# Table of Contents - [Professional Programming](#professional-programming) - [Must read books](#must-read-books) - [Must-read articles](#must-read-articles) - [Other general material](#other-general-material) - [Topics](#topics) - [Algorithm and data structures](#algorithm-and-data-structures) - [Attitude, habits, mindset](#attitude-habits-mindset) - [Automation](#automation) - [Biases](#biases) - [Career growth](#career-growth) - [Characters sets](#characters-sets) - [Coding](#coding) - [Computer science](#computer-science) - [Databases](#databases) - [Debugging](#debugging) - [Design (visual, UX, UI)](#design-visual-ux-ui) - [Design patterns & anti-patterns (OOP)](#design-patterns-&-anti-patterns-oop) - [Dev environment & tools](#dev-environment-&-tools) - [Dotfiles](#dotfiles) - [Editors & IDE](#editors-&-ide) - [Incident response (alerting, outages, firefighting)](#incident-response-alerting-outages-firefighting) - [Internet](#internet) - [Interviewing](#interviewing) - [Learning](#learning) - [Project management](#project-management) - [Programming language](#programming-language) - [FP vs. OOP](#fp-vs-oop) - [Reading](#reading) - [Releasing & deploying](#releasing-&-deploying) - [Security](#security) - [Shell](#shell) - [System architecture](#system-architecture) - [Scalability](#scalability) - [Stability](#stability) - [Resiliency](#resiliency) - [Testing](#testing) - [Version control (Git)](#version-control-git) - [Webdesign](#webdesign) - [Writing for performance](#writing-for-performance) - [Concepts](#concepts) # Professional Programming > Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. (Abraham Lincoln) A collection of full-stack resources for programmers. The goal of this page is to make you a more proficient developer. You'll find only resources that I've found truly inspiring, or that have been become timeless classics. ## Must read books I've found these books incredibly inspiring: * [The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master](http://www.amazon.com/The-Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X): hands-on the most inspiring and useful book I've read about programming. * [Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670): a nice addition to The Programatic Programmer, gives you the necessary framework to talk about code. * [Release It!](http://www.amazon.com/Release-It-Production-Ready-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/0978739213): this books goes beyond code and gives you best practices for building production-ready software. It will give you about 3 years worth of real-world experience. * [Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites](http://www.amazon.com/Scalability-Rules-Principles-Scaling-Sites/dp/0321753887) * [The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook](http://www.amazon.com/The-Linux-Programming-Interface-Handbook/dp/1593272200): outside of teaching you almost everything you need to know about Linux, this book will give you insights into how software evolves, and the value of having simple & elegant interfaces. There are some free books available, including: * [Professional software development](http://mixmastamyk.bitbucket.org/pro_soft_dev/): pretty complete and a good companion to this page. The free chapters are mostly focused on software development processes: design, testing, code writing, etc. - and not so much about tech itself. * [List of free programming books](https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books) ## Must-read articles * [Practical Advice for New Software Engineers](http://product.hubspot.com/blog/practical-advice-for-new-software-engineers) * [On Being A Senior Engineer](http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/) * [Lessons Learned in Software Development](http://henrikwarne.com/2015/04/16/lessons-learned-in-software-development/): one of those articles that give you years of hard-earned lessons, all in one short article. Must read. * [Signs that you're a good programmer](http://www.yacoset.com/Home/signs-that-you-re-a-good-programmer) * [Signs that you're a bad programmer](http://www.yacoset.com/Home/signs-that-you-re-a-bad-programmer) ## Other general material * [The Imposter's Handbook](https://bigmachine.io/products/the-imposters-handbook) - $30. From the author: "Don't have a CS Degree? Neither do I - That's why I wrote this book." ## Topics ### Algorithm and data structures * Read the [CLRS](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms). You can watch and download the course on [OCW](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/) - there are newer courses as well. * Or [The Algorithm Design Manual](https://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/dp/1849967202?ie=UTF8&qid=1297127794&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) * Try out some algorithms on [Project Euler](https://projecteuler.net/) Let's be honest: algo can be a pretty dry topic. [This quora question](https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-book-that-teaches-algorithms-data-structures-and-other-computer-science-basics-in-a-fun-way) lists some funnier learning alternative, including: * [Grokking Algorithms](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617292230/ref=cm_sw_su_dp) * [Essential Algorithms](https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Algorithms-Practical-Approach-Computer/dp/1118612108?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0) ### Attitude, habits, mindset * [Mastering Programming](https://www.prod.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/mastering-programming/1184427814923414#), Kent Beck. * [The traits of a proficient programmer](https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-traits-of-a-proficient-programmer) * [The tao of programming](http://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html): a set of parables about programming. * [Taking Ownership Is The Most Effective Way to Get What You Want](http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/take-ownership-of-your-goals) * [Finding Time to Become a Better Developer](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/finding-time-to-become-a-better-developer-eebc154881b2#.4i2t1z6q2) ### Automation * [Automation Should Be Like Iron Man, Not Ultron](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2841313) ### Biases Biases don't only apply to hiring. For instance, the fundamental attribution bias also applies when criticizing somebody's code written a long time ago, in a totally different context. * [Cognitive bias cheat sheet](https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.6temb6hyg). #hiring ### Career growth * [The Conjoined Triangles of Senior-Level Development](http://frontside.io/blog/2016/07/07/the-conjoined-triangles-of-senior-level-development.html) looks into how to define a senior engineer. ### Characters sets * [The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html) ### Coding * [Write code that is easy to delete, not easy to extend](http://programmingisterrible.com/post/139222674273/write-code-that-is-easy-to-delete-not-easy-to) * [Lessons learned writing highly available code](https://medium.com/imgur-engineering/lessons-learned-writing-highly-available-code-7eaf3d7aae00#.u7c4j6hac) * [The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-ten-commandments-of-egoless-programming/) ### Computer science * [What every computer science major should know](http://matt.might.net/articles/what-cs-majors-should-know/) ### Databases * [A plain english introduction to CAP Theorem](http://ksat.me/a-plain-english-introduction-to-cap-theorem/) * [NOSQL Patterns](http://horicky.blogspot.nl/2009/11/nosql-patterns.html) * [NoSQL Databases: a Survey and Decision Guidance](https://medium.baqend.com/nosql-databases-a-survey-and-decision-guidance-ea7823a822d#.9fe79qr90) * [Safe Operations For High Volume PostgreSQL](https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/safe-operations-for-high-volume-postgresql/) (this is for PostgreSQL but works great for other db as well). * [Zero downtime database migrations](https://blog.rainforestqa.com/2014-06-27-zero-downtime-database-migrations/) (code examples are using Rails but this works great for any programming language) * [SQL styleguide](http://www.sqlstyle.guide/) ### Debugging * [Rubber Duck Problem Solving](http://blog.codinghorror.com/rubber-duck-problem-solving/) * [Rubber Ducking](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking) * [Five Whys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys) * [The Infinite Hows](http://www.kitchensoap.com/2014/11/14/the-infinite-hows-or-the-dangers-of-the-five-whys/): this provides a strong criticism of the five whys method. * [Linux Performance Analysis in 60,000 Milliseconds](http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/11/linux-performance-analysis-in-60s.html) ### Design (visual, UX, UI) I highly recommend reading [The Non-Designer's Design Book](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0133966151/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687602&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0321534042&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1R7MVQP0BCP7GP9VZGYX). This is a pretty short book that will give you some very actionable design advices. * If you're working on data, Edward Tufte's [The Visual Display of Quantitative Information](http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/0961392142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458046603&sr=8-1&keywords=tufte) is considered a classic. * The [Universal Principles of