There are a couple of real gems in here, mostly from people that I would expect, although a couple from people I hadn't heard of before. Then there are a bunch of people that seemed so enamored with their entire project they couldn't boil the essay down to a real message. My suggestion is to borrow it from someone and read until you lose interest and then skip to the next one. I guess the good part is that point will be different for everyone so there is a good chance there is something in here you will enjoy. Personally I would have cut it down to about a third of the size though.

With more than thirty essays on the beauty of code, by more than thirty programmers, this book was bound to have some weak spots. However, it also has some brilliant, eye-opening pieces that I'm happy I've now read.

The key to enjoy the book is to sniff out those chapters that won't make the cut for you, either because of their topic or the skills you need to make sense of them, and to focus in detail on the rest. ( )

A good book of explained example code in a variety of programming languages. For me there is too much focus explaining the tricks used and less on the title topic of "beautiful code". ( )

Beautiful Code is a collection of essays by master programmers, each discussing a piece of code or software architecture that they find particularly beautiful or elegant. The essays cover a wide range of topics and some will really challenge your understanding, but readers who put in the effort will be rewarded. This is an invaluable resource filled with practical wisdom from gurus, and pretty much all of the code is taken from software in actual use. This book is a must-read for any programmer, and could one day be regarded as a classic text on programming. ( )

Nowhere near as good as I expected; many of the essays were either bad or not at all related to "beautiful code". There were some good pieces, though. ( )