Books, articles, and talks that I wish I knew about sooner
This is a collection of selected books, articles, and talks I got a lot from, and recommend them to you. The list is in no particular order and is subject to update in the future!
1. Dan Abramov, The WET codebase
A link to the talk: \ https://www.deconstructconf.com/2019/dan-abramov-the-wet-codebase
This Dan talk is a big one for me. At this time, I was working on a project that was quite badly maintained, written by mostly beginner developers. The codebase was certainly far from flawless, but I often caught myself thinking:
Why do I sometimes find beginner code so much easier to work with, even if it’s sometimes copy-pasty/naive/unstructured?
Well, this talk answers that question.
I think after a certain point, we all developers strive to write “clean” code, use Bob’s solid patterns, etc. But this often compromises the readability (which is №1 priority IMO) and can shoot ourselves in the foot. The key takeaway from this talk for me was this basic idea:
Bad abstractions are worse than copy-pasting
They are. They are harder to maintain, and come at the worst cost, than code duplication. The latter is also bad and a form of technical debt, but often less dangerous.
2. Rich Harris, Transitional apps
A must-see Rich Harris talk that looks at the traditional web page vs. SPA debate. Looking at the bigger picture of the web, its past, and where it’s all going is really valuable. And of course, Rich is one of the most respected people in front-end for me.
3. Ryan Carniato, breaking down the web
I think Ryan’s streams is the most underrated thing at this moment. You can get a lot of useful knowledge from this recording and his other streams. I value Ryan’s big-picture view of the web, how it works, and looking at possible solutions to improve it.
4. Image optimization, Addy Osmani
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/printed-books/image-optimization/
It’s uncommon for a single article or book to cover its topic in its totality, but Image optimization, Addy Osmani did it! It has all you need to know about that! Super thorough and informative.
5. Brian Will, Object-Oriented Programming is Bad
Well… that’s a title 😬
It sounds like yet another hot take on the internet (which it is), but I think he makes a good case for that. I believe this mindset of not using the OOP paradigm works well for the front-end. Nowadays, I think twice before introducing the word ‘class’ in the codebase.
I wouldn’t go as far as trashing this paradigm completely, but I think most of the arguments he gives are 100% valid for front-end.
6. Kevlin Henney, Clean Coders Hate What Happens to Your Code When You Use These Enterprise Programming Tricks
That’s another hot take-y presentation, about the enterprise code and its consequences. My single-sentence summary is: don’t try to seem smart when writing code. Many bad things can start from the idea of: “huh, lemme do a currying pipe function here, probably gonna look cool”.
7. The coding career handbook, Shawn Wang
This one is not a technical pick. This is a book by Shawn Wang, aka @swyx about building a career in tech. It’s quite short but dense with ideas. There are many cool factoids, tips, and ideas about building a career in tech. I seriously vibe with the learning in public idea, and that’s actually one of the reasons why I started this blog 🥰