David Heinemeier Hansson

Creator of Ruby on Rails, Founder & CTO of Basecamp

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Book Recommendations:

DH

Growth has been hacked to simply mean 'more'. Paul Jarvis will help you open your eyes to a broader, wiser definition of growth. One of learning, one of betterment, one of contentment. (from Amazon)

What if the real key to a richer and more fulfilling career was not to create and scale a new start-up, but rather, to be able to work for yourself, determine your own hours, and become a (highly profitable) and sustainable company of one? Suppose the better—and smarter—solution is simply to remain small? This book explains how to do just that. Company of One is a refreshingly new approach centered on staying small and avoiding growth, for any size business. Not as a freelancer who only gets paid on a per piece basis, and not as an entrepreneurial start-up that wants to scale as soon as possible, but as a small business that is deliberately committed to staying that way. By staying small, one can have freedom to pursue more meaningful pleasures in life, and avoid the headaches that result from dealing with employees, long meetings, or worrying about expansion. Company of One introduces this unique business strategy and explains how to make it work for you, including how to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. Paul Jarvis left the corporate world when he realized that working in a high-pressure, high profile world was not his idea of success. Instead, he now works for himself out of his home on a small, lush island off of Vancouver, and lives a much more rewarding and productive life. He no longer has to contend with an environment that constantly demands more productivity, more output, and more growth. In Company of One, Jarvis explains how you can find the right pathway to do the same, including planning how to set up your shop, determining your desired revenues, dealing with unexpected crises, keeping your key clients happy, and of course, doing all of this on your own.

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The Elements of Style book cover

by William Strunk Jr·You?

"No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume." - The Boston Globe You know the author's name. You recognize the title. The advice of Strunk is as valuable today as when it was first offered. This book has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use "the little book" to make a big impact with writing.

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Javascript Allongé book cover

by Reginald Braithwaite·You?

A strong cup of functions, objects, combinators, and decorators by Reginald Braithwaite JavaScript Allongé solves two important problems for the ambitious JavaScript programmer. First, JavaScript Allongé gives you the tools to deal with JavaScript bugs, hitches, edge cases, and other potential pitfalls. There are plenty of good directions for how to write JavaScript programs. If you follow them without alteration or deviation, you will be satisfied. Unfortunately, software is a complex thing, full of interactions and side-effects. Two perfectly reasonable pieces of advice when taken separately may conflict with each other when taken together. An approach may seem sound at the outset of a project, but need to be revised when new requirements are discovered. When you “leave the path” of the directions, you discover their limitations. In order to solve the problems that occur at the edges, in order to adapt and deal with changes, in order to refactor and rewrite as needed, you need to understand the underlying principles of the JavaScript programming language in detail. You need to understand why the directions work so that you can understand how to modify them to work properly at or beyond their original limitations. That’s where JavaScript Allongé comes in. JavaScript Allongé is a book about programming with functions, because JavaScript is a programming language built on flexible and powerful functions. JavaScript Allongé begins at the beginning, with values and expressions, and builds from there to discuss types, identity, functions, closures, scopes, and many more subjects up to working with classes and instances. In each case, JavaScript Allongé takes care to explain exactly how things work so that when you encounter a problem, you’ll know exactly what is happening and how to fix it. Second, JavaScript Allongé provides recipes for using functions to write software that is simpler, cleaner, and less complicated than alternative approaches that are object-centric or code-centric. JavaScript idioms like function combinators and decorators leverage JavaScript’s power to make code easier to read, modify, debug and refactor, thus avoiding problems before they happen. JavaScript Allongé teaches you how to handle complex code, and it also teaches you how to simplify code without dumbing it down. As a result, JavaScript Allongé is a rich read releasing many of JavaScript’s subtleties, much like the Café Allongé beloved by coffee enthusiasts everywhere. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

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“A riveting, immensely detailed biography of Putin that explains in full-bodied, almost Shakespearian fashion why he acts the way he does.” –Robert D. Kaplan The New Tsar is the book to read if you want to understand how Vladimir Putin sees the world and why he has become one of the gravest threats to American security. The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English – that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief. In a gripping narrative of Putin’s rise to power as Russia’s president, Steven Lee Myers recounts Putin’s origins—from his childhood of abject poverty in Leningrad, to his ascension through the ranks of the KGB, and his eventual consolidation of rule. Along the way, world events familiar to readers, such as September 11th and Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, as well as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, are presented from never-before-seen perspectives. This book is a grand, staggering achievement and a breathtaking look at one man’s rule. On one hand, Putin’s many reforms—from tax cuts to an expansion of property rights—have helped reshape the potential of millions of Russians whose only experience of democracy had been crime, poverty, and instability after the fall of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Putin has ushered in a new authoritarianism, unyielding in his brutal repression of revolts and squashing of dissent. Still, he retains widespread support from the Russian public. The New Tsar is a narrative tour de force, deeply researched, and utterly necessary for anyone fascinated by the formidable and ambitious Vladimir Putin, but also for those interested in the world and what a newly assertive Russia might mean for the future.

