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What Book(s) Are You Currently Reading To Be a Better Programmer?

Jeannie Nguyen on August 21, 2020

I just started The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas.

You can view the list of tips to become a better programmer from The Pragmatic Programmer here.

What book(s) are you reading right now?

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Stephen Leyva (He/Him)

Currently reading “The Linux Programming Interface”. There’s a lot of features in the Linux that are typically exposed in most languages and allow you to leverage the full power of the OS. Cool to add tools to the tool box!

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scroung720

Software Engineering at Google I just finished the 8th chapter out of 22. It has very interesting ideas, cover a lot of stuff. I wouldn't say it is a masterpiece but I do recommend it for any CTO or technical leader to read it because it covers many topics.

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Martín Vukovic • Edited

I am "listening" The Pragmatic Programmer via the Coding Blocks podcast. They have a series of episodes about the book ;)

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Jeannie Nguyen • Edited

Nice! How do you like the Coding Blocks podcast and what do you think of the book so far?

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Martín Vukovic

The podcast is interesting, they are experienced developers just talking about a different topic each episode, and they give some cool insights.
The series about the Pragmatic Programmer are some of the best episodes, specially the first couple. There's a lot to process. It gives many things to have a frame of reference when coding, refactoring, planing, even selling projects.

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Nicolas Del Piano

I read the book and this podcast is an awesome way to go over the contents of the book. Thanks!

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Benjamin Trent • Edited

Good programmers avoid burnout, love creating/nurturing things, and are effective writers.

Consequently, I have been reading New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry. Its a collection of poems by a farmer in Kentucky. Helps put things in perspective.

Don't get stuck only reading technical things.

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Carlos A.

Thanks for the link. About a book I'm reading, UML @ Classroom - An introduction to Object Oriented Modeling.

I want to get/set an image of the required system, so I can stop wandering with the IDE and check the correct files. Also to better describe the system/problem to my peers.

The path to be a senior is quite long.

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Jeannie Nguyen

Haha, it definitely is a long path, Carlos! But we'll get there!

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Lex Ned

I just finished reading Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin. It was a good read. For the most part, the book presented the ideas from Clean Code from the point of view of the architect. For me, part 5, Architecture was the most interesting. Although I don't feel like I gained new knowledge from the Clean Architecture book, it gave me good exercises for thought.

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Cesar Napoleon Mejia Leiva • Edited

I just started reading Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby (POODR) by Sandy Metz. I work with python (Django), so I plan to convert most of the code examples to Python 3 as I progress through the book. I'm only through chapter 3 at the moment, but even at this early stage, it's clear that POODR is an excellent choice for anyone interested in writting effective OO software.

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***

I read that one last year, but I didnt do the examples which I think was huge mistake, might re-read it while doing the examples.

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Illia Zub

Sandi Metz's POODR is brilliant! Have you ever read Confident Ruby by Avdi Grimm?

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Francisco M. Delgado

I just ordered Planning Extreme Programming. Oldie but goodie, I hear.

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Illia Zub

Have you read TDD by Example by the same author?

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Francisco M. Delgado

I have not! Do you recommend?

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Illia Zub

For sure! If you'll enjoy it, I'd also suggest to read GOOSGT. It felt like I observed the everyday job of seasoned programmers in a text mode. The similar feeling I had while watching RailsCasts.

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Abdisalan

Designing Data Intensive Applications - Really awesome if you want to be a better back-end engineer

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Marc Jerome

I finished reading TDD with python last month. It was a nice book to read for a programmer without testing experience because not only it taught me about the topic, it emphasized the importance and value of testing.

Last week I read the docs of django rest framework and also another ebook about it which is recommended by the docs. I got the concept but it's kinda missing something so I decided to read "The design of Web APIs". So far, I can say it's a good book that gives you priniciples in designing APIs.

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Nirav Nikhil

Great suggestions for books in the comments, but I'll suggest some interesting blogs.

  1. Steve Yegge: Great writing style, powerful ideas
  2. Joel on Software: Absolutely essential advice
  3. James Mickens: Extremely fun stream-of-consciousness writing, just try one of his pieces

The great thing about blogs is that they will often just plant seeds of ideas in your head, and you get to think for yourself. Know more cool blogs? List them below.

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Peter Kang

I just ordered a Kindle and have Clean Code and Pragmatic Programmer queued up. Reading game about to go crazy 🔥

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Pablo Herrero

I recently finished Clean Code and now I am with Pragmatic programmer. Two essential books!

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Bento

I'm currently reading The Lean Startup =)

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Jens Genberg

Functional Programming in C#.
manning.com/books/functional-progr...

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Brian Hannaway

I'm reading Release It! by Michael Nygard, for the second time. I really love this book... It focuses on patterns and practices that help you build robust, production ready applications. There are lots of stories about real life production issues and incidents, along with measures taken to resolve them. The book doesn't focus on any particular tech stack, so its a great read no matter what stack you're working with.

There's a revised version available which I'm hopefully going to get my hands on soon.

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Visakh Vijayan

I see a lot of people are reading this. Makes me curious. What is special about this?

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Jeannie Nguyen

It's a good read if you're into constant improvement, Visakh! I consider it a good reference book regardless of which stage of your career you're currently at. There's this post on Medium that breaks down why it's so essential.

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Yuri Costa

Clean Coder, TDD with python, DDD Distilled.

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Manyong'oments

Learn Python 3 The Hard Way and Flutter In Action

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Jesse

I'm reading Joel On Software; a little outdated (1999-2004), but really insightful stuff regardless 😄

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chuylerma • Edited

Eloquent Ruby is a good book that I wished to read before I started to Code in ruby. Anyway never is to late to improve my ruby' skills :)

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fraybabak

you dont know js async await.

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Illia Zub

Just finished This is Marketing and now revising Skin in the Game.

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Christian Javellana

Confluent’s free ebook
confluent.io/designing-event-drive...