Skip to content
7 books

Technical Books

The books behind how I think about software, data systems and craft.

Database Internals: A Deep Dive into How Distributed Data Systems Work

Author: Alex Petrov

How distributed data systems work on the inside: storage engines, replication, and consensus algorithms like Raft and Paxos. Worth reading if you work with databases. I'm big on databases, so this was a no-brainer.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications

Author: Martin Kleppmann

It's all about data these days. It's the new elixir of life. Covers OLTP vs. OLAP, distributed databases, caching strategies, event-driven architectures, and stream processing. If you don't understand this stuff, you're missing out.

Crafting Interpreters

Author: Robert Nystrom

Most don't care about how their code gets executed, but they should. This book takes you from lexing, parsing, and ASTs to building a full interpreter from scratch. Writing a line that looks like English and making it do things is pure magic. Every programmer should go through that euphoric feeling at least once.

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Author: Robert C. Martin

On writing code that is elegant and maintainable. Talks about meaningful naming, reducing dependencies, writing small functions, and avoiding unnecessary complexity. I will continue to write garbage code though.

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Authors: Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides

The daddy of all design pattern books. Introduces concepts like Singleton, Factory, Observer, Decorator, and Command patterns, which still dominate software architecture today. If you haven't read this, you’ve definitely used its patterns without realizing it.

The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers

Author: Robert C. Martin

A call to professional discipline and ethical behavior. Talks about saying "no" when needed, handling deadlines, and taking full responsibility for your work. It changes how you approach the job.

Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn, Keras, and TensorFlow

Author: Aurelien Geron

The Swiss Army knife for anyone serious about ML. Takes you from linear regression to transformers with code you can actually run. It goes light on academic math and spends its time on real problems. If you work in AI and haven't read this, you're doing it wrong.

The Staff Engineer's Path

Author: Tanya Reilly

Finally, a book that explains what happens after senior engineer. Covers technical vision, navigating ambiguity, and leading without authority. Essential reading for anyone who wants to grow without becoming a full-time manager. The chapters on "being glue" hit different.

Natural Language Processing with Transformers

Authors: Lewis Tunstall, Leandro von Werra, Thomas Wolf

Written by the Hugging Face team themselves. Covers everything from attention mechanisms to fine-tuning LLMs. If you're building anything with transformers, this is your bible. The world runs on attention now—might as well understand it.