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Jasterix
Jasterix

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What's the last technical book you read?

I'm currently speeding through and enjoying, "JavaScript Application Design: A Build First Approach" by Nicolas Bevacqua.

The only downside to this fantastic book is that it was written in 2015 and doesn't (so far) use ES6. But it's a comprehensive JavaScript book I wish was recommended more to beginners.

For reference, taking a build first approach means dedicating a good chunk of the book towards:

  • understanding and creating build tasks
  • truly exploring environment workflows
  • building out continuous deployments
  • writing modular, easy to test code

This is counter to most intro books that focus on JavaScript syntax and standalone concepts.

Latest comments (22)

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jasterix profile image
Jasterix

Good to know! I'll check it out

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togakangaroo profile image
George Mauer • Edited

Righting Software by Juval Lowy

If you can make it through the intense egomania and talking down to absolutely everyone, there's some really really good stuff in there.

Also, ok, I still haven't finished it, it takes a while to absorb.

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Aschwin Wesselius

Yes, it is utmost necessary to cut through the egomania. But the guy is actually quite humble. He's not talking down to absolutely everyone. He's talking down to the practices of absolutely everyone. And he has all the right to do so, since you hardly can prove him wrong on his practices.

It's just like Ignaz Semmelweis had to endure opposition by reknown doctors for bad practices, in the end he was right.

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togakangaroo profile image
George Mauer

Well kinda except you also have statements from Juval (I don't remember if it was in the book or an interview) such as that his method is just about the only software architecture ever done right and even then few people can do it. That's not exactly provably wrong but it's not provably right either, it's just kind of a useless thing to say. He does that a lot and it's a real reason why I think some people can't and won't get into it.

He also has a nasty habit of misstating the position of others. While he doesn't do much as reference domain driven design in the book, he does elsewhere and hit students do as well. Instead he beats around the bush talking about domain modelling and completely butchers the very idea. The whole thing is dumb as DDD ubiquitous language concept is useful regardless, and the rest fits in very nicely within Juval's framework as a way of defining the innards of a component (which honestly is a way better take on the bounded context concept).

Anyways, the book itself has solid ideas if you can push through so I still recommend it.

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jasterix profile image
Jasterix

Thanks, George! I'll keep that in mind. So far though, it sounds like an interesting book

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Lynn Langit • Edited

I read Genomics In the Cloud with great interest, because I am working in this area. Also because I was one (of the many) tech reviewers and I was eager to see the 'final form' of the book.

Genomic in the Cloud

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vipulchodankar profile image
Vipul

Eloquent JavaScript 🙂

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truthseekerbeast profile image
Tapan Parmar

Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques to Build Intelligent Systems

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Sandor Dargo

The last one I read was Functional programming in C++. If you are a C++ developer and interested in functional concepts it's a must to read. But even if you are not interested that much in FP, the parts on STL, ranges, templates, and algebraic data types are worth the days/week you'll spend reading it and for sure will help you to become a better C++ programmer.

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Alexandru Muntean

Clean Coder was my last technical book read.

It was a pleasure to read it since it contains lots of short stories of Robert C. Martin through his path to become a 'well-rounded' developer with lots of good advice along the way.

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softprops profile image
Doug Tangren

I re-read the book extreme programming explained. It's incredible how relevant this book still is. If you work on a team of more than one person (most teams) you should read this book.

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Jean-Michel Plourde

This semester, I didn't code at all and had classes about engineering. Thus the technical book I read and loved the most was Control Systems Engineering by Norma S. Nise. I really like it and there is a ton of really interesting stuff that will in the big picture, help me integrate the hardware and software of system engineering.

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JUIC#801

Do RFCs count? If so, I was skimming RFC 6455 on the Websocket Protocol. But other than that I think it was the Cisco CCNA Textbook.