Introduction My friend, Denis Magda, wrote a wonderful book called Just Use Postgres!, and I’m glad that I got the chance to read it. Audience This book is useful for any software developer who’s either using PostgreSQL or plans on using it because it covers a lot of features that are very useful for modern applications. No matter your level…
#book
21 posts
24 Nov 2025
15 Oct 2025
Introduction My friend, Laurentiu Spilca, has been working on the second edition of his Troubleshooting Java book, and when I was asked to review it, I was more than happy to do it since the book features a lot of topics that I’m also very interested in, such as performance tuning and query optimization. Audience This book is useful for…
10 Jul 2024
Introduction My friend, Dmitry Aleksandrov, has been very generous in giving me a copy of his Helidon book, which he co-authored with Dmitry Kornilov and Daniel Kec. Since I was interested in learning about Helidon, I decided to read this book and see what approach it takes to develop Java applications, as opposed to Spring Boot. The book is called…
7 Jul 2024
Before I read The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya, I only knew about John von Neumann in two contexts: that computers use the von Neumann architecture, and that he appeared in a story about a mathematical problem I … Continue reading →
10 Jan 2024
“Software design is preparation for change; change of behavior” Tidy First? is a new book by Kent Beck. It is a short little book, only about 100 pages (and lots of white space on them), but it contains some deep … Continue reading →
12 Feb 2023
I really enjoyed reading Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide by Jeffrey M. Bacidore. Before starting, I imagined it would cover various strategies for trading in the markets, along the lines of “buy on this condition, sell on this condition”. But … Continue reading →
19 Jun 2022
I recently finished Effective Software Testing – A Developer’s Guide by Maurício Aniche, and I really liked it. I have been coding for a long time and I think I have been writing pretty good tests for the features I … Continue reading →
12 Jul 2021
I really liked A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. It is compact and short, only 170 pages, so it is a quick read, but it contains many good ideas. The focus is on how to structure systems to … Continue reading →
19 May 2020
I really enjoyed reading Artificial Intelligence – A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell. The author is a professor of computer science and an artificial intelligence (AI) researcher. The book is her attempt at working out if the singularity … Continue reading →
4 Jan 2020
In the book club at work, I just finished reading Grokking Deep Learning by Andrew Trask. It is an introduction to deep learning, but there are some problems. It spends a lot of pages on the basics, and in the … Continue reading →
27 Oct 2019
I really enjoyed Classic Computer Science Problems in Python by David Kopec. It covers many different problems I hadn’t read detailed explanations of before. For example: neural networks, constraint-satisfaction problems, genetic algorithms and the minimax algorithm. Unlike many other books … Continue reading →
27 Jul 2019
What a great book Designing Data-Intensive Applications is! It covers databases and distributed systems in clear language, great detail and without any fluff. I particularly like that the author Martin Kleppmann knows the theory very well, but also seems to … Continue reading →
26 May 2019
The book Accelerate details the findings of four years of research on how DevOps affects various outcomes, such as software delivery tempo and stability, as well as the organizations’ profitability and market share. DevOps in this context means things like … Continue reading →
13 Mar 2018
In the book club at work, we recently finished reading Exercises in Programming Style by Cristina Videira Lopes. The book consists of a simple program implemented in 33 different programming styles. It is a great way of showing the different … Continue reading →
20 Aug 2017
I recently found out about the book Developer Testing – Building Quality Into Software by Alexander Tarlinder, and I immediately wanted to read it. Even though I am a developer at heart, I have always been interested in software testing … Continue reading →
15 Jan 2017
Last month we finished reading “The Effective Engineer” by Edmond Lau in the book club at work. It is a great book full of practical advice on how to get more done as a software developer. In fact, it is one … Continue reading →
8 Nov 2016
For several years now, we have been running a developer book club at work. We pick a book relevant to software development, and read a chapter a week. Every other week we meet for 30 to 45 minutes and discuss … Continue reading →
27 Oct 2016
In the book club at work, we recently finished reading Release It! by Michael T. Nygard. It is a book I have been meaning to read for a long time, but somehow I never got around to it until now. … Continue reading →
3 Jan 2015
I finally got around to reading Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob). It is often high on lists of the best books for software development, and for good reason. Clean Code is an excellent book that all programmers … Continue reading →
8 Jun 2014
Is software antifragile? I think so. I recently finished the book Antifragile – Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I liked it a lot, and I think the ideas in it are quite useful when examining various systems and … Continue reading →
23 Sept 2012
When I found out about the book “How Google Tests Software“, it didn’t take long until I had ordered a copy. I find it quite fascinating to read about how Google does things, whether it is about their development process, their … Continue reading →