When you start your career in software development you become bamboozled by the amount of material on the interwebs, the number of published books (print and ebooks) and the available courses online and offline.

Let me lend you a helping hand!

As I stated in Thoughts on building a library knowledge is power and books are the easiest way to gain profit from other people’s experience.

In contrast to online material (everyone can write articles online nowadays) books from renowned publishers have a rigid publishing process with editing and reviews.

Such a book has most likely few errors in it. Additionally, when a book is in its 43rd printing it should mean it has some truths in it which stand the test of time.

So the books I recommend are “meta” books. They are not about a specific language or framework because those can become outdated pretty soon (e.g. my “Introduction to node.js” from 2012)

You should buy them in their original language in this case English. Translations tend to miss most of the puns and are often not quite precise regarding technical terms.

The Passionate Programmer

Subtitle: “Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development”

This book is about building a career in the software industry. It focuses on questions like “Which technology shall I learn?”

It is packed with career tips and self-improvement concepts like “Daily Hit – Have an accomplishment to report every day!”

The Passionate Programmer on Amazon (Affiliate)

The Pragmatic Programmer

Published in 1999 with the subtitle “from journey man to master” this is the big brother to the passionate programmer.

It’s main topic is how to deal with your everyday life as a software developer codified into 70 tips.

From the mindset (“don’t live with broken windows”) over DRY principle, code generation, Big-O notation to team building this book has it all.

I first bought it when I started as a SW developer in 2005 and the lessons are still true!

The Pragmatic Programmer on Amazon (Affiliate)

Clean Code

Uncle Bob wrote this masterpiece in 2009 and had (still has) a big impact on the software crafting movement.

From the boy-scout rule to an appendix of code smells this book is monster.

It is hard to fathom its deepness in just a few sentences you need to read it!

Clean Code on Amazon (Affiliate)

Design Patterns

AKA GoF, Gang of Four, subtitle “Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software.”

It is one of the most influential books regarding how to structure your code.

It contains a description of the basic 23 design pattern which are language agnostic. (Although implementation examples are given in C++)

This makes the book a timeless classic as well.

Design Patterns on Amazon (Affiliate)

Refactoring

Another heavyweight. Refactoring by Martin Fowler

The subtitle says it all: “Improving the design of existing code”

Yes, this is for the brownfield trenches.

Refactoring on Amazon (Affiliate)

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All just idiots!!!

This thought has certainly crossed some people’s minds after a meeting or group work, but is everyone else really an idiot or am I the idiot in the room?

The author Thomas Erikson thinks it is simply a matter of communication. In his book” Surrounded by Idiots” he describes four different types of behavior.

To understand which behavioral type my counterpart has and therefore also understand his way of thinking is according to Erikson the key to a successful communication.

Because the so-called “idiots” in our environment are mostly people who have a different behavioral pattern and communication style and thus process the information different than they were intended.

4 Behavior Types

The book divides the four behavior types into red, yellow, green and blue which is based on the DISC system.

The red type represents people who are dominant and controlling, yellow represents people who are social and optimistic, green represents people who are relaxed and friendly, and blue represents people who are analytical and precise.

In addition, Thomas Erikson explains how to recognize and deal with each personality type. This simple four-color system allows you to quickly identify a friend or co-worker and adjust the way you talk and interact with them in different situations. It also shows how certain types can be combined or simply not 🙂

Conclusion

I often think that everyone else in the room is just an idiot, so the title spoke directly to me.

By reading the book you will understand why some people in certain situations behave differently than you had expected or in other words behave idiotically.

Of course, this technique is not an all-purpose miracle cure to have a good relationship with everyone. Sometimes someone is just an idiot no matter what type.

But: By being able to recognize the type now and to know how to approach these people in order to work with them successfully is not only a great skill but also one that saves you a lot of time and nerves.

I think that Surrounded by idiots is well written. From time to time you have to either laugh about yourself or you immediately think of a familiar person when the author describes a character.

Some chapters could have been spared because you feel like you’re told the same thing over and over.

All in all, everyone benefits from reading the book and can reflect on his behavior and that of others.

I can only recommend everyone to pack the book for the next vacation.

Surrounded by Idiots on Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)

Surrounded by Idiots on Amazon.com (Affiliate Link)

Further Reading

The Peter Principle by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull

Review Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker

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Over the years I gathered some nice books about space exploration, rocketry and space in general.

