What book should I read next? 🤔

This year I set my reading goal to 5 books, I have already read 2 so far:

• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
• The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers

I have a whole list of want to read books but instead of choosing one myself I thought it might be fun to let you guys decide what book I should read.

DEV doesn't have polls (yet) so I made one on Twitter, feel free to retweet 😄

Glenn Carremans

@glenncarremans

What book should I read next? 🤔 #goodreads #DEVCommunity

goodreads.com/book/show/2225…

goodreads.com/book/show/2253…

goodreads.com/book/show/9426…

goodreads.com/book/show/2194…

17:15 PM - 15 May 2019

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The options are:

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Also looking forward to any other suggestions in the comments!

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I would also like to share that I am trying to get Goodreads liquid tags on DEV but for that Goodreads first need to add embeds to their website: Feature request

I think books are an important resource to devs and that adding a Goodreads liquid tag to DEV would make it a lot easier to share among each other.

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Feel free to follow me on Twitter @GlennCarremans or Goodreads @Glenn

Comments

[Yordi Verkroost]

The Pragmatic Programmer is full of tips and tricks that would help anyone to become a better developer. Furthermore, it's very easy and enjoyable to read. Based on your list and what I read myself, it's the top pick for me.

The book about Elon Musk is enjoyable to read as well. Less technical, more life-story. You could even decide to read both this book and The Pragmatic Programmer at the same time, as Elon's story is good bed-time material and The Pragmatic Programmer lends itself for bite-sized reading.

[Glenn Carremans]

Thanks! I think I have my book #3 and #4 now, but gonna wait till the poll finishes 😉

[Florian Rand]

Hey Glenn, I'm reading the pragmatic programmer and enjoying it a lot. Can't say about the others. Well, Elon Musk is an interesting character, that would be my second choice.

I like your suggestion about Goodreads liquid tags!

[Glenn Carremans]

I am looking forward to reading that book now 😄

I would really like to add Goodreads liquid tags (if DEV team approves this of course), I think could also open a new section of blog posts. Hopefully Goodreads will add embed urls to their platform soon so I can start working on it.

[Florian Rand]

I posted a few days ago a list of design books and definitely would love that feature!

[Paulo Renato]

If you already have read the Clean Code you should have noticed that it refers to the Pragmatic Programmer book several times.

I was lucky enough to have read them in the correct order, and I think that the Pragamtic Programmer book should be the first in the reading list of a developer, and it has a new edition, The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition.

[Tony Metzidis]

Coders at Work -- Reflections on the Craft of Programming by Peter Seibel

[Glenn Carremans]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I added it to my want to read list.

[Igor Irianto]

I only read Elon Musk biography one. I think it is good to read a specific person's biography at least once a year. I believe Elon himself read several biographies when he was younger. Frankly I haven't read the other 3 out of 4, so I can't give input on those (I did read clean code last year and highly recommended it!)

[Saurabh Sharma]

pragamatic programmer is only book I have read among those 3. It's still one of the best book I have ever read

[Drozerah]

I hesitate to buy the Clean Code because it is JAVA centric and I'am more JavaScript fluent, what do you think ?

[Glenn Carremans]

I am an Android/Java developer so for me the examples where not bothering me but I can see you point.
The examples itself are written in Java but still they are very general and not with a lot of Java functions, you can easily see what is happening by reading the variable and function names. Also with each example there is always a good explanation what is happening, why it is bad code, what he refactored and so on.
So even though the examples might sometimes be harder to follow for you I think you can still get a lot of useful tips from this book about refactoring, code styles, naming, ... I think especially the first ~half, after that it gets a little more technical but can still be useful .