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Bad Programming Practices 101: Become a Better Coder by Learning How (Not) to Program
Paperback
Publisher: Apress
Published: May 19 2026
Pages: 235
Weight: 1.01
Height: 0.55 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
This book flips the script of generic programming manuals, using humor to teach by bad example. Discover how to become the world's worst programmer and build bad habits that lead to buggy, poorly written code.
Do you dream of writing code that gets instantly rejected in review? Do you look forward to reading feedback plastered in comments like WTF Do you hope your bug-ridden changes sneak through and wreak havoc in the codebase? If your goal is to build a reputation for writing creaky, messy, error-prone code that drives your teammates up the wall, Bad Programming Practices 101 is here to help.
Alternatively, you could use this book to identify those bad habits and learn to avoid them. It covers topics like the foundations of programming (layout, variables, loops, and modules) and is revised with a NEW chapter on how NOT to use AI for writing code. It's been said that you need to write 10,000 lines of bad code before becoming a good programmer. This book helps you to fill that quota while truly understanding the why behind best practices.
What You Will Learn:
- Become a better coder by learning how (not) to program
- Choose your tools wisely
- Think of programming as problem solving
- Discover the consequences of a program's appearance and overall structure
- Explain poor use of variables in programs
- Avoid bad habits and common mistakes when using conditionals and loops
- See how poor error-handling makes for unstable programs
- Sidestep bad practices related specifically to object-oriented programming
- Mitigate the effects of ineffectual and inadequate bug location and testing
- Learn how to avoid sabotaging your code with misuse of AI tools
Who This Book Is for:
Those who have some practical programming knowledge (can program in at least one programming language), but little or no professional experience, which they would like to quickly build up. They are either still undergoing training in software development or are at the beginning of their programming career. They have at most 1-2 years of professional experience.
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