Daniel Worthy

Software Engineer on Match

Been with JBH since Fall 2023
Been building web apps 'professionally' since 2007
I like to build stuff -> Wood, 3D printing, LEGO
I'm terrified of public speaking
I've become obsessed with getting tattoos

What we are going to cover

'Essential' Dev Books
Career Path Books
Process Books
Team/Lifestyle Books
'Fun' Reads

My Biases

Story Time

In late 2007, web development was pretty primitive when it came to 'free' resources.

Online documentation was terrible
Stack Overflow wasn't a thing until Sept 2008
Community hadn't embraced open source or knowledge sharing (at least in the ASP.NET world)
Coding books you owned were most likely from college/highschool

Why should we be reading books?

Short form content only covers so much
Broaden our knowledge base
Provide new perspectives
Motivational

Guess What?

I don't enjoy reading. It's hard.

I listen to almost all my books.

It is significantly more convenient

Invest in an
Audible subscription

Developer Books

Valuable, but potentially boring

The Foundational 1 Page Book

The Agile Manifesto

17 people | 2001

Book

Look for these author's books
    covers the 12 principles of agile software

One Big Book To Rule Them All

Code Complete Vol 2

Steve McConnell | 2004

Book

Really good book on the basics of coding. 

It offers a lot of practical advice on how to write good code.

It is a little heavier on the water fall side of planning, but still a good read.

914 pages

The 'Text Books'

The Mythical Man Month

Frederick Brooks | 1975

Book

Refactoring

Improving the Design of Existing Code

Martin Fowler*, Kent Beck* | 1999 / 2018

Book

Mythical Man Month:
Brook's Law
'Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.'
    
Refactoring:
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
 Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

This book provides reasons for refactoring, the mechanics 
behind it and examples of refactoring

The true test of good code is how easy it is to change it

With refactoring, we can take a bad, even chaotic, 
design and rework it into well-structured code

The key to effective refactoring is recognizing 
that you go faster when you take tiny steps

Code

The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Charles Petzold | 2000

Book

Covers the absolute basics of how computers work.

Clean ________

Clean Code

A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Robert Martin* | 2008

Book Audio

The Clean Coder

Practical Advice for the Professional Programmer

Robert Martin | 2011

Book Audio

Clean Architecture

A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design

Robert Martin | 2017

Book Audio

Clean Agile

Back to Basics

Robert Martin | 2019

Book Audio

Clean Craftsmanship

Disciplines, Standards, and Ethics

Robert Martin | 2021

Book

Functional Design

Principles, Patterns, and Practices

Robert Martin | 2023

Book

Bob started programming in the 1970s
Clean Code:
Definition of clean code
Meaningful Variable Names
Functions
Good Comments
Formatting
Data Structures
Error Handling
TDD

Clean Coder:
Professionalism
Saying No / Saying Yes
Coding
TDD
Practicing
Communicating
Time Management
Estimations
Pressure
Collaboration

Clean architecture:
Reuse/release equivalence principle
Common closure principle
Common reuse principle
Acyclic dependencies principle
The stable dependency principle
Stable abstractions principle
Time Management
Estimations
Pressure
Collaboration

Clean Agile:
What is Agile?
What is proper SCRUM?
Business Practices
Team Practices
Technical Practices
Becoming Agile
Craftsmanship

Clean Craftsmanship:
Moving towards the "north star" of true software 
craftsmanship: the state of knowing how to program well

Practical, specific guidance for applying five core 
disciplines: test-driven development, refactoring, simple design,
collaborative programming, and acceptance tests

How developers and teams can promote productivity, quality, and courage

The true meaning of integrity and teamwork among programmers, 
and ten specific commitments every software professional should make

Functional Design:
Understand functional basics: immutability, persistent data, recursion, iteration, laziness, and statefulness

Nov 2024
We, Programmers: A Chronicle of Coders from Ada to AI

More Quality Books

Extreme Programming Explained

Embrace Change

Kent Beck*, Cynthia Andres | 2004,

Book

The Pragmatic Programmer

Your Journey To Mastery

David Thomas*, Andrew Hunt | 1999, 2019

Book Audio

Extreme Programming:
More of a 'how we got here book'.
Lots of early agile practices.