Design](http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-Revised-Updated/dp/1592535879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458046663&sr=8-1&keywords=universal+principles+of+design) will give you enough vocabulary and concepts to describe design challenges into words. * [Microsoft's Rest API guidelines](https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md) * [Book recommendations from HackerNews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711060) ### Design patterns & anti-patterns (OOP) Here's a list of good books: * [Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201633612/): dubbed "the gang of four", this is almost a required reading for any developer. A lot of those are a bit overkill for Python (because everything is an object, and dynamic typing), but the main idea (composition is better than inheritance) definitely is a good philosophy. * [Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321127420/?tag=stackoverfl08-20): learn about how database are used in real world applications. Mike Bayer's SQLAlchemy has been heavily influenced by this book. * SourceMaking's [Design Patterns](https://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns) seems to be a good web resource too. * O'Reilly's [How to make mistakes in Python](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/how-to-make-mistakes-in-python.pdf) * [101 Design Patterns & Tips for Developers](https://sourcemaking.com/design-patterns-and-tips) * [Python Design Patterns: For Sleek And Fashionable Code](https://www.toptal.com/python/python-design-patterns): a pretty simple introduction to common design patterns (Facade, Adapter, Decorator). A more complete list of design patterns implementation in Python on [Github](https://github.com/faif/python-patterns). [Also a book here](http://python-3-patterns-idioms-test.readthedocs.io/en/latest/PatternConcept.html). I maintain a [list of antipatterns](https://github.com/charlax/antipatterns) on another repo. This is a highly recommended read. * [Inheritance vs. composition](http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex44.html): a concrete example in Python. [Another slightly longer one here](http://python-textbok.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Object_Oriented_Programming.html). [One last one, in Python 3](http://blog.thedigitalcatonline.com/blog/2014/08/20/python-3-oop-part-3-delegation-composition-and-inheritance/#.V7SZ4tB96Rs). * [Composition Instead Of Inheritance](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CompositionInsteadOfInheritance) * [10 Modern Software Over-Engineering Mistakes](https://medium.com/@rdsubhas/10-modern-software-engineering-mistakes-bc67fbef4fc8#.da6dvzyne) ### Dev environment & tools * [Awesome Dev Env](https://github.com/jondot/awesome-devenv) Tools * [Glances: An eye on your system](https://github.com/nicolargo/glances) * [HTTPie: a CLI, cURL-like tool for humans](https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie) * [jq: command-line JSON processor](https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) * [tmux: terminal multiplexer](http://tmux.github.io/) * [htop: an interactive process viewer for Linux](http://hisham.hm/htop/) ### Dotfiles * [Awesome dotfiles](https://github.com/webpro/awesome-dotfiles) * [My dotfiles](https://github.com/charlax/dotfiles) Articles * [Setting Up a Mac Dev Machine From Zero to Hero With Dotfiles](http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/setting-up-a-mac-dev-machine-from-zero-to-hero-with-dotfiles--net-35449) ### Editors & IDE * [Sublime Text essential plugins and resources](https://github.com/dreikanter/sublime-bookmarks) * [vim-awesome](http://vimawesome.com/) * Bram Moolenaar (Vim author), [Seven habits of effective text editing](http://www.moolenaar.net/habits.html) ([presentation](http://www.moolenaar.net/habits_2007.pdf)). ### Incident response (alerting, outages, firefighting) * [Incident Response at Heroku](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/5/9/incident-response-at-heroku) * [Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture](https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/) * [My Philosophy on Alerting](https://docs.google.com/document/d/199PqyG3UsyXlwieHaqbGiWVa8eMWi8zzAn0YfcApr8Q/preview#heading=h.fs3knmjt7fjy) * A great example of [notes taken during outage](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GCK53YDcBWQveod9kfzW-VCxIABGiryG7_z_6jHdVik/pub) and [postmortem from Gitlab (01/31/2017)](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/02/01/gitlab-dot-com-database-incident/). This one's a tricky one because an engineer's action caused the irremediable loss of 6 hours of data. ### Internet * [How Does the Internet Work?](https://web.stanford.edu/class/msande91si/www-spr04/readings/week1/InternetWhitepaper.htm) * [How