Recommended Reads
Generally, I’m not all that much of a bookworm, mainly due to time constraints. However, the following is a non-comprehensive list of books and blog articles that I’ve read in the past and that I found particularly interesting, influential or otherwise worth sharing - including some brief words about why that is and what my key takeaways were.
Tech
Designing Data-Intensive Applications – Martin Kleppmann
This is almost a “must-read” for every software engineer. It’s a super broad, yet very technical and in-depth intro into pretty much all topics that are relevant for modern software development and architecture. The author covers many highly relevant topics, ranging from different programming styles, paradigms and system architectures over different database types (SQL, NoSQL, and others) and their “under-the-hood” workings (including storage formats, indexing, etc.) to fundamental concepts of distributed systems and networking.
Topics: Distributed systems, databases, software architecture.
Clean Architecture – Robert C. Martin
In my opinion, another must-have for every software engineer and probably one of the most fundamental works in that domain. The book teaches a ton of best practices related to good software and systems design, including the SOLID principles, the dependency rule, different design patterns and much more. Two quotes from the book that stuck with me:
Software architecture is to facilitate development, deployment and operation in a way that leaves as many options open as possible, for as long as possible.
A good architect maximizes the number of decisions not made.
Topics: Software design.
Working in Public – Nadia Eghbal
This book is a great deep dive into the world of open source software. It covers everything from the history of open source (from the early “free software” movement at Berkely to a “sharing is the default” culture nowadays), its economical meaning, the intrinsic motivation of contributors and maintainers, different organizational concepts and styles behind big projects to philosophical aspects like increasing inequalities between the value provided by FOSS and the financial funding it receives. On the one hand, the author does great at printing the “bigger picture”, while, on the other hand, some parts of the book go super technical. What I particularly liked are the many very specific, in-depth examples from various well-known projects (including Linux, Rust, Node.js, Webpack, the npm ecosystem, …).
Topics: Software, open source.
programmier.bar CTO Special #17
Not a book, but: Stephan Schmidt - the interviewee in this podcast episode - made a statement that I thought was very on point. He effectively said that developers need new technologies to stay interested and keep up their excitement, while (tech) companies increasingly push for the development of shallow features, as opposed to deep features. To prevent themselves from getting bored, developers jump into new technologies / frameworks / languages or start building their own ones. I observed this phenomenon myself as well, which is why I found that particular episode particular relatable (even wrote an article about it).
Topics: Tech culture.
More (unordered, non-comprehensive)
- In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome
- You Are Not Google
- Software Engineering at Google
- Should I Open Source my Company?
- Scaling Slack’s Job Queue
- Chromium’s impact on root DNS traffic
- Fixing The Internet for Real Time Applications
- Once a Developer, Always a Developer
- Understanding how Facebook disappeared from the Internet
- The Realities of Being a FOSS Maintainer
- My first year as a full-time open source developer
- The internet is broken
- Here’s how we take back the Internet (Edward Snowden)
- BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code
Non-tech
Der Ernährungskompass (engl. “The Diet Compass”) – Bas Kast
This book was my gateway into the world of nutrition and how the human body works. I have probably learned more from it than from any other book and found it super interesting to discover how different nutrients and diets affect the body in which way and which foods are healthy or unhealthy for what reasons. It is fairly comprehensive, yet written in a very beginner-friendly and easy-to-understand way. Highly recommended for anybody wanting to time into nutrition and body health.
Topics: Health, medicine, biology, sports.
Hoch die Hände, Klimawende! – Gabriel Baunach
As you might have already learned from other parts of my website, I’m highly interested in (and equally concerned about) the world’s current climate situation and how thing appear to be evolving in that regard. I got this book recommendation from a friend and even after the first few pages it git me hooked. Besides a ton of very interesting facts, figures and charts, it primarily gave me an unexpected realization about how individuals can best make a contribution to fight climate change: don’t care too much about your personal footprint, but instead try to increase your handprint.
Also, it taught me about the concept of Ikigai as a guideline for finding your profession, which has definitely coined me since.
Topics: Climate, society.
Superintelligence – Nick Bostrom
In this book, also a recommendation from a friend, the author elaborates on the topic of “superintelligent” AI, i.e. AI models that are on par human intelligence or even exceed it. Besides philosophizing about the likelihood of such a development, he explains different conceivable scenarios and outcomes and debates whether AGI (artificial general intelligence) will be beneficial and benevolent or a serious threat for mankind. Even though I definitely wouldn’t categorize myself as an “AI doomer”, I must admit that - at latest after reading this book (and similar others) - I understood the importance of not being too careless about the endeavors of big tech to achieve AGI. The fact that many more than just a handful of prestigious scientists conduct serious research on the topic underlines this.
Quote from the book:
While weak, AI behaves cooperatively. When the AI gets sufficiently strong […] it strikes, forms a singleton, and begins directly to optimize the world according to the criteria implied by its final value.
Topics: Philosophy, AI.
Outliers – Malcom Gladwell
A compilation of super interesting anecdotes about why and how different individuals became (seemingly) successful in various ways, what unexpected factors their development was influenced by and how correlation is different from causation. Featuring: a group of extraordinarily healthy Italian emigrants in the US, a bunch of seemingly strangely talented Canadian hockey players, the computer pioneer Bill Joy, a series of airplane crashes, the fortune of Chinese farmers and many more. I learned about self-fulfilling prophecies, the curse of accumulative advantage, and the 10,000 hours rule.
Topics: Society, statistics.
Toxisch Reich – Sebastian Klein
In progress…
More (unordered, non-comprehensive)
- The Age of AI has begun (Bill Gates)
- The path to focused work
- Wenn das grüne Produkt zum Standard wird
- …
Podcasts
Some podcasts I (more or less) regularly listen to (tech and non-tech):