I recently read Remote: Office Not Required by David Heinemeier-Hansson (who created Ruby on Rails) and Jason Fried (who co-founded 37 Signals with Heinemeier-Hansson). This book is really a case study in why the future of work will be remote, of which the book did convince me (but I would say, I already believed). The book is really structured to convince those who do not believe in the premise of the title.
I recently read O’Reilly Building Maintainable Software (Java Edition). It provides good insight as to what to look for to create maintainability in enterpise software systems. 10 suggestions the book provides: Write shorter units Write simpler units (measured in Cyclomatic Complexity) Write code once only Keep interfaces very small Seperate code in to modules Couple modules loosely Keep modules evenly sized Keep codebase small (and look for ways to right-size) Automate development pipeline and your tests Write clean code and refactor as you go Overall I thought the book was very well laid out, easy to read and easy to understand.
I recently finished reading Steve Jobs, the biography by Walter Isaacson. I can’t add much more then the extensive coverage that it has recieved in the press to date. Instead I paraphrase really badly a friend of mine, Noel Hudson: All that book thought me was dropping acid and treating people really badly works as a life strategy. While that’s not entirely true it is a humourous look at the books tone.
The Ubuntu Book (2nd Edition) is a nicely put together book for dealing with the Linux operating system in a number of clearly laid out and well presented chapters. Chapters are as follows: Introducing Ubuntu Installing Ubuntu Using Ubuntu on the Desktop Advanced Usage and Managing Ubuntu Ubuntu Server Support / Typical Problems Using Kubuntu Ubuntu Community Ubuntu-Related Projects Using Edubuntu This book is a very complete introduction and contains suprising elements related to finding out and joining the community of users - which you will not find in other Ubuntu Books (such as O’Reilly’s Ubuntu Hacks) which make it a unique and worthwhile addition to any Ubuntu users personal library.