Now that 2021 is finished (and 2022 is going quickly), I would like to recap all the books I have read in 2021. I have leveraged the free time earned when working remotely to read and also the Ipad that Ericsson gave me which makes easier the book tracking with the Books app.

• Object-oriented analysis and design with applications, Grady Booch.

Mainly focusing on fundamentals aspects of Object-Oriented programming. It is a classic book, including UML diagrams and not only coding stuff but models, notations, releases… It includes also the analysis of some applications.

• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, Martin Fowler.

It is again a classic book for learning fundamentals concepts. While the first part handles layering, organizing domain logic, relational databases, concurrency… the second part focuses on describing many patterns organized by type. It is interesting.

• The One Thing: The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results.

This is more oriented to become more productive, efficient, improve your time management… which I beleave a professional should also take into account. Good to learn how to focus. Although the title is direct, do not expect to change your life without taking any actions.

• So good they can’t ignore you, Newport Cal.

I knew this book because I knew the author from another book regarding focused work, and I wanted to read it. It presents four rules the author considered a key factor to improve your career. At the end it is not silver bullet but makes you think about what he writes.

• Kubernetes in action, Marko Luksa.

It is the recommended book for achieving the CKA certification. At the end it covers all concepts of kubernetes focusing on developing applications. You can apply all concepts in your kubernetes deployments.

• The five dysfunctions of a team, Patrick Lencioni.

It is another classic book. It shows an story of a company. It will go through five dysfunctions regarding the presented team that were making them to underperform. It is easy to read.

• The Mythical Man-month, Fred Brooks.

Another classic book, in this case regarding project management. The central idea of the book is that adding more human resources to a project does not improve the output. I like to read about project management as well, to understand more about this subject, and what is better than reaching some fundamental topics.

• Kubernetes patterns, Bilgin Ibryam.

Another book about Kubernetes that complements “Kubernetes in action”. Although the concepts are also included here, in a briefly manner, one can find also more content (ordered in patterns) that for instance I have used in production, like the sidecar container pattern, the ambassador, blue-green release…

• Remote: office not required. David Heinemeier.

An easy to read book regarding remote working, now that we are used to it I wanted to see what was written. At the end it is making explicit many aspects that one could have probably live if has work remotely. It covers things like benefits, colaboration, hiring, management, life aspects…

• Continuous delivery. Jez Humble.

It is one of the most recommended books regarding the topic described by the title. Long book covering all the aspects of continuous delivery: software delivery, configuration management, continuous integration, deployment pipelines, dependencies, testing. All with great granularity.

• Mastering Concurrency Programming with Java 8.

I wanted to continuing studying concurrency in Java, and after reading the famous “Java concurrency in practice” I found this other book. I believe that this book is a nice complement to the other, since not all the content is the same. As you can imagine, they key about concurrency is explained. As a negative note that made the book difficult to follow, is that for each concept you have an example in the form of an application, and at least for me it is difficult to follow the code in a book.

• Apprenticeship patterns: guidance for the aspiring software craftsman. David H. Hoover

Another easy to read book which can make you think about your professional career. It is divided in many short patterns that one could execute to behave as an expected software craftmanship, at least from the point of view of the authors. Some of them are obvious, like find a mentor, think it is a long road, share what you learn… but others are less obvious. I enjoyed it.

• Systems Performance. Brendan Gregg.

For me this is book was an absolutely reference about systems performance. But it will squeeze your brain. Brendan Gregg is such a great engineer, and this book is a proof of it. It specially focuses all the time on the methodology to analyze different aspects from the kernel to the application layer. It is a complete book disclosing also many tools that could be use to analyze performance. I totally recommend it if you are a developer and want to improve in performance analysis and operation.

• El libro negro del emprendedor. Fernando Trias de Bes.

I had it since long time ago and finally read it. Probably I am not going to create a company but since it is a short book I was interesting in what it was claiming. There are many tips regarding failures when starting a business that are good to know.

• Release It! Michael T.Nygard.

A book that focuses on non functional requirements to build your application ready to production (stability, capacity, networking, security, availability…) and how to operate it.