the web works](https://github.com/vasanthk/how-web-works) ### Interviewing * [All the best advice we could find on how to get a job](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-get-a-job/) * [System design interview for IT company](https://github.com/checkcheckzz/system-design-interview) * [Technical Interview Megarepo](https://github.com/jdsutton/Technical-Interview-Megarepo): study materials for SE/CS technical interviews * [How to Win the Coding Interview](https://blog.devmastery.com/how-to-win-the-coding-interview-71ae7102d685#.16ph6bp5y) * [The elevator programming game](http://play.elevatorsaga.com/) * [I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here’s what I learned.](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/5-key-learnings-from-the-post-bootcamp-job-search-9a07468d2331#.uq7vbbjfx) * [Top 10 algorithms in Interview Questions](http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-algorithms-in-interview-questions/) * [Questions to ask your interviewer](https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-interviewer.html) ### Learning Learn how to learn! * [How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math](http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/how-i-rewired-my-brain-to-become-fluent-in-math-rp): subtitled *the building blocks of understanding are memorization and repetition*. * [One Sure-Fire Way to Improve Your Coding](https://changelog.com/posts/one-sure-fire-way-to-improve-your-coding): reading code! * [Tips for learning programming](http://blog.hiphipjorge.com/tips-for-learning-programming/) * [You can increase your intelligence: 5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/you-can-increase-your-intelligence-5-ways-to-maximize-your-cognitive-potential/): forgive the clickbait title, it’s actually a good article. ### Project management * [How should deadlines be used in software engineering?](https://keen.io//blog/143850394061/how-should-deadlines-be-used-in-software) ### Programming language This is language-specific, for instance, checkout my [professional Python education doc](https://github.com/charlax/python-education). I'd recommend learning: * At least one dynamic language (Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc.). Pretty useful for quick one-off automation scripts, and fastest to write for interviews. * At least one compiled language (Java, C, C++, etc.) * At least one more recent language to see where the industry is going (as of writing, Go, Swift, Rust, etc.) * At least one language that has first-class support for functional programming (Haskell, Scala, etc.) A bit more reading: * [A brief, incomplete, mostly wrong history of programming languages](http://james-iry.blogspot.fr/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) * [Types](https://gist.github.com/garybernhardt/122909856b570c5c457a6cd674795a9c) #### FP vs. OOP * [Jargon from the functional programming world](https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming-jargon) * [Goodbye, Object Oriented Programming](https://medium.com/@cscalfani/goodbye-object-oriented-programming-a59cda4c0e53#.39ax09e4k) ### Reading * [Papers we love](https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love): papers from the computer science community to read and discuss. Can be a good source of inspiration of solving your design problems. ### Releasing & deploying * [How We Release So Frequently](http://engineering.skybettingandgaming.com/2016/02/02/how-we-release-so-frequently/) * [How to deploy software](https://zachholman.com/posts/deploying-software), Zach Holman * [BlueGreenDeployment](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/BlueGreenDeployment.html), Martin Fowler * [Move fast and break nothing](https://zachholman.com/talk/move-fast-break-nothing/), Zach Holman * [Flipping out](http://code.flickr.net/2009/12/02/flipping-out/), flickr. One of the first articles about feature flags. ### Security * [Penetration Testing Tools Cheat Sheet](https://highon.coffee/blog/penetration-testing-tools-cheat-sheet/#http--https-webserver-enumeration) * [My First 10 Minutes On a Server - Primer for Securing Ubuntu](http://www.codelitt.com/blog/my-first-10-minutes-on-a-server-primer-for-securing-ubuntu/) * [A practical guide to securing macOS](https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide) ### Shell * [Awesome Shell](https://github.com/alebcay/awesome-shell) Resources * [Bash Hackers Wiki](http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/) * [Master the command line, in one page](https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line) **must read** ### System architecture * [High Scalability](http://highscalability.com/): great blog about system architecture, its weekly review article are packed with numerous insights and interesting