I would recommend reading the book "code complete" for more specific tips about thinking about the code you write.
My preference is Kernighan and Pike's _The Practice of Programming_, TPoP, that's Kernighan as in the `k' in awk and K&R, and Pike as in Blit, sam, and now #golang. The book's home page has a sample chapter and a war story that didn't make it into the book. http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020161586X/mqq-20 http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/
In hindsight perhaps I shouldn't have bought the kindle edition of the book (Code Complete) because it's a very large book and it's not those kinds of books where we must read from cover to cover and I don't think it's very practical to read those books in a kindle but perhaps it's just me. Just my 2 cents.
That prevents anyone from "sneaking" into your account, even if the can snoop your mail / copy your inbox. You'll see the intrusion, and you'll be unable to log into the service after the password is changed.
Storing the password in plain-text in your inbox has none of that protection.
1. Give the book a quick read. Essentially just to know what it covered and how the book approaches/covers the topics you are interested in.
2. Now that you know what the book covers and have a fuzzy idea about it, go straight to the section that concerns you most as the need arrises.
Thanks for the tip! ;)
I'm not surprised as even those geo-targeted "Continue shopping" messages are fairly recent. I once wrote a Teleporter script to switch between Amazons (http://softwareas.com/domain-teleporter-greasemonkey-script) and if they're redirecting to homepage, it's still useful!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Effective-Programming-More-Writing-e...