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Miranda
Miranda

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📚 Tell me your ABSOLUTE favorite books and online classes

Hello lovely, lovely dev community. ❤️️

I am currently putting together a list of developer resources to put on my blog, Books on Code, and I must know:

What are your absolute favorite, can't-stop-raving-about-them books and online classes?

I know there are plenty of resource lists out there already, but I think I rarely get to hear the books or classes that come top-of-mind to people that altered the history of their dev careers.

My ears are open!!

Top comments (34)

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banjoanton profile image
Anton Ödman • Edited

I'm a self-taught developer. I took three online courses before I landed my first job:

I can wholeheartedly recommend the three of them. All of them have been so fun and educative!

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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda

Love this, Anton! Do you have links to the classes? I think it's not enough information for me to find them myself.

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banjoanton profile image
Anton Ödman

Thank you! I have updated my comment with links to all classes. Good luck!

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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda • Edited

I enrolled in CS50 to give it a try. I've already taken computer science courses, so wondering if I'll still find the material valuable. Let me know. 😊

Edit: Nevermind. Started watching the lectures, and it's amazing

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banjoanton profile image
Anton Ödman • Edited

I haven't taken any other CS courses, so I don't know the coverage. But as you just added in your edit: the lectures (and teacher) is amazing, I firmly believe that every developer should take CS50 to learn the basics of CS! 😀

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helenanders26 profile image
Helen Anderson

Agreed! CS50 is a must for anyone working in tech to appreciate the basic concepts of CS

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jvr0x profile image
Javier ⚛️ • Edited

Not exactly connected to coding, but a book I read recently I totally loved is Indistractable by Nir Eyal. My life has improved a lot since I started taking control back from all the devices which are so full of distractions! Very pleasant and easy read, very actionable. Highly recommended.

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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda

Sounds valuable. I might just pick it up.

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jvr0x profile image
Javier ⚛️

It is golden!

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gypsydave5 profile image
David Wickes

If you're a vaguely confident with one programming language and are looking for something a bit different - a little bit crazy, a little bit genius, a whole lot of fun - may I recommend:

Land of Lisp

If you're looking for something a bit more practical, again want to learn a new language, explore a bit about how a computer works, but also see how to build useful things (and beautiful things!) well, try:

The Go Programming Language

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rodiongork profile image
Rodion Gorkovenko • Edited

There are tons of books on programming and related stuff nowadays. And hence usually no reason to buy or read them. They are dull, and we have internet.

I prefer browsing some old books, which don't give you particular instructions like "type this code, download this library, open browser console", but those which give opportunity to think. On my own.

One of nice examples is

Jacques Arsac - Jeux et casse-tête à programmer (French) - Programming of Games and Puzzles (Paperback – 1985)

This has translation into some languages (I read it in Russian for example). The fellow here suggests writing a few dozens "games" of those kind you more like to write than to play. But he don't explain unnecessary things. He motivate reader to think and invent something own.

That's priceless!

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larswww profile image
larswww

Clean Code - Robert C Martin

MongoDB University

  • especially the courses on Data Modeling, Performance and Aggregation. It'll show you what mongodb really can do and make building apps sooo much easier. With less code.
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_marekj profile image
Marek Jay • Edited

Sandi Metz. Practial Object Oriented Programming with Ruby.

amazon.com/Practical-Object-Orient...

Testing with JUnit, Frank Appel
learning.oreilly.com/library/view/...

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jamesdengel profile image
James dengel

I'm really enjoying reading and learning with Test Driven Development for Embedded C

It's opening my eyes to a new world of testability in C.

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gskoba profile image
Grigoriy Skobelev
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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda

I can add a one of my own contributions:

On Coursera, the Rice University Computing concentration. The professors were fun (with ongoing, corny jokes), the assignments were the perfect amount of challenge, and it really had the material and rigor of a university computer science curriculum.

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svaza profile image
Santosh Vaza

a. Microservices and Patterns by Chris Richardson
b. Clean Code by Robert Martin
c. Dive into design patterns by Alexander Shvets
d. Designing event driven systems by Ben Stopford

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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda

Clean Code is always the one I hear about.
Perhaps it is mandatory reading for me at this point. 🤔

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jvr0x profile image
Javier ⚛️

Clean Code is definitely a must! I would also recommend The Pragmatic Programmer, Clean Architecture, Clean Coder.

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mlimonczenko profile image
Miranda

Yes! Pragmatic Programmer is on my nightstand.