Kent Beck

I came across this book in the Bibliography section of Scott Berkun's "The art of Project Management". First, the structure. Well, this book is under 200 pages. So when Beck talks about keeping what is essential, he is surely applying it while writing books. Second, the content.

Your class library works, but could it be better? Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code shows how refactoring can make object-oriented code simpler and easier to maintain. Today refactoring requires considerable design know-how, but once tools become available, all programmers should be able to improve their code using refactoring techniques.

The entire history of software engineering can be characterized as one of rising levels of abstraction. We see this in our languages, our tools, our platforms, and our methods. Indeed, abstraction is the primary way that we as humans attend to complexity—and software-intensive systems are among the most complex artifacts ever created.