Introduction

Books offer wisdom in a nice package. It serves to enrich our mind and perception of the world. Good books fulfil a role as an invisible consultant. Who we call upon them for entertainment, inspiration, insights & wisdom to shape our minds. I believe where I am now is the direct result of good books I had read over the years. These books served to change my reality in how I view the world to become a sponge to learn new things about the world.

Unscripted By Mj DeMarco

I read Mj DeMarco's previous book called The Millionaire Fastlane and unlike your usual entrepreneurship books. He provides tons of tough love and truth bombs. The book literally busts your a** to adopt thinking patterns or perception as an entrepreneur. I like those ugly truth books that is simple, direct and hearty in how he tells his story. That is battle-tested in the trenches by these people.

The Unicorn Project By Gene Kim

A sequel to Gene Kim's famous book called The Phoenix Project. A book that I highly recommend it for those who have an interest in DevOps to pick it up. As the Unicorn Project covers stories and context of a developer. Who works in a large IT department works with jargon and technical terms that you may be familiar as a developer. The Unicorn project to incorporate lean manufacturing concepts & DevOps methodology. To me, it is not a tool book but more of a concept/philosophy book that uses stories as lessons to drive a point across.

Architecture Patterns with Python By Harry J.W. Percival, Bob Gregory

A followup of Harry Percival book called Test Driven Web Development with Python was one of the few books that talks about Django & TDD.

In his new book, he goes deep and talks about various concepts & architecture patterns used in other programming languages. While providing you examples by himself and his co-author with Python with TDD. Therefore if you are a person interest in testing & Python, it will serve you well to dive deep into it.

The Mom Test By Rob Fitzpatrick

I heard about it from in one of the podcast episode in IndieHacker that talks on customer development, sales and conducting user interviews for your startup.

What I found interesting besides it being a sales book. The book is written for techies by techies. So any developer or techie can use it to build their indiehacker business or startup without much knowledge in sales & customer development.

Meditations By Marcus Aurelius

I had an interest in Stoicism due to the influence by Tim Ferriss. I read about the benefits as a personal operating system for yourself. This leads to me, collecting afew stoicism & philosophy books in my personal library. Meditations have been one of my favourite goto stoicism books. As it resonates with me the most on how I should view or operate in the world. If you have an interest in understanding the minds of famous people through biography or autobiography. The book is written as a self-reflection by Marcus Aurelius. Who is one of the 5 good Roman Emperor who had ruled Rome. During the reign, he had to endure constant invasion, civil war, famine, a pandemic that is much worst than covid19 in lethality.

Conclusion

These books are part of my open book list. I do take a while for me to read and absorb each book. So I tend to have a huge backlog of books that is in my open book reading list. So if you are into entrepreneurship & business checkout The Mom Test & Unscripted.

If your developer and wants to know more on Python, DevOps, testing and maintaining a legacy codebase. I would suggest you look at The Unicorn Project & Architecture Patterns with Python to serve you to become a better developer.

If you like Stoicism or is interested to read more on Stoicism. I would suggest you read my favourite Stoicism book called Meditations as a gateway drug into the Stoicism.

Lastly, are you looking to specialise as a developer? If yes, I’m giving away my free ebook called "Picking Your Specialisation as a Developer". It is for anyone interested in commanding a higher salary or simply doing the work they like.

This post includes affiliate links, I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.

Reference

• Read These Books Instead of Getting an MBA
• Unscripted
• The Phoenix Project
• The Unicorn Project
• Architecture Patterns with Python
• The Mom Test
• Meditations
• The Millionaire Fastlane
• Test Driven Web Development with Python
• IndieHacker
• Tim Ferriss
• How Marcus Aurelius Responded To A Pandemic | Ryan Holiday | Coronavirus and Stoicism
• How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System: From Seneca to Musashi