I was attracted to this book by the title: 'refactoring' and the agile development philosophy are sometimes used as an excuse for insufficent design. So I liked the explicit emphasis on the need to get stuff right the first time.

Ken Pugh writes with an engaging style that is very easy to read and makes sound suggestions. It would be a valuable guide for new developers looking to broaden their horizons from tools and code. However, there is not a lot that is new in this book and the principles are somewhat introductory for a more experienced programmer. 'Journeymen' programmers would be better served by the Practice of Programming by Kernighan and Pike, or by the Pragmatic Programmet by Hunt and Thomas. ( )

I enjoyed the beginning of the book which talked about useful development practices, but the second half of the book was slightly too focused on the author's project. ( )