There's a reason this is considered a classic. Most of the "rules" and heuristics will be familiar to any programmer, but they're rules for a reason, and when you read the examples and explanations, you will undoubtedly think of something in your code base that should be refactored. There's a few chunks of Java-specific advice in the book that I could have done without, but easy enough to skim/skip. The best parts of this book are the ones where Martin successively refactors code samples and makes incremental improvements that eventually become Clean Code. "Refactoring is a lot like solving a Rubik's cube. There are lots of little steps required to achieve a large goal. Each step enables the next."