Code Complete with Steve McConnellSteve McConnell, author of Code Complete, shares timeless lessons from his classic software engineering handbook, what he’s updated since, and the career principles every engineer should know.
The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast is back with the Fall 2025 season. Expect new episodes to be published on most Wednesdays, looking ahead. Stream the latest episodeListen and watch now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. See the episode transcript at the top of this page, and timestamps for the episode at the bottom. Brought to You by• Statsig — The unified platform for flags, analytics, experiments, and more. Statsig built a complete set of data tools that allow engineering teams to measure the impact of their work. This toolkit is SO valuable to so many teams, that OpenAI - who was a huge user of Statsig - decided to acquire the company, the news announced last week. Talk about validation! Check out Statsig.
— In this episodeThe Pragmatic Engineer Podcast is back with the Fall 2025 season. Expect new episodes to be published on most Wednesdays, looking ahead. Code Complete is one of the most enduring books on software engineering. Steve McConnell wrote the 900-page handbook just five years into his career, capturing what he wished he’d known when starting out. Decades later, the lessons remain relevant, and Code Complete remains a best-seller. In this episode, we talk about what has aged well, what needed updating in the second edition, and the broader career principles Steve has developed along the way. From his “career pyramid” model to his critique of “lily pad hopping,” and why periods of working in fast-paced, all-in environments can be so rewarding, the emphasis throughout is on taking ownership of your career and making deliberate choices. |