The List

To Space and Back

Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut’s Story

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

Letters from an Astrophysicist

NASA Saturn V Owners’ Workshop Manual

NASA Mars Rovers Manual

Von Apollo zur ISS: Eine Geschichte der Raumfahrt

Der Mensch im Weltraum, eine Notwendigkeit

Further Reading

Thoughts on building a library

The post Books about Space appeared first on Creatronix.

Annotated Turing

Statistics For Dummies

The Practically Cheating Statistics Handbook

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Appoach

Prediction & Data Science

The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction

The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction

Philosophical

Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future

Data for the People: How to Make Our Post-Privacy Economy Work for You

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Content Overview

For planning purposes I use Google Docs. Everything is tracked in a spreadsheet. I use task based planning.

I’m aware that making a backing track usually needs more effort than exporting the tracks or generating QR codes, but this high level overview works for me.

Percentage of Completion

A pie chart shows the ratio between open and finished tasks.

To calculate the number of tasks in a row, we count the checkboxes per column which is done with the formula:

=COUNTIF(B2:B57; FALSE) + COUNTIF(B2:B57; TRUE)

The finished tasks are counted with:

=COUNTIF(B2:B57; TRUE)

Open tasks are “all tasks – finished tasks”

Then we sum up the open and finished rows to get the data for the pie chart.

Writing in markdown

markdown is a good choice if you want to focus on writing the content. It gives my texts enough structure (headlines 1 – 4) without distracting me to much.

# H1 Headline

## H2 Headline

### H3 Headline

### Lists

#### Unordered Lists
* list item 1
* list item 2
* list item 3

### Text styling

**Bold text**

_Italic text_

~~strikethrough text~~

    one line code

```python
import math
print(math.pi)
```

Tables can be inserted in HTML

Converting with pandoc

Pandoc is great to convert any kind of text to other formats like PDF, HTML or Word (.docx)

The basic conversion looks like this:

pandoc metadata_de.yaml -o ./level_up_de.pdf --from markdown -V lang=de-DE level_up_de.md

Due to the fact that I have one file for each chapter and generate multiple formats it gets a bit more complicted than this. You can read about the details in my bash tutorial

The post My book writing workflow appeared first on Creatronix.

Atomic Habits – James Clear

If there was one and only one book I could take with me on a lonely island this would be the one. It is such a good read!

James Clear does an awesome job in explaining how tiny changes in habits can lead to great results.

Main takeaways: Habit stacking, Rule of 1%

Atomic Habits on Amazon

Bullet Journal Method – Ryder Carroll

The Bullet Journal changed the way I worked forever. It gave me a structure for my life.

Bullet Journal Method on Amazon

4 Hour Work Week – Tim Ferriss

Top-down thinking, bucket lists

4-Hour Workweek on Amazon

I will teach you to be rich – Ramit Sethi

Main takeaways: budgeting, Vanguard ETFs

I will teach you to be rich on Amazon

Die Gesetze der Gewinner – Bodo Schäfer

Constant learning and growth

Die Gesetze der Gewinner on Amazon

The war of art – Steven Pressfield

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Managing for Happiness – Jurgen Appelo

Invisible fences, delegation poker, moving motivators, celebration grid

Managing for Happiness

Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink

Taking full responsibility for your actions

Extreme Ownership: How US Navy Seals Lead and Win

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen R. Covey

Main takeaways: Being proactive, think from the end, sharpen the saw

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on Amazon

The Daily Stoic – Ryan Holiday

My first contact with the stoic philosophy

the daily stoic on Amazon

How to stop worrying and start living – Dale Carnegie

Main takeaway: live in day-tight compartments

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Rework – Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Review – Rework by Jason Fried und David Heinemeier Hansson

Deep Work – Cal Newport

https://amzn.to/4nUbd34

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Jurgen Appelo is “an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer pioneering leadership to help innovative businesses survive and thrive in the 21st century.”

The book

This book is a beast!

On almost 400 pages divided into 16 chapters Jurgen lays the foundation for his Management 3.0 concept.

Chapter 1

Marty the M3.0 monster

6 views

1. Energize people
2. Empower teams
3. Align constraints
4. Develop competence
5. Grow structure
6. Improve everything

Chapter 2

Seven dimensions of Agile

Derived from the agile manifesto Jurgen presents his own view of agile

• People
• Functionality
• Quality
• Tools
• time
• Value
• Process
• conflict

Chapter 3 – Complex Systems theory

• General Systems Theory
• Cybernetics
• Dynamical Systems Theory
• Game Theory
• Evolutionary Theory
• Chaos Theory

Chapter 4 – The information innovation system

Five cogs of innovation

• Knowledge
• Creativity
• Motivation
• Diversity
• Personality

Buy Management 3.0 on Amazon

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Why do I need a library?

