Table of Contents

• Professional Programming - about this list
  • Principles
  • Contributing to this list
  • Must-read books
  • Must-read articles
  • Other general material and list of resources
    • Other lists
    • Books
    • Articles
    • Axioms
    • Courses
  • Topics
    • Accounting
    • Agentic coding
    • Algorithm and data structures
    • API design & development
    • Attitude, habits, mindset
      • Procrastination
    • Authentication/authorization
    • Automation
    • Best practices
    • Beyond software engineering & random
    • Biases
    • Business
    • Buy vs. Build
    • Cache

Professional Programming - about this list

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 become timeless classics.

Principles

• This page is not meant to be comprehensive. I am trying to keep it light and not too overwhelming.
• The selection of articles is opinionated.
• I don't necessarily agree with or endorse every single line that is written in every single one of those resources. The same applies to their authors: I don't endorse everything each of those authors has said and will ever say.

Items:

• 🧰 : list of resources
• 📖 : book
• 🎞 : video/movie extract/movie/talk
• 🏙 : slides/presentation
• ⭐️ : must-read
• 📃 : paper

Contributing to this list

Feel free to open a PR to contribute!

I will not be adding everything: as stated above, I am trying to keep the list concise.

Must-read books

I've found these books incredibly inspiring:

• 📖 The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master: hands-on the most inspiring and useful book I've read about programming.
• 📖 Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction: a nice addition to The Pragmatic Programmer, gives you the necessary framework to talk about code.
• 📖 Release It!: 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
• 📖 The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook: 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.
• 📖 Structure and interpretation of Computer Programs (free): One of the most influential textbooks in Computer Science (written and used at MIT), SICP has been influential in CS education. Byte recommended SICP "for professional programmers who are really interested in their profession".

There are some free books available, including:

• 📖 Professional software development: 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.
• 🧰 vhf/free-programming-books
• 🧰 EbookFoundation/free-programming-books

Must-read articles

• Practical Advice for New Software Engineers
• On Being A Senior Engineer
• Lessons Learned in Software Development: one of those articles that give you years of hard-earned lessons, all in one short article. Must read.
• Things I Learnt The Hard Way
  • Spec first, then code
  • Tests make better APIs
  • Future thinking is future trashing
  • Documentation is a love letter to your future self
  • Sometimes, it's better to let the application crash than do nothing
  • Understand and stay away of cargo cult
  • "Right tool for the job" is just to push an agenda
  • Learn the basics functional programming
  • ALWAYS use timezones with your dates
  • ALWAYS use UTF-8
  • Create libraries
  • Learn to monitor
  • Explicit is better than implicit
  • Companies look for specialists but keep generalists longer
  • The best secure way to deal with user data is not to capture it
  • When it's time to stop, it's time to stop
  • You're responsible for the use of your code
  • Don't tell "It's done" when it's not
  • Pay attention on how people react to you
  • Beware of micro-aggressions
  • Keep a list of "Things I Don't Know"
• Signs that you're a good programmer (not everything in here is great - some of the points are counterproductive)
  • The instinct to experiment first
  • Emotional detachment from code and design
  • Eager to fix what isn't broken
  • Fascinated by the incomprehensible
  • Compelled to teach
  • Incorruptible patience
  • A destructive pursuit of perfection
  • Encyclopedic grasp of the platform
  • Thinks In Code
  • When In Rome, Does As Romans Do
  • Creates their own tools
  • Indifferent to Hierarchy
  • Excited by failure
  • Indiff