A Pragmatic Philosophy
DRY
Orthogonality
Tracer Bullets
Basic Tools
Power of Plain Text
Shell Games
No broken windows -> neglect accelerates the rot faster than any other factor.
20th anniv

Humor Break

If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript

Angus Croll

Book

If Tupac Wrote JS


var theyDigits, theStash, nextFigure, anEmptyHash = {} 
 
  function isChillin(maFigure) { 
    theStash = theStash || anEmptyHash 
   	NextFigure = 0 /* picture me nillin' */ 
   	/* in preparation fo' fillin' */ 
   	/* they precondition is partition so */
    doFissionOn(maFigure) 
   	sumTheySquares() /* quadratic addition, like a math'matician */ 
   	/* and the stash is the hash caching all my dead figures */ 
  	/* if your value is one, you won, or if you in tha' stash, you done */ 
  	if (nextFigure == 1) return "chillin" 
  	if (theStash[nextFigure] == 'x') return "illin" 
  	theStash[nextFigure] = 'x' /* keepin' the history */ 
  	/* breakin' the chain of iteration misery */ 
  	return isChillin(nextFigure) /* recurse, rejigga, re-traverse the verse */ 
  } 
 
  function doFissionOn(n) {theyDigits = n.toString().split('')} 
  function sumTheySquares() {theyDigits.forEach(function(n){nextFigure += n*n})}

Tech Mastery Career Path

Anything but being the boss

The Staff Engineer's Path

A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change

Tanya Reilly | 2022

Book Audio

Staff Engineer

Leadership beyond the management track

Will Larson | 2021

Book Audio

    path:
- Take a broad, strategic view when thinking about your work
- Dive into practical tactics for making projects succeed
- Determine what "good engineering" means in your organization

engineer:
Contains good advice on determining if you want to pursue staff or management.
    Interviews with Staff Engineers form Dropbox, Etsy, Slack, etc.

Modern Software Engineering

Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster

David Farley | 2021

Book Audio

Struggled on where to put this. References a lot of other books on this liss
    Farley is a co-author of Continuous Delivery
    has a decent youtube channel

Tech Leadership Career Path

The Manager's Path

A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

Camille Fournier | 2017

Book Audio


Begin by exploring what you expect from a manager
Understand what it takes to be a good mentor, and a good tech lead
Learn how to manage individual members while remaining focused on the entire team
Understand how to manage yourself and avoid common pitfalls that challenge many leaders
Manage multiple teams and learn how to manage managers
Learn how to build and bootstrap a unifying culture in teams
from:https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/

Extreme Ownership

How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

Jocko Willink, Leif Babin | 2015

Book Audio

    Ramadi, Iraq
    Story -> Principle -> Application to business
    No bad teams, only bad leaders
    How to lead up and down the chain of command.

Team Topologies

Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow

Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais | 2019

Book Audio

“Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly)
will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the 
organisation's communication structure.”
—. Conway    
Heavy Focus on Team Size, team autonomy, 
and ability to produce.

Start with Why Series

Start with Why

How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Simon Sinek | 2009

Book Audio

Leaders Eat Last

Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

Simon Sinek | 2014

Book Audio

Find Your Why

A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team

Simon Sinek, David Mead, Peter Docker | 2017

Book Audio

Sinek gotten popular on TED talks and tiktok
SWW -> They realized that people won't 
truly buy into a product, service,
 movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it
Leaders -> 
Marine Corps general conversation "officers eat last"
Great leaders sacrifice their own comfort--
even their own survival--for the good of 
those in their care
goes into the lengths some companies go through to avoid layoffs
Hits generation gaps and the differences 
in businesses though the day
FYW -> 
The book expands on the concepts of SWW
and how to apply them to your life and team

-The Infinite Game
-Together Is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration -Kids book

The Coaching Habit

Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Michael Bungay Stanier | 1905?!? 2016

Book Audio

questions, attitudes and habits for 
    managers of selfs staining teams
    
    7 questions to ask

Some war books!

