Developer Advocate

📕 The Creative Act: A Way of Being 📆 January 17, 2023 The #1 New York Times bestseller. "A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment.” —Anne Lamott From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us. “I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us. Amazon Rick Rubin (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time 1st Edition 📆 April 7, 2020 Today, software engineers need to know not only how to program effectively but also how to develop proper engineering practices to make their codebase sustainable and healthy. This book emphasizes this difference between programming and software engineering. How can software engineers manage a living codebase that evolves and responds to changing requirements and demands over the length of its life? Based on their experience at Google, software engineers Titus Winters and Hyrum Wright, along with technical writer Tom Manshreck, present a candid and insightful look at how some of the world’s leading practitioners construct and maintain software. This book covers Google’s unique engineering culture, processes, and tools and how these aspects contribute to the effectiveness of an engineering organization. You’ll explore three fundamental principles that software organizations should keep in mind when designing, architecting, writing, and maintaining code: How time affects the sustainability of software and how to make your code resilient over time How scale affects the viability of software practices within an engineering organization What trade-offs a typical engineer needs to make when evaluating design and development decisions. Amazon Titus Winters (Author) Tom Manshreck (Author) Hyrum Wright (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management 📆 May 28, 2019 There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams, and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in. Amazon Will Larson (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Engineering Management for the Rest of Us Hardcover – November 1, 2022 📆 November 1, 2022 A lot of Engineering Managers and leaders studied for years and years to become the best Engineer they possibly could be... and then they were promoted. It can be very tough for those of us who didn't go into Engineering with the distinct concept that we would become managers, but still want to do our best to support our teams. I wrote this book because there's so much no one told me about management that I wished I would have known. There's a lot to be purposeful about that many of us learn on the job, and worse: learn on people. This book provides some organization for collaborating with networks of people, working together towards a common purpose. There seem to be millions of articles and "how to"s on programming and only a handful of resources on Engineering Management- why? It's very tough to talk about something that involves people processes. People are non-deterministic. Working relationships are nuanced, communication is linked with individual values, motivations, power dynamics, and skills. People also have a range of experiences and emotions that are not consistent day-to-day. Amazon Sarah Drasner (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Web Api Cookbook: Level Up Your Javascript Applications 1st Edition 📆 April 30, 2024 JavaScript gives web developers great power to create rich interactive browser experiences, and much of that power is provided by the browser itself. Modern web APIs enable web-based applications to come to life like never before, supporting actions that once required browser plug-ins. Some are still in an experimental stage, but many are ready for use today. With this hands-on cookbook, author Joe Attardi helps you explore the powerful APIs available in modern browsers and guides you through the specific tasks that they unlock. Because these features are web standards, there is comprehensive documentation available from trusted resources such as MDN Web Docs. The knowledge you'll gain is transferable across different companies and projects. Learn the breadth of functionality available in modern browser APIs Explore future APIs that are still in an experimental stage Discover newer elements, such as dialog that replaces the need for a third-party library Build more powerful and interactive web applications using native APIs Understand the permissions model used by the browser to unlock functionality such as geolocation and push notifications Amazon Joe Attardi (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Architecting ASP.NET Core Applications: An atypical design patterns guide for .NET 8, C# 12, and beyond 3rd Edition 📆 March 22, 2024 What you will learn Apply the SOLID principles for building flexible and maintainable software Test your apps effectively with automated tests, including black-box testing Embark on mastering ASP.NET Core dependency injection Work with GoF design patterns including strategy, decorator, facade, and composite Design REST APIs using Minimal APIs and ASP.NET Core MVC Discover layering and the tenets of clean architecture Use feature-oriented techniques as an alternative to layering Explore microservices, CQS, REPR, vertical slice architecture, and many more patterns Amazon Carl-Hugo Marcotte (Author) Nick Cosentino (Foreword) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Skills of a Successful Software Engineer 📆 July 12, 2022 Skills to grow from a solo coder into a productive member of a software development team, with seasoned advice on everything from refactoring to acing an interview. In Skills of a Successful Software Engineer you will learn: The skills you need to succeed on a software development team Best practices for writing maintainable code Testing and commenting code for others to read and use Refactoring code you didn’t write What to expect from a technical interview process How to be a tech leader Getting around gatekeeping in the tech community Skills of a Successful Software Engineer is a best practices guide for succeeding on a software development team. The book reveals how to optimize both your code and your career, from achieving a good work-life balance to writing the kind of bug-free code delivered by pros. You’ll master essential skills that you might not have learned as a solo coder, including meaningful code commenting, unit testing, and using refactoring to speed up feature delivery. Timeless advice on acing interviews and setting yourself up for leadership will help you throughout your career. Crack open this one-of-a-kind guide, and you’ll soon be working in the professional manner that software managers expect. Amazon Fernando Doglio (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product 📆 October 21, 2014 User story mapping is a valuable tool for software development, once you understand why and how to use it. This insightful book examines how this often misunderstood technique can help your team stay focused on users and their needs without getting lost in the enthusiasm for individual product features. Author Jeff Patton shows you how changeable story maps enable your team to hold better conversations about the project throughout the development process. Your team will learn to come away with a shared understanding of what you’re attempting to build and why. Get a high level view of story mapping, with an exercise to learn key concepts quickly Understand how stories really work, and how they come to life in Agile and Lean projects Dive into a story’s lifecycle, starting with opportunities and moving deeper into discovery Prepare your stories, pay attention while they’re built, and learn from those you convert to working software Amazon Jeff Patton (Author) Martin Fowler (Author) Peter Economy (Author) Alan Cooper (Author) Marty Cagan (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture 📆 January 13, 2015 To make sense of the world, we're always trying to place things in context, whether our environment is physical, cultural, or something else altogether. Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever--starting with "where" and "who" we are. This practical, insightful book provides a powerful toolset to help information architects, UX professionals, and web and app designers understand and solve the many challenges of contextual ambiguity in the products and services they create. You'll discover not only how to design for a given context, but also how design participates in making context. Learn how people perceive context when touching and navigating digital environments See how labels, relationships, and rules work as building blocks for context Find out how to make better sense of cross-channel, multi-device products or services Discover how language creates infrastructure in organizations, software, and the Internet of Things Learn models for figuring out the contextual angles of any user experience Amazon Andrew Hinton (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate

📕 User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development 📆 March 1, 2004 Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software. The best way to build software that meets users' needs is to begin with "user stories": simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle. You'll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You'll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak with your users. Then, once you've compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing. User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other "proxies" Writing user stories for acceptance testing Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach. Amazon Mike Cohn (Author) @DeveloperAdvocate