Books!

I like to read. After a long day of computers at work, I find that it doesn’t work for me to get back onto a computer to learn after the kids are in bed. Here’s a stack of books I’ve read, am reading or hope to get to soon.

Thank you to Omnitech for buying me many books over the years!

From top to bottom:

The Kindle PaperWhite

I have way too many free books that I haven’t gotten to. I do like using the PaperWhite to send PDFs and ebooks on programming. Some recent ones have been on Kubernetes and Docker, parts of Architecture Modern Web Applications with ASP.NET Core and Microsoft Azure and others at times. The other books have taken priority.

I get a lot of free ebooks from David C Cook Publishing or by searching Amazon for $0 priced items.

The Bible

I try to read some every day. Our church has a great Daily Bible Reading guide .

How to Pray - The Best of John Wesley

I want to pray more and get better at it. I got this for a few dollars and pull it out on occasion.

How to Win Friends and Influence Others

We are reading this at Omnitech as a group. I’ve already re-learned not to criticize and to encourage others.

In Freedom’s Cause- G.A. Henty

I’m reading this to my kids as part of our homeschooling. We’re learning about William Wallace and Sir Bruce, Scotland, England, courage, bravery, patriotism, the difficulty of fighting, war and fighting for freedom and liberty.

O Jerusalem!

I read a few pages every once in awhile. I’m learning about the years leading up to and after the UN declaration that Israel could be a country in the 1940s. It has perspective from both sides. It’s interesting how Jerusalem is the center for the worlds 3 major religions.

Test Driven Development - Kent Beck

I’ve had this on my shelf for years. I finally read it! This is the book that introduced the approach of TDD. It’s probably not exactly what you think. I enjoyed how he wrote out his thinking. In the middle there is a lot of good advice on testing and patterns to help you through.

I did a TDD L&L with Roman Numerals. Stay tuned for an article about that experience.

Clean Architecture - Uncle Bob Martin

We just finished this book as a summer book club at Omnitech with some interns at 10 engineers. I wish I had read this years ago. It taught me a lot and gave us plenty to think and talk about.

• Defer your decisions
• Policies are business rules that should be in the center of your architecture
• think about components and boundaries

Listen in on the Coding Blocks discussions and read the book to get more insights.

John and I are going to be presenting on Clean Architecture at SD Code Camp 2019 . I’ll be creating a post for this too.

Treat Your own Neck

I had a sore neck after switching contracts. The new place had a different setup and it took time to get used to. Treat Your own Back has been extremely helpful after I had a lot of Sciatic nerve pains in my back. The chiropractor helped too.

There’s a lot of good exercises in both books.

The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim

This is a must read novel about DevOps for anyone working with software (that’s pretty much every business these days). Most people can relate to a character or event. They usually say “__ is like this character”.

I first heard of it from Richard Campbell at a NE Code conference in 2016.

I’ve read it twice and it’s great to refer back to and think about.

The Unicorn Project - Gene Kim

This is another must read novel about DevOps and software. It was published in November 2019 and will be the focus of a book club at Omnitech in early 2020.

The Unicorn Project

• Parallels the Phoenix Project, but focused on the software side.
• listen to 4 chapters for free

Domain Driven Design - Eric Evans

I’ve heard DDD a lot and I want to learn about it. I read a few chapters before being distracted by Clean Architecture and other things. It sounds like a great way to discover how to write software for business. It sounds complicated too. I really like using “ubiquitous language” to be a common language with business users and in the code. I’ll definitely get to this one at some point.

Patterns of Enterprise and Application Architecture - Martin Fowler

A comment about Clean Architecture on a blog post lead me to this book. I haven’t opened it yet.

Honorable Mentions

The Art of Unit Testing - Roy Osherove

I always say, if you’re learning about unit testing read this book. I’ve been in several book clubs using this book over the years.

Pragmatic Programmer

This is a great book. I had it in college and read it again a few years ago. I hope to do a book club someday in the future.

Accelerate - Gene Kim+

Research using the State of DevOps surveys. Automated testing and Continuous Integration are shown to help developer and team satisfaction and happiness.

Another must read for devs, team leads, managers and all the way up.

DevOps Handbook - Gene Kim+

The how to of DevOps. A lot of great case studies and practical tips. There isn’t a one way for DevOps, but this shares how teams have improved.

Summary

You’ve learned more about me and what I read. What book recommendations do you have?

I have more in my resources page, but a lot of them are the same.

Here’s a list from the 2019 NE Code Conference that I attended.