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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

#251

Post by archsurface »

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…

I suspect you didn't look at the article - I was caught off guard, they're not technical. It's not a list I would go near.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#252

Post by dgellow »

goodpoint wrote: post #201
dgellow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried audiobooks? It helps me a lot to do something boring, like cleaning the kitchen or emptying/filling the dishwasher, while I consume content. Somehow when my body is doing something in automated mode I can focus well on my thoughts or audio/video content. Audiobooks and podcasts are perfect for this, videos are a bit more difficult as you’re likely to miss something, and text content is not adapted at a…

I've never found a podcast that is not full of idle chatter. Admittedly I gave up searching after trying some astonishingly dull ones. The only exception was a Linux kernel podcast but the format was really unsuitable for the topic. Do you have any good technical podcast to recommend?

CppCast is awesome, even if you're not a C++ developer: https://cppcast.com/

"Algorithms + Data structures = programs": https://adspthepodcast.com/

Crypto Critics' Corner may be my favorite podcast: https://cryptocriticscorner.com/

Anything from microbe.tv: https://www.microbe.tv/science-shows/. They have podcasts covering evolution, microbiology, neuroscience, parasitism, virology, urban agriculture, and more. Lot of stuff to dig into, you can try and see which one you like.

Not technical, but I like to listen to Startup Therapy, I like how they openly talk about failures and mistakes: https://adspthepodcast.com/

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#253

Post by dgellow »

moffkalast wrote: post #188
dgellow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried audiobooks? It helps me a lot to do something boring, like cleaning the kitchen or emptying/filling the dishwasher, while I consume content. Somehow when my body is doing something in automated mode I can focus well on my thoughts or audio/video content. Audiobooks and podcasts are perfect for this, videos are a bit more difficult as you’re likely to miss something, and text content is not adapted at a…

Some people seems to find audiobooks and podcasts fantastic, but I think it's somewhat correlated with your multitasking capability. If I go on a walk listening to a podcast or have it on in the background while working on something else I absorb only like 5% of it because I can't focus on it. As such it's useless for me unless I literally lay back in bed and listen to it. At that point I might as well just read some…

Interesting, I have the opposite issue :)

I cannot just sit and listen without doing anything, I need to be doing something with my body to be able to stay focus on an audio feed. I mean, I can do it but I won't be able to keep my attention on the audio content. When I bike, walk, or do laundry, no problem at all!

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#254

Post by balaji1 »

euske wrote: post #129

Maybe they are good books, but I found that most of these summaries are bland and generic, as in these phrases: "The book is strictly about career development and it has a lot of insights ..." "The book is filled with classic and fresh anecdotes, thoughtful examples, ..." "This book is amazing to understand the corporate structure and how you should behave ..." These generic praises aren't good enough to overcome my…

I thought I was the only one who felt this way^. Dunno why this article is upvoted so much. Actually the post heading itself seemed so clickbait-y that I didn't click into this link and the comments until it reached 500 votes.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#255

Post by mattcwilson »

rzzzt wrote: post #228
ignoramous wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow." -Charles Browder Not just ideas, people have lost their careers to unkind jibes. Here's English Cricketer Monty Panesar explaining the unexpected course his life took after a retort by Australian cricketer Shane Warne that "Panesar hasn't played 33 matches,…

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times." - Bruce Lee So now I'm thoroughly confused, which one is better?

The intentional one.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#256

Post by solarmist »

rzzzt wrote: post #228
ignoramous wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow." -Charles Browder Not just ideas, people have lost their careers to unkind jibes. Here's English Cricketer Monty Panesar explaining the unexpected course his life took after a retort by Australian cricketer Shane Warne that "Panesar hasn't played 33 matches,…

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10000 times." - Bruce Lee So now I'm thoroughly confused, which one is better?

I'm pretty sure Bruce Lee would agree that the one kick needs to be employed in many contexts and situations for that to hold.

I don't think the concept was as well known. There was less chance for robotic/fragile implementation of things in the past.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#258

Post by exdsq »

shu15 wrote: post #102
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…

Would you mind sharing the investment finance cert you read?

https://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-website/study-with-us/fou...

I believe it was this one with a slightly different name

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#259

Post by exdsq »

rmk wrote: post #113
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…

This is good advice for something like finance. But many software companies are out to "disrupt" very broad areas, and unless you intend to stick in one such area, I doubt there is a whole lot of benefit to doing that. For example, if you are developing software at Uber, there is no "domain" to speak of. Ditto for a search engine at Google. The company pioneered information retrieval in the internet age, so what's th…

Uber:

- "Hey, I saw a statistic that females are anxious about taking taxis at night in France. Why don't we add a feature to let people share their locations with others?"

- "In London taxi drivers have to pass The Knowledge, a test on roads! Have we considered adding a similar pre-requisite test for drivers in that city?"

- "I noticed a lot of drivers on Reddit have been complaining that the tips aren't viewable on the app, but we have the data. Why don't we add that to the drivers UI?"

Etc... The sources of this information would be user channels like Reddit, taxi-related news sources in countries you operate in, and keeping up to date on legislation. Sure you might not have the ability to make any of these changes yet but if you stay ahead on these factors it's definitely the way to move into a position where you can have that level of impact.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#260

Post by croo »

wiseowise wrote: post #158
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…

> 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.. To this day I cringe when I see dogmatic opinions of a fraud taken like an absolute truth.

Clean Code was the first book I read that suggested (with concrete examples and rules!) that I should use code as a communication medium to other programmers first and foremost, the orders you give to the computer comes second. It is an opinionated book and there are some dumb rules in it but it did way more good than harm to the dev community. Definitely not a fraud...
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