What course/book positively affected your career as a developer the most?

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Just like the title says :smiley: which courses you find that have had the most impact in the span of your career as a developer?

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Refactoring by Martin Fowler and Kent Beck. I’ve read the original Java version, they did a JS revision soon ago.

It did open my eyes for the fact that our work is not a playground and we should all be taking the gradual evolution of code very seriously. All of the techniques inside taught me to spot opportunities to make code more readable, more maintainable, and more extensible.

It was a priceless learning experience.

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  1. CSS Core Concepts & CSS Page Layouts both by James Williamson (lynda.com)
  2. Rediscovering JavaScript by Venkat Subramaniam (pragprog)
  3. Phoenix inside out series by Shankar Dhanasekaran (self published, book #1 Mastering Phoenix also available free online)
  4. Elixir & OTP by Mike and Nicole Clark (pragmatic studio)
  5. Ruby on Rails 5 Essential Training by Kevin Skoglund (lynda.com), (I don’t call myself a Rails developer)
  6. Pure React by Dave Ceddia` (self published)
  7. Some free PHP courses by Alex Garrett (CodeCourse) and Brad Traversy (Traversy Media) at Youtube, back in the day.
  8. Many more, will keep updating…
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The Pragmatic Programmer by @Andy and David Thomas.

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Currently reading this right now and have been enjoying it!

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Great, I will be sure to add this to my reading list :smiley:

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I definitely need to sharpen up my CSS skills so I’ll give those a look. Thanks for the response!

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Cool topic of discussion, @chasekaylee!

Aside from some great titles that have already been mentioned, I have two books that immediately come to mind.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by @Andy

This is a really insightful read into how we acquire expertise and how our approaches to problem solving differ along the way, e.g., beginners want recipes while experts ‘just know’ and may even have a bit of trouble putting their intuition into words.

I also learned that I can copy a drawing really well if I simply turn it upside down. :laughing:

Programming in Scala by Martin Odersky, Lex Spoon, and Bill Venners.

Now in its fourth edition, I consider it the definitive introduction to Scala, written by its inventor.

I read the second edition in 2012. I came for an alternative to Java and stayed for the clear writing and my first exposure to functional programming (which in turn led me to reading a lot about Clojure and Elixir).

I’m still writing Java day to day, but I think the code I write is so much better by being familiar with FP. I would like to revisit Scala some day.

I’m very grateful that I read this early in my career. Lots of foundational wisdom about turning a profession into a craft.

I still have my copy. The little red ribbon bookmark was a nice touch.

I’m excited to hear this! I’m looking forward to working through the course myself when some of my time (hopefully) frees up in the next few months.

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I think one of the most important books I read about programming which enlightened me about OOP and also programming in general was C++ How to Program, by Deitel and Deitel. It was among the books suggested for a university course.

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I had quite a successful run as an independent Rails dev, as it was just becoming mainstream, so I’m gonna vote for Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial. It taught me not only Rails, but more than enough Ruby to do that, plus better testing ideas. Other than that, maybe The Pragmatic Programmer.

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  1. The New CSS Layout by Rachel Andrew
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To become the developer I learned a lot of video courses. Many of this courses I boutht in Udemy. One courses , not enouth to became developer. Also I think very Important not ignore programming courses on native languages. Althou I passed a lot programming courses in english. To became a developer , me really helps programming courses in native languages.

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I was a self-taught programmer, but what got me started was Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel, although I really haven’t programmed in C++ professionally. :slight_smile:

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I would say the Ruby and Rails course bundle from the Pragmatic Studio. The quality of the course materials and teaching approaching is at least a level above of other courses aimed at developers.

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Beginning POJOS was my AHA!! book when I was trying to wrap my head around OO concepts in Java. It helped me understand interfaces and polymorphism.

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Apprenticeship Patterns

It is definitely a magnificent book rethinking how to be a good engineer with a clear roadmap.

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