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✨ 10 Books For Every Software Engineer in 2025

Ravin Rau on December 30, 2024

Throughout my seven years in tech, from being a frontend engineer to an engineering manager, I have found some amazing books that have helped me gr...
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abhivyaktii profile image
Abhinav

This reading list looks fantastic! What are your view around System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide -Alex Yul.
It’s a remarkable resource that helped me gain a deeper understanding of what happens behind the scenes when code goes live.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @abhivyaktii. Yes, I have read about the System Design Interview. In fact, I have the PDF version of the second part.

Download System Design Interview Book

It is a good book for someone who wants to have a quick understanding of how system design works and the strategies that they will need to put in place to ensure the scalability and reliability of the system.

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Lin Pengcheng • Edited
Keep it Simple and Unified. 
Only simple can unity, 
only unity can be truly simple.

Computer science is essentially a management science, 
and vice versa.

Software and hardware are factories that manufacture data, 
so they have the same "warehouse/workshop model" and 
management methods as the manufacturing industry.

Traditional IT theory (OO, FP and hardware architecture, etc.) 
are pseudoscience. they belong to what physicist 
Wolfgang Pauli said "Not Even Wrong".

It is the perfect theory if a theory is based on mathematics 
and meets the five basic principles of "Simplicity, Unity, Order, 
Symmetry and Definiteness" in science, industry and aesthetics.  

        ---- Lin Pengcheng

The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and 
definiteness, which the mathematical sciences 
demonstrate in a special degree.

       ---- Aristotle, "Metaphysica"

Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

My programming aesthetic standards are derived from the basic principles of science. Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Aristotle and other major scientists hold this view.

The aesthetics of non-art subjects are often complicated and mysterious, making it difficult to understand and learn.

The pure function pipeline data flow provides a simple, clear, scientific and operable demonstration.

Simplicity and Unity are the two guiding principles of scientific research and industrial production.

  • Unification of theories is the long-standing goal of the natural sciences; and modern physics offers a spectacular paradigm of its achievement. It can be found from the knowledge of various disciplines: the more universally applicable a unified theory, the simpler it is, and the more basic it is, the greater it is.

  • The more simple and unified things, the more suitable for large-scale industrial production.

  • Only simple can unity, only unity can be truly simple.

In the IT field, only two systems fully comply with these 5 programming aesthetics:

  • Binary system

The biggest advantage is that it makes the calculations reach the ultimate simplicity and unity, so digital logic circuits are produced, and then the large-scale industrial production methods of computer hardware are produced.

  • The pure function pipeline data flow with principle-based warehouse/workshop model

From:

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lindiwe09 profile image
Lindiwe

✨ Thank you for sharing this incredible collection of books! 🙏

As someone navigating the tech field, I truly appreciate the thought and effort you put into curating resources that have impacted your journey. Your insights and recommendations are invaluable, and I’m excited to explore these books to help me grow as a software engineer.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @lindiwe09. The best thing an engineer can do is to share their learning and knowledge with other engineers so that innovation and improvement can happen faster. These are some books that my seniors recommended to me when I was a junior and some were books that I read along my way which became super impactful for me.

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lindiwe09 profile image
Lindiwe

You're most welcome! 😊
Sharing knowledge truly drives innovation and growth.

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perisicnikola37 profile image
Nikola Perišić

Thanks for sharing! I’d like to recommend one more resource that has been valuable to me: The Laravel Official Documentation in PDF format. You can access PDFs for various Laravel versions here:
github.com/mnishihan/laravel-docs-...

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you for sharing it @perisicnikola37, this is useful since now the older version of laravel is remove from the official documentation

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skillboosttrainer profile image
SkillBoostTrainer

The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project are such powerful reads for understanding DevOps and team dynamics. These books helped me see how technical and management roles intertwine.

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Ravin Rau

Yup those two books are highly recommended for devops and management people. It is also a very good read.

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sahildahekar profile image
Sahil Dahekar • Edited

That looks like a exciting list . Looking forward to complete atleast 2 book as one of my 2025 resolution.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @sahildahekar and all the best for your 2025 reading.

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veektor_v profile image
Victor Peter

Really cool post, thank you.

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Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @veektor_v 😄

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dhanush9952 profile image
Dhanush

Think Like a Programmer ✨

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devmercy profile image
Mercy

Thank you for sharing. This is the masterpiece, some of us love reading but don't have money to buy books.
Thank you for making these books available to the public for free.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @devmercy, I am an advocate of free knowledge but at the same time, I do respect the authors' effort in creating their content. Without them, we might not get this content in the first place. That is why I ask my readers to support them when they have the excess money so that they can produce more content in the future that can help more engineers and create more software engineers in the future.

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qobyna4714 profile image
Qobyna

Thanks a bunch for the book recommendation and the public links! I now have a few books to dive into in 2025.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @qobyna4714 😁, all the best for 2025, and hope these books will be able to help you in your journey.

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gupede1027 profile image
gupede

Thanks for the share. Love that you include the downloadable version.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @gupede1027 😁

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lykyfi516 profile image
lykyf

The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project is such a good read. Thanks for the share.

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juniourrau profile image
Ravin Rau

Thank you very much @lykyfi516 😁. Yes, those books were so great to read. Since they were written in novel style, they resonated with the reader well enough.

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