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Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#42“The Effective Manager” by the people behind Manager Tools (a great podcast) is a really, really good view of this. Re: Communication, this book starts there and builds upon that foundation. It’s targeted at line managers, but anyone in a leadership position can and will benefit. For example, I don’t do one-on-one’s with my team. I do “Project Management 1:1’s” or “Weekly project status updates.” I don’t always give…
> how to structure emails or how to address a personal scent issue (which I’ve actually used) How did that play out?
Honestly pretty well.
One of our colleagues took aggressive advantage of the ping pong tables at the office (in the before times) every afternoon after lunch. I’d noticed as had some others. I had a short talk with that person about the fact that in a shared office environment he was essentially showing up post-workout for the balance of the afternoon. I actually don’t recall what changed - but we stopped noticing the issue. I think they just started playing toward the end of the day then just went home after.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#43My personal opinion is reading about coding does nothing. Its like reading about math without doing the exercises. You need to work on good codebases, and have your code reviewed by people who are good.
> reading about coding does nothing
> Its like reading about math without doing the exercises
But you do learn math from reading and then you practice it to improve your understanding with exercises. It's not an either or. It's both. You should be reading about software development as well as actively improving your code in practice. I don't think you'd get even half as far if you only did one of the two things.
This is such a bizarre point of view that I'm seeing increasingly. "Reading does nothing". Since when?
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#44My personal opinion is reading about coding does nothing. Its like reading about math without doing the exercises. You need to work on good codebases, and have your code reviewed by people who are good.
Obviously if you land in a perfect environment, then you won't need outside resources.
I am self taught in how to write good code by reading books, watching videos, and reading recommended open source code. I was never in an environment with other great coders who reviewed my code. HN was my guide in how to learn to write better code.
It is possible to be self taught at writing good code.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#45I’m currently reading Peopleware which is simultaneously very insightful and very obvious. It’s also a bit of a marker in time of how software development worked. I’d say a lot has improved with remote work, at least for some companies.
I found The Mom Test pretty helpful for honing a product mindset. I’ve fallen into the trap of writing code simply because I find it less daunting than talking to users. The Mom Test is a good reminder on priorities.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#46You can take a look at the following. Doesn't look like anyone else has mentioned this yet.
As with everything else, check it out, adopt what looks good, adapt it to your needs.
> Watts Humphrey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Humphrey
> Personal software process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_software_process
> Team software process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_software_process
> More at Libgen: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=watts+humphrey&lg_topic=libg...
> More at PDF Drive: https://www.pdfdrive.com/search?q=watts+humphrey&pagecount=&...
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#47Try "Extreme Ownership".
It will give you concrete examples on how to broaden your scope out of just your individual contribution, by learning to care for all the rest, and pushing you to realize that to a large extent, the things you see as broken you can actually fix.
Even when they are not inside the codebase you are in charge of. Even if they aren't even on engineering side.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#48My suggestion is that besides reading books, you could try to build a startup. It could just be consulting on your own (or with ChatGPT or Fiverr/freelancing sites as your team). Then you will gain direct experience in a lot of those things.
Also here are a few ideas for managing scope, deliverables, expectations, time management. Structure things financially so that they are tied to relatively short iterations that require direct interaction with working software and between the engineers and the users and management at regular intervals. The communication with users AND management, payment, and deployment of working software at regular intervals should be strictly enforced. The project should not continue into the next iteration until all of those requirements are met for the current one.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#49Peopleware and Mythical Man-Month are fundamental to understanding larger software projects and teams.
They often state obvious things, but I didn’t guess them myself.
Mythical Man-Month also provides important historical perspective.
Re: Ask HN: Reading material on how to be a better software engineer?
#50My personal opinion is reading about coding does nothing. Its like reading about math without doing the exercises. You need to work on good codebases, and have your code reviewed by people who are good.
I don’t know why this is phrased as a dichotomy. You can work on a good codebase with good people and read books. You can also be in a less than ideal situation and at least read books. Unless these books are actively hurting you, which is pretty unlikely imo, it’s not a bad idea to read them.