Books for Software Engineers in 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#21

Post by galoisscobi » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:09 AM UTC

I read Build, The Pragmatic Programmer and A Philosophy of Software Design last year. All three were excellent reads. My favorite take away from A Philosophy of Software Design was to try to make low-level functions more general and high-level functions application specific/concrete.

I have been working on improving my API design skills, and I felt that particular insight helped evolve APIs nicely as the spec updates or I need to add new features to my projects and reduced the need for refactoring and big design revisions.

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#22

Post by User23 » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:13 AM UTC

A Discipline of Programming by Edsger Dijkstra. It’s an approachable introduction to a frankly under-taught approach to programming.

Being able to apply mathematical reasoning to programming is perhaps the main reason to use a functional approach. But mathematical reasoning isn’t restricted to functional style programs! All imperative programs can be described by purely functional mappings between points in a program state space with each in scope variable naming a dimension.

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#23

Post by llimllib » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:19 AM UTC

A Philosophy of Software Design is excellent, I dislike almost all programming books but that one is great.

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#24

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #15

> “Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time” Isn't Google's software engineering culture kind of a joke right now? I've spoken to multiple ex-Googlers and they tell me they leave because everything moves at a snail's pace. From the outside looking in, it seems like absolutely nothing is being done in Google and I would not want to replicate their engineering culture in any company. P…

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Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#25

Post by Panini_Jones » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:21 AM UTC

glisom wrote: post #2

As a software engineer, staying up-to-date with the latest developments and best practices is essential for growth. One of my favorite (and what I feel is overlooked) methods for growth is reading books. We spend a large part of our day reading Stack Overflow...

Why did you repeat the first 1.5 sentences of the article?

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#26

Post by smohare » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:23 AM UTC

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Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#27

Post by Jtsummers » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:23 AM UTC

quartesixte wrote: post #19

andrewf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought The Goal was more generally applicable. Its core idea ("theory of constraints") is described in terms of a factory floor where different workstations have different throughputs/latencies/reliability; you could apply that to a diagram of a distributed system [0], CPU [1] or server [2]. Examples: [0] https://d1.awsstatic.com/architecture-diagrams/ArchitectureD... [1] https://chipsandcheese.com/2022/11/05/amds…

The Goal is interestingly written as a work of narrative fiction. Which threw me off at the very start. I feel like it would make a great movie a la The Big Short. The academic paper in the appendix is super useful as well.

https://www.toc-goldratt.com/en/product/the-goal-movie-how-t...

The movie has been made! 46 minutes, I remembered it being shorter for some reason.

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#28

Post by elorant » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:25 AM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #5

I read two of these last year and I'd recomend both, but I wanted to give my two cents on them. The Phoenix Project: I really enjoyed reading this, but it's told as a story about fictional characters working at a fictional company, which I didn't expect. Because of the way it's written, some other people I know who read it found it a bit too fluffy. Also, from what I've heard, it's pretty much an IT focused version o…

I've read The Unicorn Project. I haven't read the Phoenix one though so I can't draw comparisons, but I enjoyed it immensely because it describes how a big auto parts corporation works from different points of view. One chapter I particularly liked was more about marketing and crm than devops, although there's lots of that in there too.

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#29

Post by Waterluvian » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:25 AM UTC

“This book is a must-read for any serious software engineer.”

This isn’t necessarily wrong but it always reminds me of the era when I had severe impostor syndrome. I haven’t read any of these books and I’m doing very well. I guess I’m just not serious enough. :)

Re: Books for Software Engineers in 2023

#30

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 1:31 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #29

“This book is a must-read for any serious software engineer.” This isn’t necessarily wrong but it always reminds me of the era when I had severe impostor syndrome. I haven’t read any of these books and I’m doing very well. I guess I’m just not serious enough. :)

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