I'm a fullstack developer, primarily working with Ruby and Javascript. I would like to share a couple of books that transformed my professional life.
- Clean Code by Uncle Bob. I would recommend this book especially for novice programmers out there. Seasoned developers might find it useful as well.
- Pragmatic Programmer by Dave Tomas and Andy Hunt. Very useful for novice programmers, nice refreshment for seasoned developers. This book summarizes the general best practices of programming in general.
- You Don't Know JS by Kyle Simpson. If you are a Javascript developer or you want to learn Javascript, this book explores and explains all the nuances of the language.
- Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby by Sandi Metz. Absolute must-read for every programmer using Object-Oriented programming language. The book uses Ruby to explain the concepts, however these are applicable to any object-oriented language.
- Domain Driven Rails by Arkency. A nice introduction to DDD using Rails. Explains the basic concepts and their implementation.
- Adopting Elixir by Ben Marx, José Valim and Bruce Tate. Why should you even care about Elixir?
- Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas. Deep dive into the language.
- Programming Phoenix by Chris McCord, Bruce Tate and José Valim. Deep dive into the framework.
- Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe by Bruce Williams and Ben Wilson.
- Kotlin Cookbook by Ken Kousen. Amazing introduction into Kotlin programming language.
- The art of unit testing by Roy Osherove. Explains best practices of testing in general with a focus on unit testing. Available for different programming languages, but it's a great book with general concepts and best practices that are applicable to different technologies.
- Rails 4 Test Prescriptions by Noel Rappin. Even though the examples are in Rails, the book provides an awesome overview of best practices for testing any web application.
- Understanding Distributed Systems by Roberto Vitillo. Awesome detailed overview of the most important concepts for anyone interested in building distributed systems.
- Kafka: a Distributed Messaging System for Log Processing by Jay Kreps, Neha Narkhede and Jun Rao. The original Kafka whitepaper. Explains Kafka internals and concepts in a very concise and quite easy to understand way. Absolutely loved it!
- Driving Technical Change by Terrence Ryan. Amazing overview of how to drive any engineering initiative and how to overcome common obstacles.
- Staff Engineer by Will Larson. Navigating the fuzzy Staff+ career. There are many interesting interviews with different Staff+ engineers. The book provides an introduction into different Staff+ archetypes and typical challenges they face.
- Staff Engineer's Path by Tanya Reilly. More holistic overview of approaching Staff+ roles.
- Help Them Grow Or Watch Them Go by Beverly Kayle and Julie Winkle Giulioni. What employees really want and need? This book is not only for managers, but for employees as well. There are many useful questions which might help anyone explore and understand their personality.
- Manager's Path by Camille Fournier. Absolutely loved this book. It's an awesome introduction for anyone who wants to explore the Management track or even anyone who wants to be a better partner to their manager.
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott. How to give/receive good feedback and improve the overall collaboration within teams and organization.
- How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. Very concise overview of how to deal with people and achieve the best outcome for everyone.
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. Very interesting piece about motivation and how to incentivize people to be more engaged.
- Remote: Office Not Required by Basecamp. Absolute must-read for everyone exploring or working remotely. Very pragmatic and full of useful tips and best practices.
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Can't recommend enough this book. It provides a very good overview of how we ended up where we are today. How things like time and money work and why were they invented in the first place.
- Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Conversations with a dying professor. It helps one clarify what is truly important in life.
- Wim Hof Method by Wim Hof. Transform your life by changing your mindset, breathing techniques and cold exposure. Tap into human potential, become strong, healthy and thrive.
- Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Naval Ravikant. Focus on what's truly important in life.
- The Art of Strategy by Avinash K Dixit and Barry J Nalebuff. It's a bit too academical introduction into game theory. But most of the examples are still aplicable to everyday life.
- Confessions of a childfree woman by Marcia Drut-Davis. Life story of a woman who decided to not have children. I was worried it will be very biased, but actually she's making really good points for both cases.
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari. It builds on top of Sapiens and provides different ideas about where are we going as humanity. It's a bit more academical and there are some concepts repeated from the Sapiens book, but I'd still recommend it.