It's rare that I find a technical book as immediately useful and fun to read as _Refactoring_. The cleverest thing about refactoring as a technique is that it provides a well-articulated, structured framework for doing something that every experienced developer does already (more or less unconsciously) -- constantly restructuring their code to make it easier to understand and maintain. This alone makes refactoring a useful contribution to software engineering.

However, Fowler doesn't stop there. He presents rationales for refactoring (with an eye towards making a case to management) and much detailed, practical insight that comes from experience, but is rarely expressed so concisely and elegantly. I also appreciated the importance Fowler placed on unit testing; in fact, using unit testing makes refactoring happen much more quickly, and leaves you with a lot more peace of mind besides.

I read the book cover to cover and enjoyed nearly every page. The book has added a lot to my value as a developer, and was a lot of fun in the bargain. I don't think a whole lot more needs to be said. Just buy it, you can thank everyone who told you to later.

I'm midway through this book, and thoroughly enjoying it. Joyner has a clear and accessible writing style, and the content is obviously well-researched and thorough. That, however, is my main problem with the book -- its core grows out of a paper of Joyner's on weaknesses in C++ and the resulting book, while still excellent, follows from that mindset. The book sometimes feels not so much like a comparision between C++, Java, and Eiffel, but rather an exhortation to avoid C++'s misfeatures (and, to a lesser extent, Java's), and instead use Eiffel. While the author makes an admirable case for Eiffel, this isn't why I bought the book, and the non-critical treatment that Eiffel receives undercuts the overall strength of the book -- no programming language is perfect, and if what Joyner really wants is better language tools and better language design, he owes it to himself and his audience to treat the objects of his comparison equally.

All that said, the book is well-organized, even the most loaded statements Joyner makes are thought-provoking, and its approach is unique. If you're willing to keep your critical thinking filters on and stay engaged with the book instead of being a passive reader, blindly trusting the author, you'll get a lot out of it.