Rating: 
Summary: If you're at all experienced, seek other reading.
Review: I only have 2 years of programming experience. I read an awful lot of programming texts. Right now I have 10 books just on C itself. Not to mention all the java and C++ books... My point to saying this is, if you've already read as many books as I have, this book will do nothing for you. I read this book over the weekend and was just astonished with how simple minded it all was. I constantly said "Duh..." throughout the entire book. The pseudo code in this book was the worst I've ever seen. I have never returned a book before except for "Linux Socket Programming". I returned this one today. The reason I did give this book 3 stars was because I can see it being extremely great for uneducated newbies. It will teach them a great deal and have them think about efficiency and general good programming practices. I was amazed at all of the great reviews I saw with this book. Everyone that gave a review must of been new to computer programming. I was personally expecting a few more advanced topics such as real C and C++ code. Not the .... pseudo code that this author insisted on using. Overall, this is a great book for neophytes. If you're new to programming, get this book and give it a good once over. Don't pay attention to his style though... As he stated in the book, it's due to the constraints on space and the fact he didn't want to write a 1200 page book. However, if you have gotten to the point where you've studied advanced data structures and algorithms and know what a linked list is and a binary tree and you understand the concepts behind a heap, priority queues and such, I'd go for another book that is going to advance your knowledge, not bring it back a step.
Rating: 
Summary: Packed with programming wisdom
Review: It's great to see they've come out with an update to this book. The essays in this book are easy to read and touch on many valuable things, such as tuning and optimization of algorithms, using mini languages to provide robust tools, doing back-of-the-envelope calculations, and much more. I have recommended this book to several beginning programmers that I know as an excellent introduction to thinking effectively about the challenges of software engineering.
Rating:
Summary: A classic
Review: One of a few books I'd suggest every programmer read. For two reasons: o the technical material is well-chosen and well-explained o the writing style is worthy of emulation Overall, it's worthy of your bookshelf's space.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes you think harder
Review: Programming pearls is a compendium of 15 columns previously published in Communications of the ACM. The columns cover a wide range of topics related to programming: from requirements gathering to performance tuning. The focus is primarily on coding techniques and algorithms.
Each column has been reorganized as a chapter. Chapters usually start with the presentation of a practical problem. Then various solutions are presented and are used as lessons to be learned. The writing style is clear and fun.
Programming Pearls is not a usual book teaching new programming concepts. Although it contains good and sometimes quite novel ideas, the aim of the book is not to teach something new. For example, the search and sort algorithms presented are well-known. The aim is to remind programmers to think hard before starting writing code. The book has great chapter on back-of-the-envelope computation for example which is useful when comparing various solutions. The easy solutions to the column's problems are usually very slow. The `good' solutions are lightening fast but require thinking hard about the problems. I would recommend having a book about algorithms nearby when reading Programming Pearls.
The book is full of little (and some not so little) exercises that are given throughout the chapters. Solutions or hints are given at the end. The exercises usually take a few hours to do properly and are a great resource. Again the emphasis is on making the reader think.
If you consider programming a repetitious activity, Programming Pearls will provoke you into thinking harder about finding elegant solutions. I recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Must have (even if you are experienced).
Review: Programming Pearls is one of the very few books that looks at the problems that we as programmers all have, and keep on having day in and day out. It strives for solutions to problems that are compact, efficient and fast. It questions thinking and makes you think about programming.
The book is comprised of a series of articles focused on a topic which you can read in any order you like. This is one of my favorite programming books, as I always find something 'new' just by browsing it. Unlike some other books on similar topics, the delivery of the information is concise and pallatable. I love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Book of stories
Review: The book wa interesting to me as the collection of stories about programming and problems that programer can meet in his work. the solutions in the book are brilliant. On the other hand, I don't lik that book treats some very specific problem areas, which are unconnecet mutually. Secondly, there are many things in this book which are completely out of date. I don't want to say that they are completely unimportant, but there are things in modern programming that are much more important and in wich you can improve your program much more. I read this book, as I said before, as collection of funny and interesting stories.
Rating:
Summary: A course in how to think like an experienced programmer
Review: The thirteen columns in this book appeared in the Communications of the ACM between 1983 and 1985. There can't be more than a couple of technical books on computing from that era that are still worth reading. Kernighan & Ritchie's book, "The C Programming Language", is one that springs to mind; this book is definitely another, and will probably outlast K&R as it has almost no ties to existing or past hardware or languages. What Bentley does in each of these columns is take some part of the field of programming--something that every one of us will have run into at some point in our work--and dig underneath it to reveal the part of the problem that is permanent; that doesn't change from language to language. The first two parts cover problem definition, algorithms, data structures, program verification, and efficiency (performance, code tuning, space tuning); the third part applies the lessons to example pseudocode, looking at sorting, searching, heaps, and an example spellchecker. Bentley writes clearly and enthusiastically, and the columns are a pleasure to read. But the reason so many people love this book is not for the style, it's for the substance--you can't read this book and not come away a better programmer. Inefficiency, clumsiness, inelegance and obscurity will offend you just a little more after you've read it. It's hard to pick a favourite piece, but here's one nice example from the algorithm design column that shows how little the speed of your Pentium matters if you don't know what you're doing. Bentley presents a particular problem (the details don't matter) and multiple different ways to solve it, calculating the relationship between problem size and run time for each algorithm. He gives, among others, a cubic algorithm (run time equal to a constant, C, times the cube of the problem size, N--i.e. t ~ CN^3), and a linear algorithm with constant K (t ~ KN). He then implemented them both: the former in fine-tuned FORTRAN on a Cray-1 supercomputer; the latter in BASIC on a Radio Shack TRS-80. The constant factors were as different as they could be, but with increasing problem size the TRS-80 eventually has to catch up--and it does. He gives a table showing the results: for a problem size of 1000, the Cray takes three seconds to the TRS-80's 20 seconds; but for a problem size of 1,000,000, the TRS-80 takes five and a half hours, whereas the Cray would take 95 years. The book is informative, entertaining, and will painlessly make you a better programmer. What more can you ask?
Rating:
Summary: A Gem!
Review: There are not many books on advanced computer programming that you actually want to read. Usually, the subject is so dry and full of theory that you have to force yourself. This book is the exception. Bentley's easy-to-read style makes this book a pleasure to read. His theoretical analysis is impeccable, but he presents complex topics in a chatty format that makes you remember the joy you felt the first time you wrote a program, and lets you know he still feels that way
Rating:
Summary: A manual with hacker spirit!
Review: This book goes into what is overlooked and should be taught in "computer science" classes. Instead of focusing on conspiracy-driven "good programming practices" with trite and bloated algorithms, this book focuses on efficient, simple, and creative solutions to problems. This emphasizes on creating solutions that work well on COMPUTERS (albeit dated computers) and not abstract turing machines with no disk or memory limitations! Programming Pearls is easy to read, with lots of little excersizes to get your brain thinking for FUN and PROFIT. This book truly has SLACK.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This book is amazing! Its a true classic on algorithims. I would place this on my list of the top 5 programming books of all time. A must read for every who calls themselves a "programmer".
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