What better way to broaden your horizons than to read a valuable programming book?
The books presented here focus on making you a better programmer – no matter your tech stack.
Code is the centre of our lives – hope this list will help you to get better at it.
📚The Phoenix Project
This is the book which started it all for me. The dream – DevOps, Cloud, Automation.
The novella presents a company’s transformation from classical ops to DevOps. With all the drama on the way.
The story goes about the IT Manager who needs to straighten up the IT operations for the company – or the company will go under.
The are several personas which you probably met in your workplace.
People like Brent – the all-knowing geek who knows everything about every system, and keeps it in his head. Or Eric, who is like Yoda, who guides the main character.
This book taught me to recognise four kinds of work: business projects, internal projects, changes and unplanned work.
The book shows the journey which a company needs to take to change its ways – in this case from classic IT to DevOps.
If you’re in IT, you should read it. If you’re in dev, you should read it.
Oh and if you like audiobooks, the Audible version has great voice acting – after years I can still hear Eric’s voice in my head.
📚The Unicorn Project
Another project about another mysterious creature? This book is a sequel to The Phoenix Project, happening in a similar timeline.
It’s told from the perspective of developers.
The book focuses on exploring five ideals:
- Locality and simplicity
- Focus, Flow and Joy
- Improvement of Daily Work
- Psychological Safety
- Customer Focus
Over time I find it more valuable than The Phoenix Project. This might be related to my career focus as I’m much closer to the Dev side.
If you’ve read The Phoenix Project and feel you need more, read this book.
📚The Goal
If there’s one book I keep quoting over and over, it’s The Goal.
The book focuses on the Theory of Constraints.
By absorbing the knowledge from the book, you will learn how to identify bottlenecks.
Every system has a bottleneck. It could be prolonged testing time, awaiting approvals, rate limiting API or unreachable decision makers.
There are three main elements affecting performance:
- Throutput: the speed of generating money through sales
- Inventory: Money invested in the system
- Operational expenses: Money spent to turn inventory into throughput
Your goal is to make throughput going up, and inventory with operational expenses going down.
Now, it doesn’t sound a lot related to IT at first. Once you’ve absorbed the book, you realise you can apply this equation to anything.
While it’s not a programming book per se, the problems, solutions and knowledge apply to today’s world. As well as programming.
📚The Pragmatic Programmer
This programming book is just a goldmine of practical knowledge.
You will learn how and why it’s important to take ownership of your work. Quality, maintainability and effectiveness of your code prove you take your work seriously.
IT is a rapidly changing field, and it’s easy to fall behind. Learning a new language every year and continuously learning are the ways to be always ready for emerging trends, threats and technologies.
Have you ever talked to a rubber duck? It’s a debugging technique, where you explain your problem to the duck. Sounds absurd at first, but it works. Talking forces you to think out loud – which is often enough to take you down the wrong rabbit hole.
My main takeaway is that the software is a garden rather than a building. Over time it grows in various places and might need trimming here and there.
There are many more insights in the book.
📚The Software Engineer’s Guidebook
If you were looking at one book on operating your programming career, pick this one.
The author worked in a number of big companies like Uber, as well as startups, and presents his knowledge on how to navigate your career.
You will learn about:
- Building your career path – both engineering and managerial.
- Differences between big and small companies.
- How to improve your technical and coding skills.
- Planning and designing your application.
- Soft skills, communication, problem-solving and adaptability
- Tips on how to prepare for an interview or performance review. What does it take to go from senior to staff.
This book (finally) convinced me to maintain my work log (or brag document, if you wish)
It’s one of the books which can grow with you, as you gain more knowledge and climb next seniority level.
Therefore it’s worth coming back to it from time to time.
📚Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual
This book focuses on everything around the life of a software engineer.
While we will see here ideas about Career development, the reader will learn as well about:
- Productivity techniques, time management and being focused
- Financial management, from savings to investment
- Wellbeing and fitness
- Soft skills in the form of communication, networking and self-marketing.
Is it safe to say this book falls in the category of self-help books, tailored to developers? Let me know (once you read it!)
📚Being Geek
This book is interesting, but somewhat I can’t classify it.
There’s a lot about career management. Going from getting the job, being promoted… to hunting for another job.
There’s even a special section on how to handle a Geek – that is you as a reader, are meant to show that part of the book to your other half.
I enjoyed this book, but I can’t pinpoint a particular reason why.
Maybe because it showed the perspective of IT manager, and how they need to handle problems on their side?
📚Shell of an Idea
This book documents the story of how PowerShell was created.
Thinking the product which is now a built-in part of Windows and official Microsoft’s management tool would be easy? Wrong.
PowerShell almost didn’t happen.
It’s a testament to why working on what you truly believe is worth it. There will be pain, and there will be obstacles – these are part of the journey.
And if PowerShell brought you here, make sure to check my PowerShell course for IT Professionals and Free PowerShell Best Practices E-book
This is the list – have you read any of these books? Did I encourage you to read any of these books?
Let us know, and share your favourite books in the comments!
