Lifelong Learning: 88+ Resources I Don't Regret as a Senior Software Engineer

Learn how I stay up-to-date with tech and what resources I used to grow to Senior Software Engineer.

The Internet is flooded with content, materials, and resources.

Knowing the most useful newsletters, books, courses, creators, and tools is hard.

In this article, I want to share some incredible resources that I’ve found valuable in my experience and day-to-day job.

Each resource on this list taught me something new and helped me learn and grow as an engineer.

🗞️ Newsletters

As a Senior Software Engineer, I need to keep up with the industry trends, updates, libraries, tools, vulnerabilities, etc, so that I can apply this knowledge at my job.

Here are most of the newsletters I read every week.

Web Development (JS, React, Node)

• JavaScript Weekly

• Node Weekly

• React Status

• TLDR Web Dev

I use these four newsletters to stay up-to-date with the Web and JavaScript world.

System Design & Architecture

• System Design One

• System Design Classroom

• System Design Codex

• Milan Jovanovic’s Tech

• The Polymathic Engineer

• Craft Better Software

• Algo Master

Leadership / Soft-Skills

• Engineering Leadership

• Leading Developers

• Developing Skills

• The Caring Techie Newsletter

• Wes Kao’s Newsletter

• Level up as a Tech Lead

General Software Engineer Growth

• High Growth Engineer

• Bitsy

• Strategize Your Career

• The Developing Dev

• Tech World With Milan

• The Hustling Engineer

• Techlead Mentor

• Elevate

• Refactoring

General / Staying up-to-date

• TLDR

• Pointer

I’d suggest avoiding reading all these newsletter at once because you’ll feel overwhelmed.

Depending on your current needs, priorities, and career aspirations, you might want to choose a few of them and come to the rest when needed.

📚 Books

Books are a great way to learn and grow as an individual.

We can learn from a lot of people even though they’re not in front of us.

We can learn from their mistakes and see what lessons they have learned.

However, I’ve found that if I read a book and don’t apply my knowledge from it as soon as possible, the value from reading the book drops drastically.

Think in advance how reading a particular book will help you in your day-to-day tasks, job, and personal life. If you can’t apply the knowledge immediately, postpone reading it.

Each book has taught me something or sparked a new idea and way of thinking.

It’s not necessary to apply everything from each book but rather look for the things that most suits you at the moment and adapt them to your lifestyle.

A great mistake I made in the past was to try to apply everything on 100%.

The true wisdom comes when you find the 10-20% of the book to apply at the moment.

At each phase of our lives we need different things, so think twice before applying anything directly. Be conscious.

Software Engineering / Architecture

• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

• A Philosophy of Software Design

• Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

• The Twelve-Factor App

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications

• Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach

• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

• Dive Into Design Patterns

• The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers

• The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win

JavaScript

• JavaScript Patterns: Build Better Applications with Coding and Design Patterns

• You Don’t Know JS Series

• JavaScript: The Good Parts

• JavaScript for Impatient Programmers

TypeScript

• Programming TypeScript: Making Your JavaScript Applications Scale

Web

• Atomic Design

• patterns.dev

• Production Ready GraphQL

• Refactoring UI

Design

• The Design of Everyday Things

• Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Soft Skills / Communication

• The Software Engineer's Guidebook: Navigating senior, tech lead, and staff engineer positions at tech companies and startups

• How to Win Friends & Influence People

• Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

• The Ideal Team Player

Writing

• The Elements of Style

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

• The Art and Business of Online Writing

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Productivity

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

• Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

• Atomic Habits

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

• How to Take Smart Notes

• Getting Things Done

Life, Psychology, and Philosophy

• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

• Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

• Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

• Thinking, Fast and Slow

• Siddhartha

• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

• The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

• The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

• Principles: Life and Work

• Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

Creativity

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

• Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

Money

• The Simple Path to Wealth: Your road map to financial independence and a rich, free life

You can also find some more books and their reviews on my Goodreads account.

“The Conscious React” Book

Become the React Architect at your company! 🚀

🎥 YouTube & Videos

• How Simple Is "As Simple As Possible"?

• The Myth of the Genius Programmer

• What the heck is the event loop anyway?

• Jake Archibald on the web browser event loop, setTimeout, micro tasks, requestAnimationFrame, ...

• Make It Count

• Admiral McRaven Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS

• Fireship

Websites / Docs

• MDN, Web technology for developers

• Read the docs of the languages, frameworks, tools, and technologies you use daily

📋 Recap

• Don’t try to read and follow everything at once.

• Think in advance how reading a particular book will help you in your day-to-day tasks, job, and personal life.

• If you can’t apply the knowledge immediately, postpone reading the book or newsletter.

• As you might see, there’re no courses. My preferred way is to read and apply what I read immediately in my day-to-day job or side-projects.

• To retain and store the acquired knowledge, I use my Minimalistic Productivity System based on Second Brain.

That's all for today. I hope this was helpful.

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What are the 1-2 resources you’ve found life changing? Share them in the comments 👀 👇

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