I firmly believe that computer programming is a craft, perhaps an art but certainly not a science. As you learn the craft you need to learn the wisdom of those that have gone before you. This book becomes essential.

It spells out, first with a counter example found in a piece of code published elsewhere and then with the code rewritten, over 70 pearls of wisdom that should be engraved into our consciousness; for many years every morning when I logged on to start work as a commercial Unix programmer one of these rules was randomly chosen as my message of the day, if I didn't understand the short rule I dragged out the book and refreshed my memory.

Brian Kernighan has co-authored three books almost essential to learning our craft, this volume, "Software Tools" and "The Unix Programming Environment". "Elements of Programming Style" spells out the fundamental rules, "Software Tools" shows you how to apply them to a number of simple projects and extends the rules to software design and finally "The Unix Programming Environment" shows you how to use them in an operating system designed to reward you for your effort.

The examples in either PL/I or Fortran expound the simple rules clearly and expertly in a manner typical of Kernighan's writing. That the languages used are old and most of the rules long accepted lore are not a drawback to this volume. Anyone who knows C, Pascal or even Perl should easily understand the code and programmers turn out code just as bad today in any number of languages.

These things make this book highly recommended reading for anyone who wishes to call them self "programmer." A final word of warning, don't lend this book to anyone, you'll never get it back - I've bought four copies so far.