing for developers may not be the best for users, and vice versa.

Most users would rather have good software today than wait for superior software a year later.

Having short iterations and smaller increments helps developers stay focused.

Unit testing is an investment. Invest wisely. Testing accessors or trivial methods is probably not time well spent.

Here are some common sense practices I adhered too.

There is more than one way to do it, but do it how more than one developer can understand it.

Design a software solution for the end user, not for a fellow developer, or worse yet your database.

If the end user can’t use your software, that’s a bug.

You may consider your code as art but no one is going to hang your code in the Louvre.

Eat fruit and vegetables before you program.

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