This document introduces the project "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know", which aims to collect wisdom and advice for programmers from practitioners in the field. It began as a response to a similar project for software architects. Contributors provide short blog-style pieces on important concepts for programmers under an open license. The collection forms a diverse overview rather than a cohesive handbook, reflecting the individual voices of contributors. The editor's goal is to achieve variety rather than a single unified perspective.

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97 Things Every
Programmer Should Know
There is an art, craft and science to pro-
gramming that extends far beyond the
program. The act of programming mar-
ries the discrete world of computers
with the fluid world of human affairs.
Programmers mediate between the ne-
gotiated and uncertain truths of business
and the crisp, uncompromising domain
of bits and bytes and higher constructed
types.
There’s no small amount of wisdom scat-
tered around the blogosphere about how
to do this, but mostly hidden in a mo-
rass of somewhat less-than-wise advice.
Sound advice can also be found lurking
within a number of books — and, again,
bookish form is no guarantee of qual-
ity. But most of the good stuff is locked
up within the minds and experiences of
practitioners. How to unlock some of this
know how?
A while back, “Dammit, that’s just one of
those things every programmer should
know!” was my response to some code
I was thinking about. I had contributed
to Richard Monson-Haefel’s 97 Things
Every Software Architect Should Know
project and I knew that Richard had
been working with O’Reilly to create a 97
Things series. My own phrasing was the
trigger: what about doing for program-
mers what had already been done for
software architects? A collective and open
project based on voluntary contributions
from programmers and others involved
in the software development process. A
cross section of people that would include
big names — but, importantly, not just
the big names.
Although not strictly open source, the
project has some open-source qualities.
In particular, contributions are made
under a non-restrictive license (Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0, in this case).
Individuals contribute blog-length items
on, well, things that they think every pro-
grammer should know. These items can
be reused, repurposed and republished
freely.
There is also an element of crowdsourc-
ing: taken together the items form part of
a big picture, but the big picture is built
up by sampling the wisdom of crowds
rather than working to a design vision
and progressively elaborating each detail
as necessary. The writing is not collabora-
tive and there’s no intent that contribu-
tions should follow a common style or
dovetail together like modular parts. If
anything, the converse is true.
My role as the editor and driver of the
project has been quite a contrast to my
involvement in A Pattern Language
for Distributed Computing, which I co-
authored with Frank Buschmann and
Douglas Schmidt. In this we documented
114 patterns, which were divided and in-
terconnected to form a coherent whole,
speaking with one voice. For 97 Things
Every Programmer Should Know, my
goal as the editor has been to achieve the
exact opposite: each item should reflect
the identity, voice and thinking of its au-
thor, and although there are overlaps and
gaps, the overall diversity and richness
becomes part of the charm, readability
and utility. And yes, it is my hope that the
outcome is useful. Not as a handbook, but
as a source of ideas, discussion and even
inspiration. The number of contributions
has been overwhelming — well beyond 97
— but what comes across from each con-
tributor is a certain passion and personal
connection to programming.
You can find the 97 Things Every
Programmer Should Know site at
http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com
You can follow it on Twitter as @97TEPSK
The book is listed at
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596809492
There is an InfoQ piece about 97 Things
Every Programmer Should Know and the
97 Things series at http://www.infoq.com/
news/2009/09/97-things.
by Kevlin Henney