I’ve read The Pragmatic Programmer. It’s not a bad book - I was nodding along the whole way. And that’s sort of the problem with the books of this genre. The thing is, I recognize that these are good techniques because I already spent lots of time applying them. I just don’t know if the idea of compressing years of hands on experience into a textbook works well in practice. This goes for most self-help books as well.
It's a good book at a certain stage in your career. Before that it's too easy to misconstrue it as absolutist (it isn't) or misunderstand the guidance (like DRY, which got a major rewrite in the 2nd edition to help with that). Too late in your career and it is all "obvious" (if you're a competent programmer).
On the other hand, as a mentor I found it useful to re-read it (or, read it through properly, I'd read large portions when I was younger but never all the way through). There's a problem of becoming too expert where you can't communicate with novices in the field anymore, at least not like they actually need you to communicate with them. There was benefit, for me, in re-reading it and nodding along and being reminded of the things I'd learned along the way, getting a name for them, and a discussion I could use as a basis for my mentoring.
When I read it I too found myself recognizing almost everything it says and it all felt almost obvious... I already had most of those insights myself, am I learning anything?
The real value is that it is much much harder to pass that sort of insight along to engineers you work with or (especially more junior) manage. Books like that didn't make me a better writer of code, but I think they made me a much better communicator, engineer and manager.
Self-help books don't work if you're just starting out. This is because the books sound trite and obvious and you haven't experienced enough failure yet.
But they get very helpful once you've been in a few battles and failed miserably. You'll be able to determine where you went wrong, whereas before it escaped you. You'll then find out how to not make those mistakes again, and do it right next time.
