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10 Fantastic Books By Developers For Developers

Simon Holdorf on December 28, 2020

Reading books still is a great way to discover and learn new skills, especially for developers, to stay relevant in the fastly changing tech indust...
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javinpaul

Great list Simon and thx for including my book. I actually like the idea of a developer for developer books, keep it up.

P. S. - Anyone interested in buying my book Grokking the Java interview can get it now for just $10.99 (usually $19.9) until tomorrow.
Here is the link - gumroad.com/l/QqjGH

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Simon Holdorf

Sure thing, you deserve it :)

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Mohammad Emran Hasan

Great list, thanks for aggregating them!

I'd also include "Doing Content Right" by Steph Smith on the list, it is a well-organized book on creating content on a consistent basis. It also sheds light on building your blog, doing SEO, adding monetization, etc.

Link: bit.ly/DCR-2020 (affiliate).

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Simon Holdorf

Thanks for the comment, gonna reach out to her!

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AlbertoM

Nice list! If anybody is interested in JavaScript i have a book that's free to read on GitHub github.com/AlbertoMontalesi/The-co...

There's also a course by the same name on educative, i won't link because I'm spamming myself enough

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Simon Holdorf

Hey Alberto, would be cool if you add your book to the site so othersca find it there 😊

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AlbertoM

Done! One suggestion may be to be able to select both Free and Paid. For example my book (but also the YDKJS book 1) are free to read on github or you can pay for it on leanpub/amazon.

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Simon Holdorf

Hey Alberto, thanks for the submission. That's a good hint, will add this to my roadmap!

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Marcel Cruz

Awesome list, thanks for sharing!

In case you're interested, I've put up a bunch of resources for developers on devresourc.es, and I'll make sure to add a "books" section there too.

Feel free to check it out! :)

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Harris Geo 👨🏻‍💻

Awesome list! I will definitely check most of them!

Another one that is a really interesting read and good to use as a guide for many stuff is the O' Reilly: Software Engineering at Google learning.oreilly.com/library/view/...

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Simon Holdorf

Thank you, Harris!

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swyx

thanks very much for the mention! :) :)

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lepinekong

intend to buy it but by the way the cover lacks a bit of sex appeal ;)

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swyx

thanks haha yeah i am no designer, spent like 2 hours on it on canva and then never touched it again. will happily take a redesign idea if you have them.. or i might do some kind of 99designs contest in june when i launch v2

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lepinekong

OK I'll propose a new cover :)

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lepinekong

I made a simple cover for my future own book (in french) dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/...

Do you like that kind of style ?

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swyx profile image
swyx

the font and colors look good, but it's a lot of words! still overall feels professional, nice job.

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lepinekong

Yes but it's for the frenches :D Yours don't have so many words so it should be even easier to do the cover :)

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lepinekong • Edited

I made a quick cover for your book i.imgur.com/aWAyxVk.png

Of course don't bother if you don't like it ;)

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swyx profile image
swyx

oh nice, thank you very much!

but yea i like the one i have now compared to this... the point was to have one duck with the sunglasses, so that it symbolizes the reader who is a cool duck compared to the others 😂

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lepinekong

ok fine :)

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Periklis Gkolias

I didnt know some of the books, thanks for bringing them up. Please don't forget "Your first year in code" which was written from a team of dev.to members :)

leanpub.com/firstyearincode

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Simon Holdorf

Right, we should add that!

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Simon Holdorf

And it's live :)

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Periklis Gkolias

Thank you :)

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Dave Ceddia

This is a great list! Thanks for including my book :)

I'll recommend another! One that I really like is Sandi Metz's Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby (she's given some excellent talks as well).

It taught me a lot about software design, how to think about where responsibilities should lie, which parts of the code should "own" behaviors, and that kind of thing. Software design stuff can be really abstract (e.g. Design Patterns) but Sandi's book makes it understandable with concrete examples. I think it's pretty accessible even if you don't know Ruby, and the things it talks about are mostly universal principles that apply to functional and OO styles alike. Definitely worth checking out.

