A huge stack of books by austinevan
There is two kind of software developers: those who are still learning and those who stopped learning. Please do not be the later. If you want to stop learning, at least wait until you are old. Wait until you are really old. Wait until you are obviously old, like cold dead. Software development is not really for living people who do not want to learn.
Since I completed my degree, I choose to not to be the kind of developer who stop to learn. As a matter of fact, I have been buying around ten to twelve software development related books per year on average since I left the university. Not only did I buy them, but I read them all.
I have started buying the really good ones recommended by most people like Code Complete, Rapid Development and The Mythical Man-Month. Then I moved into the less but still highly recommended books. I am now starting to exhaust most obvious recommendations I can find on the web. I also have another problem which is space. I do not have much space left in my office to store them all. I will have to buy another bookshelf in a few weeks to make some room.
Books are not all made equals. Some of them are quite thick and dense while others are a few pages long with big pictures in them. Some of them gives a better chance at learning to your brain while others are not forgiving. This brings me to the Head First series.
The Head First series is designed to make you think and remember stuff you read. This is plain and simple. Let’s take the design patterns books example. In one corner, you have the official reference: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. This is the book that mostly started the design patterns’ field. In the other corner, you have Head First Design Patterns. Both of these books will teach you about the same thing, but you will learn more and, most importantly, you will remember more with the Head First one. If you have only one book to buy, get the Head First one. If you have the money, I would suggest you would still buy and read them both.
How you can learn more with the Head First books? It is well explained in the book, but to summarize it, it is full of pictures, it makes you feel and it repeat the same stuff in different ways. You can check out the Head First website to learn more about it.
Since I have the money, I usually buy many different books on the same subject to have different points of view. You can do the same, but if you do not, you should have a serious look at the Head First books.
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