Knowledge is power!

Books are the easiest way to gain profit from other people’s experience.

You can see books as mentors which tell you valuable life lessons.

For example the book “I will teach you to be rich” got me started to think about personal finance.

What do you need to build a library?

A shelf and your first book!

For starters you can buy an IKEA billy or even a Gersby for way below 100€.

As an entry into a topic you can buy introductory books, e.g. a Science Fiction Almanac which contains stories from different authors.
From there you can dive deeper into subtopics or sub-genres or buy more from authors You like.

But books are to expensive!

Buy them used! The great thing about amazon market place is to be able to buy used books. For example I purchased the biography of Ozzy Osbourne for a ridiculously cheap 1€ (+3€ shipping)

Remaindered books are a great way to quickly build up your library. You often find them in a supermarket near by. It is a bit like gold digging because those boxes contain a lot of girl porn books (those books where longhaired princes riding on unicorns save the damsel in distress) but the search for the nuggets is worth it. I found my first Dan Simmons book “Terror” that way.

And what shall I read?

I would recommend starting with three categories:

• Biographies
• Fictional books
• Specialist books from your field of work

Non-fictional books are harder to read and you should of course try to apply the lessons to your situation so you will be slower as well.

Which Biographies shall I read?

Learn from the great! For techies: You can start with a biography of Isaac Newton, Kepler or Galileo and work your way to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. (again: Highly opinionated!)

For musicians: read Slash, Ozzy, Rudolf Schenker, Gene Simmons, Motley Crue, and so on.

Other great biographies I read over the last years:

• Total Recall – Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Losing my Virginity – Richard Branson
• Mick Jagger Biographie

Do you have any tips for fictional books?

Some of my favorite authors are:

• Ken Follett
• Dan Simmons
• Paulho Coelho
• Martin Suter

How do I chose from specialist books from my field of work?

Again, read some books about broader topics and narrow down. For programmers, start with

• Pragmatic Programmer
• Clean Code
• Passionate Programmer

Read the classics

• Extreme Programming
• Design Patterns
• Refactoring

Read books from the “Head First” series, because they are really great especially for beginners. E.g. Head First – Design Pattern

If you are interested in management and leadership read some Peter Drucker. for self-improvement read Marshall Goldsmith, Stephen Corvey, Dale Carnegie.

How shall I read a non-fictional book to get the most out of it?

I’ve tried different things: Writing notes on paper, writing directly into my PC text editor. But when I read I want to be as comfortable as possible, so in the end the only tool I use is a text marker pen to highlight important passages.

Shall I re-read my books?

Yes, you definitely should! Books are like friends, you can visit them over and over again. While fictional books often have a plot twist which you will still remember when you re-read, non-fictional books are often worth a second read especially when they are full of wisdom.

Still curious? Read Thoughts on building a library – Part 2

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But in software development sometimes it seems to look like that universities show you algorithms and data structure and the syntax of a specific language and say you are done – save the world with your code.

In the last couple of years more and more people look at software development as a craft and call it the software craftmanship movement.Diomidis Spinellis is an adherent of this movement. In his eyes to become a master at your craft you have to look at other masters over and over again. With his book Code Reading he shows us how.

Structure

398 Pages accumulated source code study. He shows basic elements of programming languages with linux programs such as echo, ls and cat. He demonstrates software architecture with large open source projects like Tomcat and good code documentation with the Apache Webserver.

But this book is not only about code, there are also chapters about version control and build process tools, as well as databases and UML modelling.

Exercises

At the end of every chapter there are exercises which encourage you to dive into more open source code. You have to grep, compile or improve code along the way. For example:

Why can’t the echo program use the getopt function?

Bottom line

You definitely cannot read such a book in one weekend. It is more like a travel guide which helps you to discover new country and landscapes. Please take your time to do all the exercises.

Code Reading on Amazon

The post Review Code Reading appeared first on Creatronix.

Nice cover!

First of all I remove all advertising garbage by shaking the magazine, but lo and behold, there are some nice stickers in it. Perhaps I share them with my daughter.

These are the topics I will definitely read:

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