this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
26 points (90.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

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No such thing. Ask away!

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I want to understand my condition of being a software developer better. From creating and contributing freely to public repositories and FOSS to having spurts of unpaid extra work. I want to understand that better without falling into the category of general labor.

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[–] obbeel 1 points 5 days ago

I've just finished reading "A Hacker Manifesto" by McKenzie Wark. I recommend that as well.

[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)
[–] obbeel 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 3 points 1 week ago

if you want to learn more about team organization and project management most definitely seek out subject:

"managerial calculus"

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My favorite book ever. "Hackers" by Steven Levy. It really does a good job of giving you a sense of the early days of software development and the background behind/before the Free Software movement.

[–] obbeel 2 points 1 week ago
[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 week ago
[–] solrize@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen, though I looked at it and didn't see much new.

[–] obbeel 1 points 1 week ago
[–] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a fan of Martin Fowler, I've used his blog post on Tech Debt to explain to managers why you can't just give a 15-year team-killer of an app to a bunch of newbies and expect smooth sailing. His refactoring book is also pretty great. Not necessarily philosophy, or a gripping cover to cover read, but skimming though it as part of a grad school class got me thinking about how I'd refactor my own code and changed my approach to coding (most notably in favoring a series of linq queries/ streams/ es6 array ops, over ugly loops with a tangle of branching logic inside).

[–] obbeel 1 points 1 week ago
[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago

Getting Real and The Cathedral and the Bazaar

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago
[–] bratorange@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago

I would advise against those clean code books. There is no such thing as „clean code“. How you code always depends on what u want achieve, how much effort u can / want to put into, the skills of u and your collaborators, and generally experience.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I dunno. What I’d suggest doing is going to the library and asking the librarians there.

I have never been steered wrong when it comes to book recommendations from librarians. Even when the books aren’t something I’d have picked on my own.