Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time

Excellent overview of the very many facets of Google's approach to software engineering at scale and over time. Not a programming / coding book at all (although there are small code examples throughout), instead it covers approaches to such areas as testing, working in and leading teams, build processes and - most interesting of all in my opinion - the metrics used to constantly improve the process.

This book gives a good balance of presenting both the practice of software engineering and the rationale behind it for many of the techniques used at Google.Be warned that many of those techniques (eg a large single repository) are not straightforward or necessarily the right path for most organisations -- this isn't a how-to guide. But many of the lessons learned over the years can be applicable to many others, such as when a large change is required (such as a major upgrade of a library or language) to focus on a small expert team doing it rather than imposing it on everyone else. Thinking about sustainable development (rather than just maintainable) is also a great concept -- what is the life time of this code, and can the code be maintained/extended/morph over time to support what is needed?This is why the book is useful -- the rationale can give you the understanding for the why, and the fact that Google is practicing it (on such a massive scale) shows that it can be important and useful. The how you apply it will likely be different, as each organisation has its own history, culture, and skillset.

I bought this book because I was really tired of all those people, preaching questionable techniques and opinions with the argument ' Google does it' . I think this book kind of gives an end to all this questionable opinions. Google does things because it has certain needs and requirements. I think this is a must read book for every manager and engineer- but again - Google is google. ...your company most probably does NOT have google problems! Never forget

I received it on time and its quality is great as expected

Just relating to the condition of the item. I could have returned but the effort would put weigh the benefit.

there's no substitute for common sense, and if you realise that you'll realise this is just a bunch of academics, subsidised by google's ad revenue, blabbing about stuff, and who couldn't probably ship anything themselves. just make and ship stuff, you don't need these "priests" to tell you how to do it.