Books are your best mentor. If you read one good programming book every month, roughly ten pages a day, you’ll soon have a firm grasp on the industry and distinguish yourself from nearly everyone around you. There are thousands of books, but not all of them are equally good. Below is my list of the best programming books of all time. I will keep this list in sync with new releases.
Some developers are worth more than others. The bigger impact you can make on the organization, the higher is your worth. To make a significant impact on the organization, the developer must keep 5 essential skills in balance: Technical skills Mentoring skills Process Organization skills Business skills Communication skills
Today I had a phone conversation with my ex-colleague Alex. Alex works as a software developer in a fast-growing international organization. Me: “How are things going?” Alex: “My company is searching for a principal developer.” Me: “Did you apply for that position?” Alex: “I did, but my application has been rejected. CTO believes that I am not qualified for that role. He is searching for a better candidate.” Me: “Do you think that you are good enough?” Alex: “Of course! I have been writing code and solving intricate technology problems for more than seven years. I write clean code, proactively fix the technical debt and cut through JIRA tasks like a ninja. I am faster and better than other teammates”. Me: “I guess this is the exact reason why you don’t qualify.” Alex wasn’t happy to hear that, so we quickly wrapped up our conversation. I felt good because I hit the target. © Moneyball (2011) by Bennett Miller
We love job promotion. The promotion gives us a sense of career progress: junior developer → developer → senior developer → principal developer → architect → senior architect → chief architect → CTO → CIO (Career Is Over). With every unlocked achievement, we earn more $, and our social status grows. We are moving towards our dream. We are happy, and life is good. But job promotion is a tool that employers use, to make us stay at the company longer.
We are developers. We need to stay up to date with technology. Every day, we learn programming languages, frameworks, and libraries. The more modern tools we know — the better. Keeping up to date with Angular, React, Vue, Riot, Ember, Knockout is fun. But we are wasting our time.
When I became a developer, I thought that my job is to write software. When my customer had a problem, I was ready to write software that solves that problem. I was taught to write software. But what customers need is not software. They need a solution to their problem. Your job is to find the most cost-effective solution, what software often is not.
