Books that changed my career as a software engineer • Hacker News Board

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#51

Post by bitexploder » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

fargo wrote: post #50

hintymad wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Outliers' chapter on Chinese people and rice field preposterous. It was like reading astrology: The entire Chinese people have grit, and their grit came from growing rice because it was such a laborious job. Really? Really? Really? Did the author even know that for thousands of years, it was the Northern China that dominated the history, and Northern Chinese largely grew wheat? And the book said Chinese were g…

yeah that's a huge problem with all of Gladwell's work. Compelling but unsupported.

The best description of have scene of the pop psychology and pop business books is “knowledge porn”. Guns germs and steel is like that. Makes the reader feel the secret history of the world or some topic is being revealed even though it’s at least partially, or wholly, fantasy :)

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#52

Post by diavelguru » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

I’m so happy these comments and conversations may take place now given we as software engineers have reached a saturation point where we are made up of those who are not just satisfied with a Java book or a Ruby book; rather we are made up of a body of members who use the tens of languages that are flourishing today in our programming stack.

I love it!

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#53

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #19

I'm not sure how any of these books have anything to do with actual career advancement. Career trajectory improvements are generally catalyzed by high-risk business decisions (e.g. doing a startup, joining as an early employee, job hopping, etc.), or political posturing (e.g. getting promoted, gaming the stack ranking, aggressive negotiations, etc.). Being a good engineer doesn't really have anything to do with eithe…

[deleted]

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#54

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #53

dvt wrote: post #19

I'm not sure how any of these books have anything to do with actual career advancement. Career trajectory improvements are generally catalyzed by high-risk business decisions (e.g. doing a startup, joining as an early employee, job hopping, etc.), or political posturing (e.g. getting promoted, gaming the stack ranking, aggressive negotiations, etc.). Being a good engineer doesn't really have anything to do with eithe…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#55

Post by wpietri » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

dvt wrote: post #19

I'm not sure how any of these books have anything to do with actual career advancement. Career trajectory improvements are generally catalyzed by high-risk business decisions (e.g. doing a startup, joining as an early employee, job hopping, etc.), or political posturing (e.g. getting promoted, gaming the stack ranking, aggressive negotiations, etc.). Being a good engineer doesn't really have anything to do with eithe…

Have you ever managed people? This bit does not match my experience at a number of companies: "you quite literally have no say [...] no one cares what your opinion is, as you have zero political capital".

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#56

Post by pcmoney » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:33 AM UTC

nomdep wrote: post #44

JavaBatman wrote: post #16

Is there a good book on object oriented programming for beginners? By beginners I mean people who code regularly but aren't software engineers.

If your language is Ruby or Python I would recommend Practical Object Oriented Design by Sandi Metz

I agree but I wouldn’t restrict the recommendation to just if you use python or ruby but if you want to use or understand any language in an OO fashion.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#57

Post by damontal » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

JavaBatman wrote: post #16

Is there a good book on object oriented programming for beginners? By beginners I mean people who code regularly but aren't software engineers.

As irritating as it is, the Head First book on OOP is actually decent for a novice.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#58

Post by dhosek » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:37 AM UTC

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.

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#59

Post by eatonphil » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

For me:

  * Effective Python
  * Designing Data Intensive Applications
  * High Performance Browser Networking
  * Google SRE Book (maybe)

Re: Books that changed my career as a software engineer

#60

Post by nefitty » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #51

fargo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah that's a huge problem with all of Gladwell's work. Compelling but unsupported.

The best description of have scene of the pop psychology and pop business books is “knowledge porn”. Guns germs and steel is like that. Makes the reader feel the secret history of the world or some topic is being revealed even though it’s at least partially, or wholly, fantasy :)

In my head, I consider these sorts of books more generalized models to run information through. For example, when I think about some historical occurrence I run it through evo bio, Marxism, geo determinism, critical race theory, symbolic culture, etc. Yeah, some of the origins of these models are dumbed-down, but my reasoning is that the more of these models I have, the closer I can get to that secret history :P