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Books that changed my career as a software engineer

julianogtz.github.io

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Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#141

Post by Jare »

baash05 wrote: post #136

Clean code... To this day I cringe when I see methods/functions over 20 lines long.. Or when I see commented code blocks in one function.. Other have mentioned The Mythical Man Month, and I'd say it's a great book. Sadly, more often than not, it's something I wish I could staple to managements foreheads. "read this now before our next planning session" The Rspec book was a great book, that helped me fully embrace TDD…

> I cringe when I see methods/functions over 20 lines long

You may find this post interesting http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.htm...

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#142

Post by Epa095 »

dhosek wrote: post #58
exdsq wrote: post #49

The thing that changed my career as a software engineer, in terms of seniority & remuneration by time and effort, was by changing my efforts from learning arbitrary tech to learning the domain I worked in. Asking useful domain-related questions gets you noticed in stand ups and helps you write the right code. I work in fintech so the best bang for my buck I’ve had was reading an entry level cert in investment finance…

Exactly. Programming is ultimately pretty simple. The hard part is the specific domain knowledge of the business.

"[...] ultimately pretty simple" you mean if you ignore everything making it hard?

I must admit that this kind of attitude triggers me. I have worked in the energy sector, in engineering (but not IT) heavy companies, and many have this attitude. "its easy to learn programming", "we just need to teach the engineers python" etc etc, and I have seen MOUNTAINS OF SHIT so tall you would faint. It's easy to get tricked, because being both the user and developer at the same time can be such a boost. But the moment there are more users things get hard. The moment the code base gets so large that you can't keep it all in your head, it gets hard.

Software development is easy until its not, and it surprisingly quickly gets to the "it's not" stage. And then you get excel sheets in python.

Some "subject matter experts" make good programmers, but in my experience its not because their background, but because they are smart and have talent for it.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#143

Post by iriss »

dorinlazar wrote: post #76

I have a terrible problem with people recommending books that „changed their whatever”. And sometimes I think that it comes from an arrogant place where people being „influenced” by books is a bad place. But I do understand that sometimes books can change the way one thinks about things, and it makes sense to make a list of those. For me, there are books that had a negative impact on my work. The GoF book is one such…

I actually really appreciate the GoF book. I don’t use their patterns every day, but it’s definitely driven home the message of carefully thinking about which parts of the system should depend on which other parts, and examples of how you can achieve that. I also find it useful as a reference because many of the more common patterns do show up in people’s code and in libraries and understanding what a singleton/adapter/factory/builder is, does help me in my day to day.

I think the problem are the people who can’t abstract the message of the book and instead use it as their reference for absolutely everything, over-engineering the hell out of things. When I’m asked the sort of questions you describe, I also just ask if they could instead explain the problem, because being able to solve problems is all design patterns are about. If they can’t, I would respectfully ask how their knowledge of the design pattern will then help them in their job.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#144

Post by DocTomoe »

Osiris wrote: post #61

Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…

Reading attention is a skill that can be trained ... and forgotten.

When I was a kid, I read books by the meter, regular at the local library. At age 35, after life happened and after I was immersed in quick internet articles, I realised I haven't finished a book in ages. Which made me slowly read more, having that extra page after "mental exhaustion", slowly working my way up to a while chapter ... trying to get back into the habit.

Now at age 41, I read long stuff again - best decision I've made. But I am under no illusion that I won't fall back into bit-sized consumption if I would stop keeping it up.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#145

Post by dunemaster »

baash05 wrote: post #136

Clean code... To this day I cringe when I see methods/functions over 20 lines long.. Or when I see commented code blocks in one function.. Other have mentioned The Mythical Man Month, and I'd say it's a great book. Sadly, more often than not, it's something I wish I could staple to managements foreheads. "read this now before our next planning session" The Rspec book was a great book, that helped me fully embrace TDD…

Why the dots?

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#146

Post by Jare »

lovecg wrote: post #22

I’ve read The Pragmatic Programmer. It’s not a bad book - I was nodding along the whole way. And that’s sort of the problem with the books of this genre. The thing is, I recognize that these are good techniques because I already spent lots of time applying them. I just don’t know if the idea of compressing years of hands on experience into a textbook works well in practice. This goes for most self-help books as well.

When I read it I too found myself recognizing almost everything it says and it all felt almost obvious... I already had most of those insights myself, am I learning anything?

The real value is that it is much much harder to pass that sort of insight along to engineers you work with or (especially more junior) manage. Books like that didn't make me a better writer of code, but I think they made me a much better communicator, engineer and manager.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#147

Post by aastronaut »

whytaka wrote: post #92

As a self taught dev, the books that helped me most are: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software The Design of the UNIX Operating System Designing Data-Intensive Applications They taught me that there is no magic. Everything is logical and comprehensible.

As another self taught, my favorites would currently be something like (from low- to high-level):

- The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Compiler from First Principles

- Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces

- Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud

- Exercises in Programming Style

- The Little Typer

- Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#148

Post by sateesh »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #124
dhosek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Programming is ultimately pretty simple. The hard part is the specific domain knowledge of the business.

You kind of have to be a rebel to get that knowledge. Most teams don’t want developers talking to customers or spending time understanding the domain beyond their next ticket, and even in that case they’ll get a product managers distilled version. If the industry has courses/exams and a path of its own that’s helpful so you can get the knowledge that way.

I don't think that is the case, or atleast that has not been my experience. Most teams would be happy if you do these, but not affecting the next deliverable. So if you are willing or can spend extra hours that becomes manageable, but one can't always be in a position to spend more hours working (priorities, family etc.). What would be best is team encourages your involvement and factors that in deciding the target date of your deliverables. This would win for both since knowing domain makes one to understand the problem better and program beetter.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#149

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Osiris wrote: post #61

Is it just me or do other people struggle to read these kinds of very technical books? It's not that I don't comprehend, it's that my brain finds it boring and hard to focus. I think I have trained my brain so much on rapid skimming of websites for useful info, while throwing away most of the content, that I tend to do the same with books, which really doesn't work well. Has anyone found alternative ways to consume t…

It doesnt detract from your general point but I dont think any of these recommended books would qualify as very technical.

Pragmatic Programmer for example could be thought of as a very curated list of blog articles. Great book, but also not intimidating or deeply technical in that sense.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#150

Post by ok_dad »

buzzwords wrote: post #131

Maybe this the best place to ask this. Unfortunately I've ended up supporting application and not actually coding so during interviews I can't get past technical parts. I feel very embarrassed by my lack of technical abilities. Anyone else had this issue? How did you rise above it?

Try to find positions where they care more about your thought process and your past experience than in your ability to memorize facts about computers. I'm pretty good at my job and make pretty good software (I think), but I couldn't tell you how to form a red-black tree or do a bubble sort. I routinely look up simple Python syntax and how to articles on bash, but nonetheless I get good jobs, and I can reason about a problem and I can read and understand technical documentation. I started barely knowing Python and googling literally everything, like for loop syntax. I'm not going to be the next big name, but I have satisfaction in life and do ok.
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