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Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual - Book review

John Hotterbeekx on September 17, 2018

This is a book review for Soft Skills: The software developer's life manual. Everybody has read a decent amount of books about technical subjects,...
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Ben Halpern

I loved this book. I’m not the biggest fan of Simple Programmmer and Sonmez’ other work. I always feel like I’m being sold to. But his book writing is wonderful.

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Tamas Fodor

I always feel like I’m being sold to

I think John is a great guy but yes, you have to be very careful because he's also a master of sales.
I mean, a lot of his work is great and he definitely deserves the money (in my opinion). I bought his workbook about blogging and loved it. I'm also a big fan of the Bulldog mindset channel. I usually watch an episode in the morning to kick off the day.

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John Hotterbeekx

I get your feeling, but looking at how I used to feel about Uncle Bob' character I think I just need some time getting used to him.

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Carla Augusto

I liked this book but I didn't finish reading it all as I found the other Jonh Sonmez' book much better. The one called "The Complete Software Developer's".

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John Hotterbeekx

I haven't read that one yet, could you give me some insights on why you think his other book is better?

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Carla Augusto

In contrast to Soft Skills book, the other book solely focuses on the career aspect of a software developer. For someone who is new (like me) to software development the other one is really useful. It helps to understand what we need to do and learn to get there.

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Aral Roca

Looks also interesting! Im going to read it! Thanks

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Aly Sivji • Edited

Incorporating the lessons from Soft Skills into my life was the catalyst in my career change to being a professional Software Engineer. I started a blog, gave my first talk, became active in the local Python community because of this book.

Cannot recommend it enough!

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Rachel Soderberg

This was one of the first books I read this year and although I did enjoy most of it, I found some of what he wrote to be a little off-putting. Talking about his body fat percentage and how intelligent he is seemed like he had the need to brag about himself a little too often.

But that aside, I agree that it was a very good book and essential to every developer's reading (even better if they can read it early in their career/during their college years).

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Md Abu Taher

I went to buy this few days ago and couldn't find it in whole market. -_-

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Víctor Gómez

Order it online, man. I had the same problem and doing that solved it.

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Md Abu Taher

Ahahaha, I have at least 100 books in wishlist and buying them all would cost me at least $2k :D I have other awesome books in the list.

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Rachel Soderberg

Use your local public library! I've saved hundreds of dollars already because the vast number of technical books they have available is crazy (and most have an option to request the purchase of books they don't already have - so you can improve their collection)

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Md Abu Taher

Sadly the local public libraries are extinct :(. At least the ones we created are robbed off and the one that still exists are not near my area.

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Rachel Soderberg

No! That's a shame :( I'm lucky that the one in my city is very nice and keeps a fresh stock of books that come out. Sorry to hear about your local libraries, that makes me sad.

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Raja Asyraf

Nice review! I would love to get a copy of this book as soon as possible.

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Aral Roca

Added to Goodreads as book to read. Thanks for sharing!

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Vladimir Pavlychev

Well. Thank You fo review. :memo: