Posts with tag: books

Essential books on the Rust programming language

Wed Feb 22 2023

Rust is gaining popularity fast, and is a language loved by many (including myself). It has recently been used for device drivers in the Linux kernel. While many early adopters did more low level code, it is gaining popularity in higher level problems as well (e.g, writing REST APIs and CRUDL database applications). You might want to learn Rust, and wonder about some resources to use. That is exactly what we will look into in this article! While books are the main topics, links to other useful resources are also provided.

Best resources to learn Kotlin (in my view)

Tue Oct 11 2022

Do you want to learn Kotlin? Wonder what resources you should use to learn it? In this article I collect a few different resources depending on your interests and skill level. You might pick a few, mix and match or do whatever you want that makes you learn the concepts. Only you know the way you learn things the best. Without further ado, let us dive into the resources!

Summer learning tips! - Programming, DevOps and retro

Wed Jun 29 2022

Summer means that time off work are coming closer and closer for some of us! In my off time I enjoy using extra time on learning and reading. Today, I will share with you some tips for topics that I enjoy, that you could look into if you want to look at something new.

Should you read Designing Data-Intensive Applications? - A short book review

Mon Jan 17 2022

You may have seen the book Designing Data-Intensive Applications mentioned several places, and wondered if you should read it. I have to admit I bought it years ago, and read parts of it (got side-tracked and researched graph databases further, and read something else). Last Christmas holiday I picked it up again, and this time I finished it. It covers many topics, ranging from how databases are designed, to how we can design good stream processing systems. Should you read it? Continue reading the review to find out!

Biographies about people in tech you should read to get inspired!

Sat Nov 27 2021

Sometimes I enjoy reading a biography about a person I find interesting. There is a lot of inspiration to be had from getting insight into the life of high achievers and visionaries. To me there is also the factor of hearing about the early days of computing with the big mainframes, PDP-10 machines, teletypes, visions of what computers would do in the future, and so on. Seeing where we come from can lead us to new ideas about the future. It is also fun trying to see some patterns in the lives of the people the biographies are about. Some commonalities are always learning new things, do new things to get new impulses, passion for what you do, and going outside the norm. NONE of the people in this article worked a standard 9-5 job for the entirety if their lives (some of them never did), and lived in very different way than the regular person does. Controlling your own destiny and starting your own businesses is probably something many of us dream of doing.

My favorite personal finance books - Start your journey to become wealthy today as well!

Wed Nov 17 2021

Today I will share my favorite personal finance books with you! This blog is mostly about programming and technology, so why do I write a personal finance post? Many people have this opinion that they have learned a craft, so why should they learn about finance? That is the mindset of being stuck in the rat race (9-5 job, consumer debt, continuously working harder and harder for a salary, never affording all the things you want). We all have extra things or experiences we want in life, whether it be big weddings, vacations, mainframe computers (yes, I want one in the future), expensive software licenses or something else. If we just work and save our money in a bank account, that money looses value over time due to inflation. What if I told you that you could use your money to buy assets that generate more money? Then you aren't stuck with working harder and harder for less and less money (after a while your salary growth will stagnate), but working less and less for MORE AND MORE money. Even people like Bill Gates, Larry Page and more are investing to keep building their wealth (but you do NOT need their amount of money to get started). Intrigued? Then continue reading, and do your own research.

The only book on classic JavaScript you'll ever neeed!

Tue Oct 26 2021

Today JavaScript (JS) has evolved a lot and has many modern features we associate with other programming languages (according to the ECMAScript standards), like classes. In the beginning these features were transpiled (like compilation, but translated from one language to another) to classic JavaScript (due to browsers and other engines not having implemented the features). If you were like me, you wondered how this was done at the time (and you may even have had some ideas). Or you may be in the other camp, and think that it's not always necessary to use big transpilers and heavy features to solve simple problems. While JavaScript has evolved, I think there is a lot of fun and advantages to knowing more about the core language that started it all! JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford is the best book to learn about all that!

Science fiction books to read to unwind and relax

Sun Sep 26 2021

Sometimes we all need a break from computers, no matter how passionate we are about it. This is true for other hobbies as well, as well as our work. All of us (probably) need to relax, dream and feel refreshed and inspired to continue our other efforts. For me, one of my favorite ways to unwind is to read books (which you can probably tell from many of my earlier articles) or listen to audio books. In this article I will recommend three science fiction books you can read (or listen to) to relax, and maybe to feel inspired.

The essential Ayn Rand reading list

Wed Sep 22 2021

You may have heard many negative things about Ayn Rand, or many positives, depending on where you have heard about her. She is a well known author and philosopher, whose points are often understood (both by people traditionally on the left, as well as so-called "conservatives"). There are many misconceptions as well out there, and doing your own research will help with that. Whether you will end up thinking Ayn Rand is the best philosopher or not, is not my goal here. What I want is for you to know about her works that you should read, what they are about, as well as having resources to understand her philosophy better. If not, I hope you may read some of her fiction books and enjoy the spectacle!

Summer book recommendations 2021

Wed Jul 28 2021

Summer is a great time to read some books and releax! A lot of us have vacation time or similar where we can enjoy our time in the sun, or inside on a rainy day. So without further ado, today I will give you ideas for some fun books to read this summer!

Books that boost your programming career (Java developer edition)

Mon Sep 07 2020

In this article I will share some books that helped me most in the beginning of my professional career. Even though I have programmed in my spare time for many years before getting a job, I think that programming in an enterprise is way different! Learning to cooperate with more people, reviewing code, seeing patterns in code, bigger codebases. tools and technologies that you may not use on your own, and so on! The books I will share are mostly technology agnostic, as I think patterns help way more than learning specific libraries, frameworks and tools. Learning about design patterns, how to write clean code, and how to write maintainable code are far more useful than learning many different tools and libraries. Why? Because when you learn patterns, you will see these patterns in many new libraries and tools you learn, and therefore learn them faster! I will also say that learning to think differently can help a lot, because it makes it easier for you to learn new things in the future.