Hi everyone, I hope you’re enjoying the bootcamp as much as I am!
I’d like to delve deeper into some foundational concepts behind the frond end web development. It’s much more helpful for me to have my practice backed up by theory, so I was thinking about reading a book or two.
But there’s so many of them available! I want to be sure I use my time only for the best, and as a beginner, I have no skills to distiguish the bad or outdated advice from the good stuff.
So here are some questions for those of you with more experience:
Could you recommend one or two up-to-date foundational books for html5, css and javascript to start with?
Could you recommend a good book about the coding/programming mindset, pro-tips and best practices? Like not so much “use this or that class/property” but rather “here are the things you need to know to avoid the mistakes I’ve done” or “here are the habits of the best devs” kind of books?
I’ve read a lot of good opinions about the “Clean Code” book by Robert C. Martin. From what I can tell, the main concept is that code should be written from the start as readable to humans with minimal additional explanations. Would you recommend this book for a beginner? Is it still relevant, considering it’s been published in 2008? Or maybe it’s useful only for devs working in teams for big companies, since it mentions agile and collaborative processeses?
Thanks a lot for all the answers, have a great day!
Can’t help you there. I generally stay away from books on specific technologies, some of them are outdated by the time they’re printed. With that said there are places to get in a ton of theory, like MDN’s Learn Web Development (which is updated regularly and text based)
There are quite a few of these, and you could find curated lists with a quick google. One book I have to mention is The Pragmatic Programmer . The gold standard imo
I’ve come across a lot of controversy when it comes to Clean Code. I haven’t read it myself, but did go through this video series of his and thoroughly enjoyed it, even as a newbie.
Wow, @matthewrawlin2592434, these are great resources and advice, thank you! And I’ll be looking into the YT series sometime soon. I’ve read about the controversy around the Clean Code - unfortunately, I’m too new to all this to even form an opinion. And the Pragmatic Programmer looks fantastic, although (for me) unfortunately unaffordable. But I’m in no hurry, so maybe a promo offer will pop up somewhere (plus I’ve seen it’s on Audible, so presumably it might be accessed within the trial month for free). Thanks again!
This is more about design but there is an excellent book and website called CSS Zen Garden. It shows you how CSS can transform the same content into many, many, different styles. It is a out-dated now but the code is all still working properly. They really helped me wrap my head around how structure is separate from css.
I believe one of the problems with Clean Code that I’ve seen mentioned online is that ‘clean code’ is more subjective than objective. With that said, in that video series I shared he goes through a lot of the content and I found it very helpful. He’s also entertaining.
I didn’t consider the pricing, that’s my mistake! Here are three sites with free programming books if you want to get started in the meantime:
I’m sure Audible work just fine for The Pragmatic Programmer too.
One last mention I’ll drop here is The Odin Project - a thorough course that teaches you industry standards and best practices, with a lot of theory and even more practice!
I have read some books on mindset and habits that aren’t specific to programming, but I think they are relevant, and I am certain most (if not all) of them contained stories about programmers.
Deep Work - Cal Newport: there is a story about a person who switched careers to programming in the first quarter of the book.
Drive - Daniel H. Pink
Grit - Angela Duckworth
The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg
Quiet - Susan Cain