A friend of mine asked me the other day about learning resources for some junior developers he knows. I sent him a list of a few resources off the top of my head. But my brain kept thinking of others to suggest. So I figured I'd write down a list with a bit more thought put in to it.
By putting together this list, I'm not implying that every junior developer should immediately use every single one of these resources. Even after 20 years of professional software development there are still books that I should have read but haven't, or coding problems I should have implemented but haven't. Please don't look at this list as a wall of "look at all the things I haven't done" shame. I hope people will look at it more as a list of things they could learn more about.
And hopefully it's obvious, but this is by no means a complete list. I'm sure there will be resources that I would have put on here given only a little more thought on my part, not to mention all the resources from other peoples' experiences and opinions. But this is my list, so I'm not going to worry about every else's lists right now.
There are a lot of good books related to software development these days. One could argue that there are too many good books and no one has time to read them all. That's probably true. But here are a few that I often recommend to people:
For some basic, all around good software development advice, The Pragmatic Programmer by Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt is a great read for any software developer.
I'm a big fan of the ideas from the software craftsmanship movement. Some books that I think have a lot of valuable material on the topic include The Software Craftsman by Sandro Mancuso and The Clean Coder and Clean Craftsmanship by Robert Martin.
Test Driven Development By Example by Kent Beck is kind of like sitting next to Kent Beck as he writes code using TDD, just in book format. It's great to be able to learn directly from one of the masters of TDD. If you're just looking to learn more about unit testing in general, this book might be a bit more than you want.
I wish I'd had the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye when I was starting out my career. It has a bunch of patterns (surprising given the name, I know) about how to learn and grow in your career as a software developer.
Ron Jeffries' The Nature of Software Development is a good discussion of the principles of agile software development, without all the baggage that Scrum and its following bring. I think he intended it more for engineering managers, but I think it's approachable enough that pretty much any software developer could benefit from it.
In addition to agile software development, I think knowing about lean software development would benefit most software developers. This is Lean by Niklas Modig and Par Ahlstrom is a great intro to lean principles in general. If you want to go super in-depth, Principles of Product Development Flow by Don Reinertsen is great. But beware! It is pretty deep. If you want something more specific to software development, Implementing Lean Software Development by Mary and Tom Poppendieck is pretty awesome.
If you have code that doesn't have tests and you want to learn how to get it under test, Working Effectively With Legacy Code by Michael Feathers is the book on the topic.
Like I said, it could be argued that there are too many good books on software development. And I could certainly add many more books to the "good" list. But I think this is a good list of topics that junior devs might otherwise not get exposed to.
There are some ideas and concepts that can be communicated well in books. But there are other ideas that translate better when learned through actually coding.
The idea of a kata comes from martial arts, where the same forms are practiced repeatedly. Code katas are slightly different, but with a similar intent. They are specific problems that can be repeated to practice various software development skills such as refactoring, test driven development, pair programming, etc.
Some of these code katas are fairly simple, self-contained problems. Some examples include
Small, self-contained problems are great for some types of practice. But sometimes it's helpful to have a real world (or at least closer to real world) problem to practice with and learn from. Personal side projects can be a great way to do this. But sometimes it's hard to come up with good inspiration for a side project you're passionate about. In that case, a closer-to-real-world code kata might help. Here are a few examples:
A few more honorable mentions:
Sometimes reading a book is the right way to learn. Other times writing some code is the right way to learn. And still other times something completely different is in order. Here are a few resources in the "completely different" category:
Again, this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have other must-have learning resources that you think should be on this list, let me know. And if you haven't (or don't ever) get to everything on this list, don't feel bad! But if you're looking for ways to practice and learn new skills so you can level up from a junior developer and progress in your career, hopefully some of the things in this list help!