Now, I'm a developer that tries to stay somewhat up to date by listening to podcasts, keeping up on Twitter and reading blog posts, but this year I'm going to try something different.
Over the next year, I have set a goal of reading some of the "Classics" of software development. These books are highly regarded in developer circles.
While I'm sure this list is not exhaustive, I think it's a pretty good start. (Also, I don't want to overpromise publicly)
I'm a huge fan of Audio books as well, but most of these books aren't in Audio format that I could find and honestly these books are best served up in dead tree format. There is a lot of code and I'd hate to try to listen to somebody try to read that to me. The other plus is that I'm planning on using these as reference material to be reviewed later, so I'm highlighting and taking notes. So paper or e-reader is the way to go. Also, on the plus side, it's going to look "cool" to have all these books on my shelf at work.
I have heard/read a lot of the information in these books in other places, which is not surprising since these are the original sources. One of the nice things about this is getting the information in its original form instead of someone else's opinion about what the author was trying to convey. Another reason I'm reading the books, instead of taking in free content for this purpose, is that the authors of books take a tremendous amount of time carefully crafting these and they are reviewed by editors. No offense to bloggers/podcasters, but we/they don't always put that kind of care into their final product (and that's ok).
Buying all these books, of course, is not cheap, but the outcome will leave me with some more information and a pretty cool little library that I can draw upon.
I will be writing blog posts on each of these books so you can read my opinion, but most likely there are much more detailed sources of information out there. I'm going to write my own mostly as a self-review exercise. You are of course still welcome to read them. I will also probably include links to reviews I like. The trick is going to be writing my review first so I don't have outside influences.
So far I've almost finished "Clean Code" and have a pretty good start on "The Pragmatic Programmer". These books have already cleared up some of the concepts I've been introduced to over the years. They have also given me flashbacks to some of the terrible code I wrote in my youth, but that's part of the growing process. Hopefully, when I look back at my code written today, in a couple of years, I'll have the same feeling.
All we can do is keep learning, keep practicing and continue to get better/wiser.
So far I've almost finished "Clean Code" and have a pretty good start on "The Pragmatic Programmer". These books have already cleared up some of the concepts I've been introduced to over the years. They have also given me flashbacks to some of the terrible code I wrote in my youth, but that's part of the growing process. Hopefully, when I look back at my code written today, in a couple of years, I'll have the same feeling.
All we can do is keep learning, keep practicing and continue to get better/wiser.
Bonus: (probably not going to be a classic, but still useful)
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