professional-programming/README.md

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# 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)

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# 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.io/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

See [Project management section on my engineering-management list of resources](https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management#project-management).

### 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.
* [Learn how to design large scale systems. Prep for the system design interview](https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer) (Github repo)

#### 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)