1.2. What This Book Is About

The Productive Programmer is divided into two parts. The first discusses the mechanics of productivity, and the tools and their uses that make you more productive as you go through the physical activities of developing software. The second part discusses the practice of productivity, and how you can leverage your knowledge and the knowledge of others to produce better software more quickly. In both sections, you will likely run into some things you already know, as well as things you have never thought of before.

1.2.1. Part I: Mechanics (The Productivity Principles)

You can treat this book as a recipe book for command-line and other productivity tips and still reap benefits. But if you understand why something increases productivity, you can recognize it all around you. Creating patterns to describe something creates nomenclature: once you have a name for something, it’s easier to recognize when you see it again. One of the goals of this book is to define a set of productivity principles to help you define your own productivity techniques. Like all patterns, it becomes easier to identify them once they have names. Knowing why something speeds you up allows you to more quickly identify other things that will help you work faster.