Shaped SWE 2026

Books Library

3 min read

πŸ“š Books Library (prioritized)

Legend: ⭐ must-read Β· πŸ“– read selectively Β· πŸ”Ž reference Β· Status: [ ] to read, [/] reading, [x] done

Mindset & craft

  • ⭐ A Philosophy of Software Design 2e: John Ousterhout
  • ⭐ The Pragmatic Programmer (20th anniversary): Thomas & Hunt
  • ⭐ The Missing README: Riccomini & Ryaboy (perfect for 0–2 YOE)
  • πŸ“– Software Engineering at Google: Winters, Manshreck, Wright (free online)
  • πŸ“– Refactoring 2e: Martin Fowler
  • πŸ“– Clean Architecture: Robert C. Martin
  • πŸ“– Accelerate: Forsgren, Humble, Kim
  • πŸ“– The Staff Engineer’s Path: Tanya Reilly (for later career thinking)

Languages

  • ⭐ Effective Java 3e: Joshua Bloch
  • ⭐ Java Concurrency in Practice: Brian Goetz
  • πŸ“– Modern Java in Action: Urma, Fusco, Mycroft
  • ⭐ Learning Go 2e: Jon Bodner
  • ⭐ Concurrency in Go: Katherine Cox-Buday
  • ⭐ 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: Teiva Harsanyi
  • ⭐ Let’s Go / Let’s Go Further: Alex Edwards

DSA

  • πŸ“– Grokking Algorithms 2e: Bhargava
  • πŸ“– Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview: McDowell, Mroczek, et al.
  • πŸ”Ž The Algorithm Design Manual: Skiena Β· CLRS

CS foundations

  • ⭐ Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (free)
  • ⭐ High Performance Browser Networking: Grigorik (free)
  • πŸ“– Database Internals: Alex Petrov
  • πŸ“– Systems Performance 2e: Brendan Gregg
  • πŸ”Ž Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective

Spring / backend

  • πŸ“– Spring Start Here / Spring in Action 6e
  • ⭐ Spring Security in Action 2e: SpilcΔƒ
  • πŸ“– High-Performance Java Persistence: Vlad Mihalcea
  • πŸ“– The Art of PostgreSQL: Dimitri Fontaine Β· PostgreSQL 14 Internals (free)

System design & architecture

  • ⭐⭐ Designing Data-Intensive Applications: Kleppmann (2nd ed. w/ Riccomini if available)
  • ⭐ Understanding Distributed Systems: Roberto Vitillo
  • ⭐ System Design Interview Vol 1 & 2: Alex Xu (Vol 2 with Sahn Lam)
  • ⭐ Fundamentals of Software Architecture 2e: Richards & Ford
  • πŸ“– Software Architecture: The Hard Parts: Ford, Richards, Sadalage, Dehghani
  • ⭐ Microservices Patterns: Chris Richardson
  • πŸ“– Building Microservices 2e / Monolith to Microservices: Sam Newman
  • πŸ“– Learning Domain-Driven Design: Vlad Khononov
  • ⭐ Release It! 2e: Michael Nygard
  • πŸ“– Web Scalability for Startup Engineers: Artur Ejsmont
  • πŸ”Ž Enterprise Integration Patterns: Hohpe & Woolf

Data & streaming

  • ⭐ Kafka: The Definitive Guide 2e
  • πŸ“– Fundamentals of Data Engineering: Reis & Housley
  • πŸ”Ž Streaming Systems: Akidau et al. Β· The DynamoDB Book: Alex DeBrie

Infra, cloud, ops

  • ⭐ Kubernetes Up & Running 3e
  • πŸ“– Kubernetes in Action: Marko LukΕ‘a
  • πŸ“– Docker Deep Dive: Nigel Poulton
  • ⭐ Terraform: Up & