Resources
This site contains a list of resources I find and found helpful. I am not an expert in all of these topics, but all the resources listed here impacted me. I read some of the books quite a long time ago, so there might be newer editions out there already, and I might need to refresh some of the knowledge.
The list may not be exhaustive, but I will be adding more in the future. I firmly believe that educating yourself further is one of the most important things to advance. The lists are in random order and reshuffled every time (via *sort -R*) when updates are made.
You won't find any links on this site because, over time, the links will break. Please use your favourite search engine when you are interested in one of the resources...
.--. .---. .-.
.---|--| .-. | A | .---. |~| .--.
.--|===|Go|---|_|--.__| S |--|:::| |~|-==-|==|---.
|%%|Lin|la|===| |~~|%%| C |--| |_|~|Perl| |___|-.
| |ux |ng|===| |==| | I | |k8s|=| | 7 |Ra|---|=|
| | | | |_|__| | I |__| | | | |ku|___| |
|~~|===|--|===|~|~~|%%|~~~|--|:::|=|~|----|==|---|=|
^--^---'--^---^-^--^--^---'--^---^-^-^-==-^--^---^-'hjw
Table of Contents
Technical books
In random order:
- Object-Oriented Programming with ANSI-C; Axel-Tobias Schreiner
- Terraform Cookbook; Mikael Krief; Packt Publishing
- Pro Puppet; James Turnbull, Jeffrey McCune; Apress
- Programming Perl aka "The Camel Book"; Tom Christiansen, brian d foy, Larry Wall & Jon Orwant; O'Reilly
- Amazon Web Services in Action; Michael Wittig and Andreas Wittig; Manning Publications
- Concurrency in Go; Katherine Cox-Buday; O'Reilly
- Seeking SRE: Conversations About Running Production Systems at Scale; David N. Blank-Edelman; eBook
- C++ Programming Language; Bjarne Stroustrup;
- Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms; Andrew S. Tanenbaum; Pearson
- Raku Fundamentals; Moritz Lenz; Apress
- The Kubernetes Book; Nigel Poulton; Unabridged Audiobook
- Tmux 2: Productive Mouse-free Development; Brain P. Hogan; The Pragmatic Programmers
- Higher Order Perl; Mark Dominus; Morgan Kaufmann
- Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!; Miran Lipovaca; No Starch Press
- Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good; Fred Herbert; No Starch Press
- Modern Perl; Chromatic ; Onyx Neon Press
- DevOps And Site Reliability Engineering Handbook; Stephen Fleming; Audible
- Chaos Engineering - System Resiliency in Practice; Casey Rosenthal and Nora Jones; eBook
- Funktionale Programmierung; Peter Pepper; Springer
- 21st Century C: C Tips from the New School; Ben Klemens; O'Reilly
- Java ist auch eine Insel; Christian Ullenboom;
- Think Raku (aka Think Perl 6); Laurent Rosenfeld, Allen B. Downey; O'Reilly
- The DevOps Handbook; Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis; Audible
- Hands-on Infrastructure Monitoring with Prometheus; Joel Bastos, Pedro Araujo; Packt
- Perl New Features; Joshua McAdams, brian d foy; Perl School
- Site Reliability Engineering; How Google runs production systems; O'Reilly
- Go Brain Teasers - Exercise Your Mind; Miki Tebeka; The Pragmatic Programmers
- Data Science at the Command Line; Jeroen Janssens; O'Reilly
- Programming Ruby 3.3 (5th Edition); Noel Rappin, with Dave Thomas; The Pragmatic Bookshelf
- Effective awk programming; Arnold Robbins; O'Reilly
- Raku Recipes; J.J. Merelo; Apress
- 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them; Teiva Harsanyi; Manning Publications
- DNS and BIND; Cricket Liu; O'Reilly
- The Docker Book; James Turnbull; Kindle
- Leanring eBPF; Liz Rice; O'Reilly
- Ultimate Go Notebook; Bill Kennedy
- Systems Performance Tuning; Gian-Paolo D. Musumeci and others...; O'Reilly
- The Go Programming Language; Alan A. A. Donovan; Addison-Wesley Professional
- The KCNA (Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate) Book; Nigel Poulton
- Developing Games in Java; David Brackeen and others...; New Riders
- Effective Java; Joshua Bloch; Addison-Wesley Professional
- Clusterbau mit Linux-HA; Michael Schwartzkopff; O'Reilly
- The Practise of System and Network Administration; Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, Strata R. Chalup; Addison-Wesley Professional Pro Git; Scott Chacon, Ben Straub; Apress
- Kubernetes Cookbook; Sameer Naik, Sébastien Goasguen, Jonathan Michaux; O'Reilly
- The Pragmatic Programmer; David Thomas; Addison-Wesley
- 97 things every SRE should know; Emil Stolarsky, Jaime Woo; O'Reilly
- Polished Ruby Programming; Jeremy Evans; Packt Publishing
- Systemprogrammierung in Go; Frank Müller; dpunkt
Technical references
I didn't read them from the beginning to the end, but I am using them to look up things. The books are in random order:
- Groovy Kurz & Gut; Joerg Staudemeier; O'Reilly
- Implementing Service Level Objectives; Alex Hidalgo; O'Reilly
- Algorithms; Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne; Addison Wesley
- Relayd and Httpd Mastery; Michael W Lucas
- Go: Design Patterns for Real-World Projects; Mat Ryer; Packt
- BPF Performance Tools - Linux System and Application Observability, Brendan Gregg; Addison Wesley
- The Linux Programming Interface; Michael Kerrisk; No Starch Press
- Understanding the Linux Kernel; Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati; O'Reilly
Self-development and soft-skills books
In random order:
- The Bullet Journal Method; Ryder Carroll; Fourth Estate
- Coders at Work - Reflections on the craft of programming, Peter Seibel and Mitchell Dorian et al., Audiobook
- So Good They Can't Ignore You; Cal Newport; Business Plus
- The Joy of Missing Out; Christina Crook; New Society Publishers
- Deep Work; Cal Newport; Piatkus
- Search Inside Yourself - The Unexpected path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace); Chade-Meng Tan, Daniel Goleman, Jon Kabat-Zinn; HarperOne
- Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track; Will Larson; Audiobook
- The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People; Stephen R. Covey; Simon & Schuster UK
- Buddah and Einstein walk into a Bar; Guy Joseph Ale, Claire Bloom; Blackstone Publishing
- Getting Things Done; David Allen
- The Obstacle Is The Way; Ryan Holiday; Profile Books Ltd
- Solve for Happy; Mo Gawdat (RE-READ 1ST TIME)
- The Software Engineer's Guidebook: Navigating senior, tech lead, and staff engineer positions at tech companies and startups; Gergely Orosz; Audiobook
- Never Split the Difference; Chris Voss, Tahl Raz; Random House Business
- Psycho-Cybernetics; Maxwell Maltz; Perigee Books
- Meditation for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman, Audiobook
- Influence without Authority; A. Cohen, D. Bradford; Wiley
- Atomic Habits; James Clear; Random House Business
- Soft Skills; John Sommez; Manning Publications
- Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction; Susan Blackmore; Oxford Uiversity Press
- The Good Enough Job; Simone Stolzoff; Ebury Edge
- Stop starting, start finishing; Arne Roock; Lean-Kanban University
- Ultralearning; Anna Laurent; Self-published via Amazon
- Eat That Frog; Brian Tracy
- The Daily Stoic; Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman; Profile Books
- Ultralearning; Scott Young; Thorsons
- Time Management for System Administrators; Thomas A. Limoncelli; O'Reilly
- Slow Productivity; Cal Newport; Penguin Random House
- The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide; John Sonmez; Unabridged Audiobook
- Eat That Frog!; Brian Tracy; Hodder Paperbacks
- The Off Switch; Mark Cropley; Virgin Books (RE-READ 1ST TIME)
- The Courage to Be Disliked; Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga; Audiobook
- The Phoenix Project - A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping your Business Win; Gene Kim and Kevin Behr; Trade Select
- The Power of Now; Eckhard Tolle; Yellow Kite
- Digital Minimalism; Cal Newport; Portofolio Penguin
- 101 Essays that change the way you think; Brianna Wiest; Audiobook
- 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know; Camille Fournier; Audiobook
- Who Moved My Cheese?; Dr. Spencer Johnson; Vermilion
Here are notes of mine for some of the books
Technical video lectures and courses
Some of these were in-person with exams; others were online learning lectures only. In random order:
- The Ultimate Kubernetes Bootcamp; School of Devops; O'Reilly Online
- Red Hat Certified System Administrator; Course + certification (Although I had the option, I decided not to take the next course as it is more effective to self learn what I need)
- Protocol buffers; O'Reilly Online
- Scripting Vim; Damian Conway; O'Reilly Online
- Cloud Operations on AWS - Learn how to configure, deploy, maintain, and troubleshoot your AWS environments; 3-day online live training with labs; Amazon
- Functional programming lecture; Remote University of Hagen
- Linux Security and Isolation APIs Training; Michael Kerrisk; 3-day on-site training
- Ultimate Go Programming; Bill Kennedy; O'Reilly Online
- Apache Tomcat Best Practises; 3-day on-site training
- Developing IaC with Terraform (with Live Lessons); O'Reilly Online
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Harold Abelson and more...;
- Algorithms Video Lectures; Robert Sedgewick; O'Reilly Online
- AWS Immersion Day; Amazon; 1-day interactive online training
- The Well-Grounded Rubyist Video Edition; David. A. Black; O'Reilly Online
- F5 Loadbalancers Training; 2-day on-site training; F5, Inc.