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Simon Holdorf

Love your book, Dave, of course, it's on the list :)

And thanks for the recommendation, I will take care of that! And Sandi can even add it to the site on her own if she wants :)

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Andriy Chemerynskiy • Edited

I would also recommend book "Make" by Pieter Levels

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Simon Holdorf

Yeah, I like that one!

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Bobby Iliev

Great list and as always great article 🙌

You can check out my open-sources Introduction to Bash Scripting eBook here too:

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Simon Holdorf

Hey Bobby, thank you! You could add your book so that others can find it :)

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Bobby Iliev

Thanks for the suggestion! I've just submitted it! 🙌

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Simon Holdorf

Awesome, I already pushed it to the site :)

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Bobby Iliev

Awesome! Thanks for that!

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Nadia Zhuk

Awesome list!

If anyone is looking for a comprehensive self-help book for aspiring coders, you might want to check out my book "Crossing the Rubycon: How to Learn to Code and Build a Programming Career" gumroad.com/l/fhIFH

I packed the book with concrete, practical advice as well as useful insider tips and encouraging stories about learning to code and finding a programming job as a code newbie. All in all, this is the book I wish I could have read 3 years ago when I was teaching myself to code.

P.S. You can check out reviews from the readers on goodreads goodreads.com/book/show/56082981-c...

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RealToughCandy.io

Great list and great idea with DevBooks! We have lots of awesome indie authors in our field. I've also written a few dev career books (Portfolio Surgery, Freelance Newbie, How to Get a Job in Web Development) and will definitely be submitting them soon!

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Simon Holdorf

Cool!

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Barry

Great list I really enjoyed that this didn't include any of the titles I was assuming to see in a programming/dev book list.

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Simon Holdorf

Thanks, Barry. Yeah, I think we've already seen the same 10 books over and over again :)

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Arvind Padmanabhan

Thanks for sharing. Interestingly, "for developers. by developers" is Devopedia's tagline.

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Simon Holdorf

Didn't know that but it's a good fit :)

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Kirby Shabaga

Thanks for sharing the list!

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Simon Holdorf

Sure thing, glad you like it!

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Zayidu A

Thanks!

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Simon Holdorf

Sure thing!

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Viet NT

Great! Thanks

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Harshal-11

Thanks a lot, Simon for such a great blog. It is really very helpful.

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Simon Holdorf

You are welcome, my friend :)

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Khusaeni Al-Qolbinnadhzifi

awesome <3

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Simon Holdorf

Glad you like it! :)

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Jonathan Yeong

I really enjoyed reading Building an Effective Dev Portfolio! So many awesome tips, and I've used the cover letter section to revamp my own cover letters.

Great list, thanks Simon!

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Simon Holdorf

Glad you like it, Jonathan :)

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Farhan Rizvi

Though all the books seems great, I loved the Building an Effective Dev Portfolio book! Thanks for the awesome collection.

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Simon Holdorf

Yeah, it's a great read, glad you like it!

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Autumn

I've published a lot of free developer books, some on my dev.to but most here if you wanna check them out :D

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Simon Holdorf

Thanks, will do!

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Simon Holdorf

Thank you, Greg!

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CJ McCaskill

Thank you for putting together this list of excellent reading materials.

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Simon Holdorf

Sure thing!

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Helio da Silva Jr.

Great list ! Thank you.

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Simon Holdorf

you're welcome :)

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Simon Holdorf

Thanks :)

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Ricardo Manoel

I recommend Grokking Algorithms by Aditya Bhargava.

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Simon Holdorf

Thanks, let's see if we can get his book submitted

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Simon Holdorf

If you know of some fantastic books that are missing, please mention them and reach out to their authors to submit them :)

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Max Hamulyák

I think any of the books by IDesign would be a very nice addition to this list. Especially the "Righting Software" one, for more info see idesign.net/Leadership/Books