The Art of War

Sun Tzu | 5th century BC

Book

On War

Carl Von Clausewitz | 1832

Book

 
 timeless wisdom about strategy, leadership, and conflict 
 resolution that can be applied to various 
 aspects of life beyond the military.
 Adaptability, Resource Management, Conflict resolution
 and self-awareness
 on war ->
 The fog of war, friction, and the moral forces

Team of Rivals

The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin | 2006

Book Audio

'He won because he possessed an extraordinary 
ability to put himself in the place of other men, 
to experience what they were feeling, 
to understand their motives and desires'

successful because he found ways to 
win the respect of his former competitors
    
Foundation of the Lincoln movie

Teamwork & Process Books

The Goal

A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Eliyahu Goldratt | 1984

Book Audio

narrative story around
Taiichi Ohno's Toyota's Production system
Narrative teaching the theory of contraints
100% utilization is not the goal
Process Of On-Going Improvement (POOGI):
Identify the system's bottlenecks
Decide how to exploit those bottlenecks
Factory can't be 100% efficient if
Every machine is 100% efficient
because of work in progress

The Goal Spinoffs

The Phoenix Project

A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford | 2013

Book Audio

The Unicorn Project

A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data

Gene Kim, | 2019

Book Audio

The DevOps Handbook

How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations

Gene Kim, Patrick Debois, John Willis, Jez Humble, John Allspaw | 2016

Book Audio

 Introduces the “Three Ways” DevOps Derive From
 First Way: Work always flows in one direction – downstream
 Second Way: Create, shorten and amplify feedback loops
 Third Way: Continued experimentation, in order 
 to learn from mistakes, and achieve mastery
 Identifies and covers the four types of work
 Business Projects
 Internal IT Projects
 Changes
 Unplanned Work


Identifies and focuses on the ‘Five Ideals’  
that  are today’s challenges impacting engineering and business
Locality and Simplicity
Focus, Flow and Joy
Improvement of Daily Work
Psychological Safety
Customer Focus

Team Geek

A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others

Brian Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman | 2012

Debugging Teams

Better Productivity through Collaboration

Brian Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman | 2015

Book

No link to TG due to price
Focuses on the development team and who they interact with.
HRT Principle for teams
Humility, Respect, Trust
Importance of establishing a dev team culture
Working with difficult people 
and positive ways to work with them.
Advice for navigating office politics

Firehose of ideas after reading these books

Kept having The Five Dysfunctions of a Team 
pop up in copilot

UX book disguised as a Dev Book

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

Alan Cooper | 1999

Book

Book focus on UX.
Developers are not the users 
and will more likely build something easy for them to code

Design Principles, Undersatnding users,
Role Clariy, improving usability

Can be a really hard read

Scrum

The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

Jeff Sutherland* | 2015

Book Audio

Jeff Sutherland is one of the creators of Scrum.
Can come across as a little arrogant.

Planning is useful, blindly following plans is stupid
inspect and adapt
change or die
fail fast so you can fix early

Proof DevOps Works!

Accelerate

The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations

Nicole Forsgren PhD, Jez Humble, Gene Kim | 2018

Book Audio

Focuses heavily on Survey of Devops. 
Highlights with data to back everything up. 
    
Also calls out 'loaded questions' 
you would see in other surveys

Security Books

Cybersecurity First Principles

A Reboot of Strategy and Tactics

Rick Howard | 2023

Book Audio

The Cuckoo's Egg

Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

Cliff Stoll | 1989

Book Audio

Cybersecurity First Principles came recommended by Audible
Easy listen and I felt like it was a good primer to cybersecurity
Opened doors to other books

The Cuckoo's Egg is considered a classic in the cyber security space 
Cliff was asked to resolve a 75 cent accounting error and
found someone was using their system at Berkley National Laboratory 
see the circles he as to run around with the FBI, CIA and NSA.

Kevin Mitnick Books

The Art of Invisibility

The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data

Kevin Mitnick | 2017

Book Audio

Ghost in the Wires

My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker

Kevin Mitnick | 2011

Book Audio

Kevin Mitnick was a former hacker turned security consultant

The A of I is a good framework for understanding 
how to protect yourself online. Slightly outdated, but 
has a lot of relevant information.  Covers how to 
protect yourself from the government, corporations, and
hackers. Uses real world examples to illustrate his points.
After reading you may be dealing in cash only and
having a stranger buy your burner phone every few months.

