Leaders Eat Last
On my eReader it has around 60+ pages for notes and bibliography. A lot of research went into this one. Well written, inspiring, and might even affect my approach to some problems. Worth a read!
Julius Robert
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Amusing Ourselves to Death
Only the Paranoid Survive
Architecture Patterns with Python: Enabling Test-Driven Development, Domain-Driven Design, and Event-Driven Microservices
Nothing new if you’ve read some of the other books on software architecture you can find here. But it’s very approachable. Using Python as an example language gives you all the principles without having to squint through the more verbose ones like C# or Java. The foundations the book builds upon are strong, and it gives you tools to structure your application from whatever situation…
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Human cruelty always seems to surprise me whenever I encounter it. “Surely people cannot be this cruel,” I ask myself, and I’m always proven wrong. The famous quote from George Carlin might just have to be extended to include cruelty alongside stupidity in humans. However, humans can also be infinitely kind. I suppose we can’t have one without the other…
Why Nature Wants Us to Be Fat
Interesting stuff, but a lot of the science is extrapolated from studies made with mice.
The Hacking of the American Mind
Nothing new here. Social Media, Food, and Entertainment industries want your attention, money, health and free time. As much as they can get it. It’s up to you to stop them.
Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth about Sugar, Obesity, and Disease
This one hit real close to home. I literally grew up in a candy store. From when I was 4 years old, until around 17. It shaped my relationship to food and nutrition in the worst possible way.
Revenge of the TippingPoint: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
Read during two days. Tipping points aren’t always positive. Small, seemingly isolated actions can snowball into widespread consequences—often unintended(hopefully), and sometimes harmful.
Modern Software Engineering: Doing What Works to Build Better Software Faster
Efficiently building software. That’s what this book is about. It frames our work not (only) as craft, art, or magic, but also as an engineering discipline rooted in empiricism and iteration. Principles like testability, observability, and incremental change form the foundation. The book emphasizes short iteration cycles, tight feedback loops, and comprehensive automated testing. These…
Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness
Nudge introduces the term Choice Architect—the people who design the options we’re presented with, multiple times a day. Sometimes it’s innocent and well-meaning, like nudging a child to eat more vegetables by putting them first on the menu. But the same mechanisms can be used in reverse: making unhealthy or processed food more attractive. Are we free to make our own choices? Or are we…
Azure Infrastructure as Code With ARM templates and Bicep
Skip this one unless you’re planning to or already doing things with Azure. The ARM and Bicep sections provide you with important information about how to think about your IaC (Infrastructure as Code). This book will give you the rundown on how Microsoft themselves want you to think about and work with Azure. Structuring your resources (aka Resources, Providers etc.), your Tenant, and how to…
Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
Oh boy, this book was not easy to get through. I was often reflecting over times in my career when the insights in this book could have saved me (and my colleagues) from headaches. It leans more toward object-oriented thinking than I’m entirely comfortable with, but that’s easy enough to skip or reinterpret into something more useful (functional programming—yes, I’m biased). I highly recommend…
Thinking In Systems
I never thought to ask for a formal way to describe what I see in society. The patterns that emerge when observing the actions and consequences of the people around me or in the media have always been visible, but just slightly out of reach of reasoning about in any meaningful way. This is now possible. The tools and language you learn from this book will help to make sense of the decisions made…
Software Architecture: The Hard Parts
Again, there are no silver bullets. It’s all about managing and balancing trade-offs. Find them, reason about them, and put them into the context of your situation/problem. Figure out which of them are important to the people around you. Your PO for example likely has a different idea about what’s important compared to your engineering colleagues. Distributed software is hard. Arm…
The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery
This one is somewhere between a 3 and a 4. As I read it today it’s more of a 3. 5+ years ago, it could easily have been a 5. I’ve realized much of what the book tries to teach, through trial and error, learning from others, and reading other books in the genre. Chapter 8 (Before the Project) is a part I’ll be revisiting. It gave me a lot to think about regarding software…
Working Effectively With Legacy Code
After this book you’ll have guiding light in the figurative tunnel of darknes that is a giant codebase with no tests, no architecture, no coherent design. You’ll be able to poke and prod into whichever horrendous monolith you’ll encounter and walk out in at least a similar amount of pieces that you entered with.
Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
This book was released in 2004, and I started working as a software engineer about 10 years later. If I had read this book then, I wouldn’t have understood the impact that the practice of XP (Extreme Programming) could (and would) have on myself and the work I do. Doing things the “wrong” way—meaning less effective and more expensive—is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to…
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art
I have to admit, breathing isn’t something I’ve paid a lot of attention to, which seems kind of… normal? I recall being taught early on that the body takes care of itself. To just leave it alone and let it do its thing. I also just wrote it off as it seems like something that becomes important enough to pay attention to when you’re doing physical activities beyond the…
Code That Fits in Your Head: Heuristics for Software Engineering
It’s a well-written and a valuable resource. All IT organizations have their way of doing things, but the ideas here are applicable almost everywhere. Depending on your level of knowledge and work experience it might be hard to imagine the impact of having the tools presented at your disposal. I would simply suggest reading it again a year later. Although I was already aware of many of the…
Turn the Ship Around
Short and mostly to the point. Former Navy Captain David Marquet shares his approach to leadership that transformed his submarine crew from followers to leaders. What kind of organization do you want to belong to? What questions should you ask yourself to measure the well-being of your organization? How do you detect deviations from the optimal path? Tactical tools are provided to answer questions…
Functional Programming in C#
If you’re interested in functional programming I’d start skimming through Scott Wlaschins site F# For fun and profit , watch some of his videos on YouTube and, get a feel for the concepts. The site is primarily about F# but the concepts are language agnostic. It will be a bit harder to do some things in C# but that’s where this book comes in. Make sure to work through the…
Not the End of the world
Author is heavily inspired by Hans Rosling and his style of presenting information. If you liked Factfulness, you’ll feel right at home. Long story short, it’s not as bad as it seems. We’re on the right track. And while we’ve never practiced sustainability to the extent we do today, there’s still a lot more to be done.
Kill It with Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems
I’m just going to drop some random quotes from the book, they ought to entice you enough. When both observability and testing are lacking on your legacy system, observability comes first. Tests tell you what won't fail; monitoring tells you what is failing. When in doubt, default to panicking. It's more important that errors get noticed so that they can be resolved. The important takeaway is…
The Mythical Man-Month
There is no silver bullet. Project management is hard. This book helps a lot .
Domain Modeling Made Functional
Even if you don’t work with F# or functional languages there are valuable lessons for any software developer. If you really want the code to be the documentation for your application, start here.
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Who am I? My name is Julius Robert. I’m a software engineer based in Stockholm, Sweden. I grew up in Västerås and spent most of my time playing video games and nerding around with technology. I also studied maths, hardware (embedded systems), and computer science. My career started when I moved to Stockholm in 2014 to work as an IT consultant. What am I doing now? Working with very talented…
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Prisoners of Geography: Ten maps that explain the world
The Courage to Be Disliked
Fun read!
Designing Data-intensive Applications
Why did I read this so late??
The Design of Everyday Things
Powerful concepts, useful for anyone building things for other people. Made me reevaluate the word design. It’s everywhere. Whatever you do has some design behind it. You design your code for the next reader, you design the app for the ease of use. Really think about what you’re building and how it looks from the users point of view, how will they use it? How will it go wrong? How do…
Behave: The Psychology of Humans at their best and worst
Should be mandatory reading for literally everyone who interacts with other humans. Even more so for the ones who decide the fate of others. You get a high level view and understanding of how the brain works. It gives you a different perspective when engaging with others.
Why We Sleep
Neglecting sleep is one of my biggest regrets in life. I don’t do that any more.
How Asia Works
I never paid much attention to the history of this part of the world. Didn’t finish this one but might pick it up again.
The Psychology of Money
I think most people know a lot of what the author is trying to teach but it’s good to get a refresher.
Radical Candor
Author is a fascinating person with much to tell. Many mistakes but also a lot of success shape the lessons in the book. Perhaps the lessons are self-evident after a while working as a manger. For me this book was a good jump-start into the fascinating intricacies of management.
High Output Management
Entertaining, educating and exciting! Great lessons. Worthy read for management types and engineers alike. As an engineer it’s good to know what to look for in a manager, as a manager it’s good to know what your engineers need.
Outliers
Very fun read! A look into how the greatest among us rose to their greatness. And it’s likely you’ll be surprised why.
Blink
Ego Is The Enemy
Helps you get into a different mindset in your life. Focus on concrete things which only you can control.
The Goal
Combining education with a human story is a great way to teach. Must read for anyone in charge of or a part of an organization with processes (which should be basically everyone)…
Deep Work
If only I’d read this sooner… Today, it’s easier than ever to get distracted. Everyone is fighting for your attention. It’s the one thing you should be very greedy with.
Factfulness
Author Hans Rosling really has to be experienced in a live talk. This book is a close second.
Homo Deus
Interesting speculations. Youval is smart and has a lot of knowledge to back up his thoughts.
Countdown To Zero-Day: Stuxnet
Tells the story of Operation Olympic Games . The first official act of cyber warfare. Educating and entertaining. Learning about different small scale “attacks” on infrastructure around the world, and the shocking lack of security in software of mechanical systems, the ones enabling much of our current infrastructure, was eye opening.
The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck
Yes!!
The Tipping Point
Big fan of Malcolm Gladwell. Many good lessons to be learned here.
Sapiens
So much history, insight and education in a book so easy to read. Highly recommend if you’re interested in our collective history.