technology reviews. Checkout the [all-times favorites](http://highscalability.com/all-time-favorites/). * [6 Rules of thumb to build blazing fast web server applications](http://loige.co/6-rules-of-thumb-to-build-blazing-fast-web-applications/) * [Deep Lessons From Google And EBay On Building Ecosystems Of Microservices](http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/12/1/deep-lessons-from-google-and-ebay-on-building-ecosystems-of.html) * [Service oriented architecture: scaling the Uber engineering codebase as we grow](https://eng.uber.com/soa/) * [The twelve-factor app](http://12factor.net/) * [Scalable Web Architecture and Distributed Systems](http://www.aosabook.org/en/distsys.html) * [Introduction to Architecting Systems for Scale](http://lethain.com/introduction-to-architecting-systems-for-scale/) * [A Distributed Systems Reading List](http://dancres.github.io/Pages/) * [Services Engineering Reading List](https://github.com/mmcgrana/services-engineering) * [System Design Cheatsheet](https://gist.github.com/vasanthk/485d1c25737e8e72759f) * [The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data's unifying abstraction](https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying): one of those classical articles that everyone should read. #### Scalability * I already mentioned the book Scalability rules above, but there's also a [presentation](http://www.slideshare.net/cyrilwang/scalability-rules) about it. #### Stability * I already mentioned the book Release it! above. There's also a [presentation](http://www.slideshare.net/justindorfman/stability-patterns-presentation) from the author. #### Resiliency * [The Walking Dead - A Survival Guide to Resilient Applications](https://speakerdeck.com/daschl/the-walking-dead-a-survival-guide-to-resilient-applications) * [Defensive Programming & Resilient systems in Real World (TM)](https://speakerdeck.com/tuenti/defensive-programming-and-resilient-systems-in-real-world-tm) * [Full Stack Fest: Architectural Patterns of Resilient Distributed Systems](https://speakerdeck.com/randommood/full-stack-fest-architectural-patterns-of-resilient-distributed-systems) ### Testing * [Testing Strategies in a Microservices Architecture](http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice-testing/) (Martin Fowler) is an awesome resources explaining how to test a service properly. * [A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html?_r=0)... and a great way to learn about confirmation bias and why you're mostly writing positive test cases. * [The test pyramid](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestPyramid.html) * [Just Say No to More End-to-End Tests](https://testing.googleblog.com/2015/04/just-say-no-to-more-end-to-end-tests.html) * [End-To-End Testing Considered Harmful](http://www.alwaysagileconsulting.com/articles/end-to-end-testing-considered-harmful/) * [Move fast and don't break things](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15gNk21rjer3xo-b1ZqyQVGebOp_aPvHU3YH7YnOMxtE/edit#slide=id.g437663ce1_53_591) (presentation) * [Eradicating Non-Determinism in Tests](http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/nonDeterminism.html), Martin Fowler * [Kent Beck : “I get paid for code that works, not for tests”](https://istacee.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/kent-beck-i-get-paid-for-code-that-works-not-for-tests/) ### Version control (Git) * [Git Cheat Sheet](https://github.com/arslanbilal/git-cheat-sheet) * [git-tips](https://github.com/git-tips/tips) * [Git from the inside out](https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/two/git-from-the-inside-out) ### Webdesign * [Maintainable CSS](http://maintainablecss.com/) ### Writing for performance * [Numbers Everyone Should Know](https://everythingisdata.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/numbers-everyone-should-know/) * [Latency numbers every programmer should know](https://gist.github.com/hellerbarde/2843375) ## Concepts [Glossary](glossary.md) * [DDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design) * [TDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) * [BDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development) * [CAP theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem) * [OOP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming) * [YAGNI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren%27t_gonna_need_it) * [DRY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself) * [KISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle) * [SOLID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLID_(object-oriented_design)) * [GRASP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRASP_(object-oriented_design)) * [Make it run, make it right, make it fast](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast)