I actually finished reading this in March but have not gotten to writing about it until now. I'm falling a little behind and may have to skip my April reading and merge it into May. Ah well...to the story at hand.

This book was an excellent read and in an ideal format for me. The book is a collection of internally published essays within Microsoft that encompass a vast amount of topics regarding software development processes, management, coding, testing, career development, etc. The essays provided a great way for me to read bits and pieces in between work items and take the book in over the course of the month.

The essays were written by Eric and are not the standard "hooray for Microsoft and how we do things" line that you would expect. The essays tell it how it is and point out what Microsoft is doing / has done wrong and what they should be doing. In addition, the essays provide sane, to the point insights regarding industry tendencies, the good and the bad, and corrections that need to be made both from a practical and a theoretical point of view. They are by no means all encompassing, but do cover a good variety of areas.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is planning on making a career out of software development. By career, I do not mean a tech-head who only cares about coding and nothing else. I also do not mean that you have to aspire for IT management. The book applies to anyone who is or wants to be involved with the software development life cycle as a whole.