Episode · The Pragmatic Engineer · 2026-07-01
Gergely Orosz & Kent Beck: books mentioned on The Pragmatic Engineer (Jul 2026)
How Kent Beck shapes the software engineering industry
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Kent Beck discussed The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander and Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander. Gergely Orosz discussed Test-driven Development by Kent Beck.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Timeless Way of Building
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander explores architectural principles and the idea that ordinary people can successfully design and build whole, living spaces.
Discussed“The patterns work I had become interested in Christopher Alexander at the University of Oregon. I couldn't afford the timeless way of building. So I read it standing up in the bookstore uh over the course of several visits”
Where to get it
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Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Discussed“Well, it was the same kind of way with these user interfaces. Nobody knew how to organize them. So we gave this initial set of patterns that Ward had come up with and we'd talked about Christopher Alexander and patterns and I ran across a copy of notes on the synthesis of form at Powell's books in Portland and devoured”
Where to get it
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Test-driven Development
Discussed“And then when did TDD come along? Because there was a book that you you wrote that came out, I think two years later, uh, test-driven development by example. And how did it relate to XP?”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Extreme Programming Explained
“When did XP extreme programming recall start to become big? Was it as you gave it a name and you started telling people or then there was your book which came out in the year 2000?”