Urban Hafner

Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript programmer. Dabbling with Rust and agile methodologies on the side.

Reading List

This is a list of tech books that I’m planning to read, or have read. I’ll add more information on each book in time and I will hopefully write full fledged reviews for more books and link them from here. Feel free to comment on any book and recommend new ones!

Books to read

  • Sinatra: Up and Running.
  • The Lean Startup.
  • The Art of the Start.
  • Start Small, Stay Small.
  • Learn You a Haskell for Great Good. This book is advertised in the back of Land of Lisp which I read in the Ruby Rogues book club. I picked it up because it seems to have a similar crazy style as Land of Lisp which I enjoyed very much. Also some of the panelists on the Ruby Rogues episode that discussed Land of Lisp mentioned that they learnt Haskell, too. And to add to that I had tried to learn Haskell a few years ago and thought that now might be a good time to try again. I do hope that this time I’ll be able to read the whole book :)
  • 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. This ebook on how to write a successful blog was mentioned on the Ruby Freelancers show and as I find it quite difficult to keep my blog going I hope that this will help me. After all as a freelancer I should have some kind of presence on the web …
  • CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development. The CoffeeScript book by the Pragmatic Bookshelf. What more is there to say?
  • Eloquent Javascript. I think this book was mentioned on the JavaScript Jabber podcast. After reading a few chapters I’m not sure if that book is correct for me as I’m not a JavaScript newbie. But I think I should keep going as I’m sure I’ve forgotten quite a few basic things about JavaScript already.
  • Smooth CoffeeScript. An adaptation of Eloquent JavaScript for Coffee Script. And hey, it’s free!
  • Metaprogramming Ruby. Even though I have been doing Ruby for a long, long time I still find some bits of the language difficult. And even though Rails is these days doing less “magic” I think it’s still very important to understand these parts of the language.
  • The Agile Samurai. There was an episode on this book on the Pragmatic Podcast. And as I work alone, and from home books like this help me improve my development technique (I hope).
  • Refactoring. What’s there to say about this book? Probably on that it’s surprising that I haven’t read it, yet!
  • Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. The brain is a surprising thing and does work in a different way than we think. Andy Hunt tries to help you understand how to more effectively use your brain in every day development.
  • Seven Databases in Seven Weeks. With all these new NoSQL databases that all use completely different ideas (graph databases, eventual consistency, …) this I hopefully a great whirl-wind tour through the major ones to get an idea on what’s out there.
  • Get Clients Now. The first book of the Ruby Freelancers book club. It was also highly recommended more than once by every panelist on that podcast. And as a freelancer I really should beef up my marketing skills.
  • tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development. tmux seems to be on everybodies mind these days. I’ve used screen a little back in the day but with everyobdy raving about it I think I should check it out.
  • Growing Object-Oriented Software Guided by Tests. Another book from the Ruby Rogues book club. And right on track with me learning more about TDD/BDD/refactoring/…
  • Refactoring Ruby Edition. A specialized edition of Refactoring obviously for Ruby. As I do most of my work in that language I might check it out.
  • Bootstrapping Design. As a web developer I don’t have a real grasp on design. I can recognize a good design but that’s about it. Hopefully this book will help me get at least slightly better at designing my own wesites.
  • Modular Front-End. We’re modularizing and we’re splitting up all our backend code, but the CSS and HTML is generally a mess. Roy suggests splitting up the HTML and CSS into modular building blocks that can be easily reused. I saw his talk at Euruko 2012 and again at Rulu 2012 and I can’t wait for him expanding on his technique in book form.
  • The Productive Programmer. Suggested by Trevor Bramble

Books I’ve read

  • JavaScript Performance Rocks!.
  • Practices of an Agile Developer.
  • The Pragmatic Programmer.
  • Design Patterns in Ruby.
  • Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns.
  • Exceptional Ruby.
  • Objects on Rails.
  • Working with Unix Processes.
  • Crafting Rails Applications.
  • Land of Lisp. See my review here.
  • Eloquent Ruby. See my series of posts on this book here.

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