Introduction
Books offer wisdom in a nice package. It serves to enrich our mind and perception of the world. Good books fulfil a role as an invisible consultant. Who we call upon them for entertainment, inspiration, insights & wisdom to shape our minds. I believe where I am now is the direct result of good books I had read over the years. These books served to change my reality in how I view the world to become a sponge to learn new things about the world.
Unscripted By Mj DeMarco
I read Mj DeMarco's previous book called The Millionaire Fastlane and unlike your usual entrepreneurship books. He provides tons of tough love and truth bombs. The book literally busts your a** to adopt thinking patterns or perception as an entrepreneur. I like those ugly truth books that is simple, direct and hearty in how he tells his story. That is battle-tested in the trenches by these people.
The Unicorn Project By Gene Kim
A sequel to Gene Kim's famous book called The Phoenix Project. A book that I highly recommend it for those who have an interest in DevOps to pick it up. As the Unicorn Project covers stories and context of a developer. Who works in a large IT department works with jargon and technical terms that you may be familiar as a developer. The Unicorn project to incorporate lean manufacturing concepts & DevOps methodology. To me, it is not a tool book but more of a concept/philosophy book that uses stories as lessons to drive a point across.
Architecture Patterns with Python By Harry J.W. Percival, Bob Gregory
A followup of Harry Percival book called Test Driven Web Development with Python was one of the few books that talks about Django & TDD.
In his new book, he goes deep and talks about various concepts & architecture patterns used in other programming languages. While providing you examples by himself and his co-author with Python with TDD. Therefore if you are a person interest in testing & Python, it will serve you well to dive deep into it.
The Mom Test By Rob Fitzpatrick
I heard about it from in one of the podcast episode in IndieHacker that talks on customer development, sales and conducting user interviews for your startup.
What I found interesting besides it being a sales book. The book is written for techies by techies. So any developer or techie can use it to build their indiehacker business or startup without much knowledge in sales & customer development.
Meditations By Marcus Aurelius
I had an interest in Stoicism due to the influence by Tim Ferriss. I read about the benefits as a personal operating system for yourself. This leads to me, collecting afew stoicism & philosophy books in my personal library. Meditations have been one of my favourite goto stoicism books. As it resonates with me the most on how I should view or operate in the world. If you have an interest in understanding the minds of famous people through biography or autobiography. The book is written as a self-reflection by Marcus Aurelius. Who is one of the 5 good Roman Emperor who had ruled Rome. During the reign, he had to endure constant invasion, civil war, famine, a pandemic that is much worst than covid19 in lethality.
Conclusion
These books are part of my open book list. I do take a while for me to read and absorb each book. So I tend to have a huge backlog of books that is in my open book reading list. So if you are into entrepreneurship & business checkout The Mom Test & Unscripted.
If your developer and wants to know more on Python, DevOps, testing and maintaining a legacy codebase. I would suggest you look at The Unicorn Project & Architecture Patterns with Python to serve you to become a better developer.
If you like Stoicism or is interested to read more on Stoicism. I would suggest you read my favourite Stoicism book called Meditations as a gateway drug into the Stoicism.
Lastly, are you looking to specialise as a developer? If yes, I’m giving away my free ebook called "Picking Your Specialisation as a Developer". It is for anyone interested in commanding a higher salary or simply doing the work they like.
This post includes affiliate links, I may receive compensation if you purchase products or services from the different links provided in this article.
Reference
- Read These Books Instead of Getting an MBA
- Unscripted
- The Phoenix Project
- The Unicorn Project
- Architecture Patterns with Python
- The Mom Test
- Meditations
- The Millionaire Fastlane
- Test Driven Web Development with Python
- IndieHacker
- Tim Ferriss
- How Marcus Aurelius Responded To A Pandemic | Ryan Holiday | Coronavirus and Stoicism
- How to Use Philosophy as a Personal Operating System: From Seneca to Musashi
Top comments (5)
Nice collection, I added some to my list. And I added Meditations to my brother when he turned 18.
Small typo, Marcus was not one of the 5 famous Roman emperors, in fact, I'm not even sure if he would have made it to the top 5, but he is one of the 5 emperors who are sometimes referred to as the 5 Good Emperors.
As you are interested in Stoicism, make sure to check out the new book from Ryan Holiday, Lives Of The Stoics.
Our reading lists have some overlaps, you might find something interesting among my reviews.
Thanks for catching my error. I thought I wrote it as 5 good emperors but I guess I'm wrong. I blame myself for not editing it well. Yes, I saw that latest book by Ryan Holiday I was thinking of getting the book as well.
But I need to clear my backlog as I'm a slow reader that includes the The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide that I had brought afew months back.
That's a good choice, you will love it! And it's something quite easy to read due to its structure and language/
I have Meditations in my TBR and will read it soon. I’m currently reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki.
Nice I love reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad as well. Which his book is part of the reason who propel me towards startups as well.