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How a Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality. Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms. The Undoing Project is about a compelling collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures. They became heroes in the university and on the battlefield―both had important careers in the Israeli military―and their research was deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences. Amos Tversky was a brilliant, self-confident warrior and extrovert, the center of rapt attention in any room; Kahneman, a fugitive from the Nazis in his childhood, was an introvert whose questing self-doubt was the seedbed of his ideas. They became one of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, working together so closely that they couldn’t remember whose brain originated which ideas, or who should claim credit. They flipped a coin to decide the lead authorship on the first paper they wrote, and simply alternated thereafter. This story about the workings of the human mind is explored through the personalities of two fascinating individuals so fundamentally different from each other that they seem unlikely friends or colleagues. In the process they may well have changed, for good, mankind’s view of its own mind.

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On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sold, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.

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Partial ContentsPart 1: What is The Problem?1. A Problem2. Peter Pigeonhole Prepared A Petition3. What's Your Problem?Part 2: What is The Problem?4. Billy Brighteyes Bests The Bidders5. Billy Bites His Tongue6. Billy Back To The BiddersPart 3: What is The Problem Really?7. The Endless Chain8. Missing The Misfit9. Landing On The Level10. Mind Your MeaningPart 4: Whose Problem Is It?11. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes12. The Campus That Was All Spaced Out13. The Lights At The End Of The TunnelPart 5: Where Does It Come From?14. Janet Jaworski Joggles A Jerk15. Mister Matczyszyn Mends The Matter16. Make-Works And Take-Credits17. Examinations And Other PuzzlesPart 6: Do We Really Want To Solve It?18. Tom Tireless Tinkers With Toys19. Patience Plays Politics20. A Priority Assignment

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Developers of enterprise applications (e.g reservation systems, supply chain programs, financial systems, etc.) face a unique set of challenges, different than those faced by their desktop system and embedded system peers. For this reason, enterprise developers must uncover their own solutions. In this new book, noted software engineering expert Martin Fowler turns his attention to enterprise application development. He helps professionals understand the complex -- yet critical -- aspects of architecture. While architecture is important to all application development, it is particularly critical to the success of an enterprise project, where issues such as performance and concurrent multi-user access are paramount. The book presents patterns (proven solutions to recurring problems) in enterprise architecture, and the context provided by the author enables the reader to make the proper choices when faced with a difficult design decision.

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"Whenever you read [Refactoring], it’s time to read it again. And if you haven’t read it yet, please do before writing another line of code." –David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails, Founder & CTO at Basecamp Fully Revised and Updated—Includes New Refactoring's and Code Examples “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” –M. Fowler (1999) For more than twenty years, experienced programmers worldwide have relied on Martin Fowler’s Refactoring to improve the design of existing code and to enhance software maintainability, as well as to make existing code easier to understand. This eagerly awaited new edition has been fully updated to reflect crucial changes in the programming landscape. Refactoring, Second Edition, features an updated catalog of refactoring's and includes JavaScript code examples, as well as new functional examples that demonstrate refactoring without classes. Like the original, this edition explains what refactoring is; why you should refactor; how to recognize code that needs refactoring; and how to actually do it successfully, no matter what language you use. Understand the process and general principles of refactoringQuickly apply useful refactorings to make a program easier to comprehend and changeRecognize “bad smells” in code that signal opportunities to refactorExplore the refactorings, each with explanations, motivation, mechanics, and simple examplesBuild solid tests for your refactoringsRecognize tradeoffs and obstacles to refactoringIncludes free access to the canonical web edition, with even more refactoring resources. (See inside the book for details about how to access the web edition.)

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This classic book is the definitive real-world style guide for better Smalltalk programming. This author presents a set of patterns that organize all the informal experience successful Smalltalk programmers have learned the hard way. When programmers understand these patterns, they can write much more effective code. The concept of Smalltalk patterns is introduced, and the book explains why they work. Next, the book introduces proven patterns for working with methods, messages, state, collections, classes and formatting. Finally, the book walks through a development example utilizing patterns. For programmers, project managers, teachers and students -- both new and experienced. This book presents a set of patterns that organize all the informal experience of successful Smalltalk programmers. This book will help you understand these patterns, and empower you to write more effective code.