Books

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master (Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas) - classic book, recommended as a must-read for every programmer. For me, the two takeaways are of the most importance. First of all: know your tools. Without mastering your instruments, you will more concentrate on them instead of solving the real problems. Secondly, proper modularization is the key to maintainable and correct code. Lack of orthogonality in the designed systems usually leads to disasters and makes the developers miserable.
• Clean Agile: Back to Basics (Robert C. Martin) - this book is a recap from Uncle Bob, one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, on how Agile was perceived at the very beginning. This book describes a set of practices that a team needs to follow to consider themselves “agile” and bring value to the customers. I would highly recommend reading this book to everyone who is somehow involved in any software project, not only the developers themselves. This treatise clarifies the agile approach without blurring the concepts with any agile methodology (like Scrum). Just like the title promises: it gets the reader back to basics.

Articles

• Write like you code - interesting comparison of writing prose with writing code. The author points out that a good text has the same qualities as a good code. It should be simple, efficient, and well structured. This article is aligned with my goals for enhancing my writing skills. It makes me notice that good coding and good writing share the same principles.
• Is the madness ever going to end? - this article expresses many concerns I have about the modern approach to web development - sometimes even to software development in general. The author points out that the industry is very keen to put unnecessary layers of abstraction even on simple problems, ignoring clear solutions and reinventing the wheel. The results can be observed on each and every “modern” web page. Even web pages with simple content are wrapped in tons of JavaScript and take literally seconds to get loaded. It’s annoying. And sad.