I could tell you here that I started in the software industry as an IT specialist trainee for application development, where I learned C# and OOP (and I’m grateful to the day for that foundation).

Or that I worked as a front-end developer at a web agency, because I was so obsessed with CSS—and how it seemed to refuse to follow the rules I learned through OOP.

Or that I started to study computer science at the age of 30 and cancelled it after three semesters to start a new job. I love to read and learn—and don’t want to miss what I’ve learned during that time (Java, C, assembly, TDD, math, …)—, but the academic path is simply not mine.

Or I could tell you that I mainly work on an e-commerce system with TypeScript and AWS in my current role.

But what I would much rather talk about are the books that formed, impacted, inspired me. I think it’s invaluable to think with the brain of someone who is more experienced and competent than you. Here are some of those brains:

• “Clean Code” by Uncle Bob (surprise, surprise!)
• “The Clean Coder” by Uncle Bob
• “But How Do It Know?” by J. Clark Scott (a diamond!)
• “Professional PHP” by Patrick Louys (it’s more about software design, than about PHP)
• “Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design” (O’Reilly; the whole “Head First” series seems to be a masterpiece of teaching)
• “Head First Software Development” (O’Reilly)
• “Head First JavaScript Programming” (O’Reilly)
• “Head First C” (O’Reilly)
• “Elektrotechnik einfach erklärt” (English: “Electrical engineering explained simply”) by Tobias Tippelt (not my competence at all, but it had to be on the list, because it’s so well and simply phrased and structured)
• “It All Adds Up: The Story of People and Mathematics” by Mickaël Launay
• “Deep Work” by Cal Newport
• “The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide” by John Sonmez (not a book I’ve read from top to bottom, but a great reference for all kinds of topics)
• “Getting Things Done” by David Allen
• “How to Become an A-Student in Science and Engineering” by Dr. Rainer Storn (well, didn’t worked out for me, but still an interesting read!)
• “A Factory of One” by Daniel Markovitz
• “Distributed Version Control with Git: Mastering the Git command line” by Lars Vogel
• “The Passionate Programmer” by Chad Fowler
• “IT-Handbuch für Fachinformatiker*innen” (English: “IT handbook for IT specialists”) by Sascha Kersken (I’ve been referring to this book ever since my professional training—especially when I’m exploring a new topic)

To be continued …