Hacker News Reader

Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

As luck would have it, my blog on Github pages is down. So here's the post describing the four in markdown.

Tldr; Designing Data Intensive Applications, Effective Python, The Google SRE book, and High Performance Browser Networking.

https://github.com/eatonphil/notes.eatonphil.com/blob/master...

View on HN

Since you mention the Google SRE book, I'm curious if you've read the Google SWE book (and if so, what your thoughts are).

https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book has a link to a PDF copy.

I've read through about... half of it; at least from my perspective (as a current software engineer at Google with experience with most of the systems / processes outlined in the book), a lot of it is philosophical about the "why" of software engineering.

I've read through half of it as well. I think it's pretty good but poorly edited somehow because of how long it's taken me to get through even just the first half.

So ultimately I don't think it will break my top list even when I finish it.

That's definitely a fair assessment.

It reads like a lot of self-contained chunks (~15-20 pages per chapter, for most chapters), but right around the halfway mark, there's 100 pages on testing philosophy, which is a slog. Don't get me wrong -- testing is a fundamental aspect of modern software engineering! But I suspect that's why I got to that point and then put it down for a few months.

To harp on the testing section some more, there's some amount of redundancy across the sections. For instance, the unit testing chapter has a page on testing state rather than interactions, and then it's followed by 5 more pages expanding on the same subject at the end of the next chapter (test doubles).

It's a shame, really, since I think chapters 20+ contain some of the more technically interesting topics (yes, including another testing section -- CI!).

You said Effective Python is one of the books you'd recommend to "every developer," are the topics covered broadly applicable rather than tied to language features specific to Python?

I think it's more that I've met so few developers who don't end up using Python in any form (scripting or actual application development). So if you never actually do anything in Python then sure it's not going to be relevant.

Looking at https://sre.google/books/, I find that "Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Services" is the third one, after two others that are very similar (judging solely by the titles...) Any insight about them? Maybe some of the other two has become a better first read?

The SRE workbook doesn't sound like a book focused on teaching (it sounds like a book on application for after you've been taught).

But no I haven't read that or the "Building Reliable..." book.

I'll look into the Building book. In general though all these Google books are really fantastic for anyone who has been a developer for a while and at any company size. I often feel like the chapters just couldn't explain the problem better.

My biggest problem is that the books kinda drone on and cover so much at once. I think they could have been better edited/cut down to make getting through them easier.

Thanks for your impressions; I will definitely have a look at "How Google runs..." first.

How well does the Google SRE book apply to environments at smaller scale?

If you maintain any software system in a production environment, I think its topics are pretty relevant!

Thx!

This is great, thanks!

+1 for both data intensive apps and Google SRE books. The other two I haven’t checked out yet

Reply on news.ycombinator.com