- MySQL Deep Dive Workshop; 2-day on-site training
Technical guides
These are not whole books, but guides (smaller or larger) which I found very useful. in random order:
- How CPUs work at https://cpu.land
- Raku Guide at https://raku.guide
- Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
Podcasts
Podcasts I like
In random order:
- Cup o' Go [Golang]
- Modern Mentor
- The ProdCast (Google SRE Podcast)
- Dev Interrupted
- Deep Questions with Cal Newport
- BSD Now [BSD]
- The Pragmatic Engineer Podcast
- Wednesday Wisdom
- The Changelog Podcast(s)
- Fork Around And Find Out
- Maintainable
- Pratical AI
- Hidden Brain
- Fallthrough [Golang]
- Backend Banter
Podcasts I liked
I liked them but am not listening to them anymore. The podcasts have either "finished" (no more episodes) or I stopped listening to them due to time constraints or a shift in my interests.
- Modern Mentor
- Ship It (predecessor of Fork Around And Find Out)
- FLOSS weekly
- Java Pub House
- Go Time (predecessor of fallthrough)
- CRE: Chaosradio Express [german]
Newsletters I like
This is a mix of tech and non-tech newsletters I am subscribed to. In random order:
- Applied Go Weekly Newsletter
- The Pragmatic Engineer
- The Valuable Dev
- Monospace Mentor
- Register Spill
- Golang Weekly
- The Imperfectionist
- Changelog News
- VK Newsletter
- Andreas Brandhorst Newsletter (Sci-Fi author)
- Ruby Weekly
- byteSizeGo
Magazines I like(d)
This is a mix of tech I like(d). I may not be a current subscriber, but now and then, I buy an issue. In random order:
- LWN (online only)
- Linux Magazine
- freeX (not published anymore)
- Linux User
YouTube channels
- Jo Van Eyck - A lot about AI in Software Engineering
- The Linux Experiment - Nice to watch to relax and learn about Linux news
I have met many self-taught IT professionals I highly respect. In my own opinion, a formal degree does not automatically qualify a person for a particular job. It is more about how you educate yourself further *after* formal education. The pragmatic way of thinking and getting things done do not require a college or university degree.
However, I still believe a degree in Computer Science helps to understand all the theories involved that you would have never learned otherwise. Isn't it cool to understand how compilers work under the hood (automata theory) even if you are not required to hack the compiler in your current position? You could apply the same theory for other things too. This was just *one* example.
- One year Student exchange program in OH, USA
- German School Majors (Abitur), focus areas: German and Mathematics
- Half-year internship as a C/C++ programmer in Sofia, Bulgaria
- Graduated from University as Diplom-Inform. (FH) at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences, Germany
My diploma thesis, "Object-oriented development of a GUI based tool for event-based simulation of distributed systems," can be found at:
https://codeberg.org/snonux/vs-sim
I was one of the last students handed out an "old fashioned" German Diploma degree before the University switched to the international Bachelor and Master versions. To give you an idea: The "Diplom-Inform. (FH)" means translated "Diploma in Informatics from a University of Applied Sciences (FH: Fachhochschule)". Going after the international student credit score, it can be seen as an equivalent to a "Master in Computer Science" degree.
Colleges and Universities are costly in many countries. Come to Germany, the first college degree is for free (if you finish within a certain deadline!)
Go back