Book explaining development process, do's and don'ts, etc.

Question

I'm a hobbyist programmer, wanting to contribute to some open source projects, and hopefully write my own (semi-popular) ones too.

I have a decent 'academic' knowledge of CS and programming business, but am finding that there's a large void between "knowing how to program", and knowing how to efficiently help out with a project.

What I'm getting at are issues like how to effectively use a debugger. How to use bug tracking software effectively (at first I may just try and hunt down reported bugs and try and fix them, to teach myself stuff).

Also other issues like how to properly use make (or automake?), that kind of thing.

My pure programming knowledge is OK, and I have read/am reading through classics like Mythical Man Month and Programming Pearls, but this practical knowledge seems to be hard to find.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Code Complete. No question.

Also look at The Pragmatic Programmer, another very good book.

I'm not aware of any Open Source specific books... would be interested to hear if there are any, seems like a topic worth writing about.

Edit To answer your specific point on make, take a look at this O'Reilly book. It's a long time since I used make, but when I did this book was very useful.

Answer 2

Very practical, concise and useful: http://www.pragprog.com/titles/prj/ship-it , http://www.pragprog.com/titles/pad/practices-of-an-agile-developer .

Answer 3

In addition to the books mentioned by Steve Haigh, I think that Gunderloy's "Coder to Developer" covers the type of material you're looking for.

Answer 4

Code Complete is the obvious starting point and an absolute must read but from an OSS perspective:

http://producingoss.com/

Available free as HTML/PDF or in exchange for actual money as a paper book.