Social Engineering, Second Edition

The Science of Human Hacking

Christopher Hadnagy | 2019

Book Audio

The Web Application Hacker's Handbook

Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws

Dafydd Stuttard | 2011

Book

Social Engineering covers more on the human hacking 
side of security. How to manipulate people in to 
giving you sensitive information.

The web application hacker's handbook was recommended
while typing this out. Little dated and it looks
like there are online tasks that you must 
buy credits to do.

Tech Life Books

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Dale Carnegie | 1936

Book Audio

Probably the best self teaching social interaction book in existence.

Cal Newport

Deep Work

Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport | 2013

Book Audio

Digital Minimalism

Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

Cal Newport | 2019

Book Audio

Slow Productivity

The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Cal Newport | 2024

Book Audio

    
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, out in march
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.
Shallow work is non-cognitively demanding, logistical-style work, often performed while distracted.
Deep work is like a superpower in our increasingly competitive twenty-first-century economy


Digital Min:
Focus on social media is evil
FOMO bad, dopamine 'like' addiction

Building Habits

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Steven Covey | 1990

Book Audio

Atomic Habits

An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

James Clear | 2018

Book Audio

Smarter Better Faster

The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg | 2016

Book Audio

7 habits establishes a lot of baseline habits. Personal development
time management, self management, interpersonal skills, 
and the ability to lead and manage change.
  
Atomic Habits is the definitive guide to breaking bad behaviors 
and adopting good ones in four steps, showing you how small, 
incremental, everyday routines compound into massive, positive change over time.

Quiet

The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain | 2013

Book Audio

Highlights a lot of famous introverts
goes through a lot of traits of introverts 
and how they can be leveraged.

Never Split the Difference

Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

Chris Voss | 2016

Book Audio

Former FBI negotiator.
Breaks down negotiation tactics
Read before buying a car, asking for a raise,

Financial Literacy Books

Boundaries

When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life

Henry Cloud | 1992

Book Audio

Helps separate personal and professional life
Christian bible verses.

The Obstacle is the Way

The Ancient Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

Ryan Holiday | 2014

Book Audio

What stands in the way is the way
    perception, action and will

Marie Kondo

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Marie Kondo | 2014

Book Audio

Spark Joy

An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

Marie Kondo | 2016

Book Audio

Listen Like You Mean It

Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection

Ximena Vengoechea | 2021

Book Audio

• Quickly build rapport with strangers
• Ask the right questions to deepen a conversation
• Pause at the right time to encourage vulnerability
• Navigate a conversation that's gone off the rails

Invisible Women

Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Caroline Criado Perez | 2021

Book Audio

Very informative and provides new perspectives on how data is collected and used in the world.
1966 -> First crash test dummy, 5th percentile of female, 2002 -> first pregnant midsized crash test dummy
2022 -> First female crash test dummy to represent the average female.

Build

An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

Tony Fadell | 2022

Book Audio

Ask Your Developer

How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century

Jeff Lawson | 2021

Book Audio

Build ->
stories and advice -> Ipod, the iphone, nest


Ask your developer ->
Twilio story

The 'Fun' Books

These are programming adjacent or comradery heavy books.

Programming adjacent books essentially mean video game books

The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System

Douglas Crockford

Book

That Douglas Crockford

Blood, Sweat and Pixels

The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

Jason Schreier | 2017

Book Audio

Press Reset

Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry

Jason Schreier | 2021

Book Audio

Boss Fight Books

33 books on classic video game development

2014 - Present

Book

Masters of Doom

How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

David Kishner | 2004

Book Audio

Doom Guy

Life in First Person

John Romero | 2023

Book Audio

Creation of Comander Keen - Wolfensteain - Doom - Quake 
 Attempt to get permission to write SMB 3 on PC - 72 binge. Wolf 3d Doom
Quake - took care of tehir own sofware idstro and people hacked their cds to get the key

Band of Brothers / Pacific

Where can I find more books?

Agile Manifesto authors
Humble Bundle Books
https://ebookfoundation.github.io/
ProgrammingBooks.dev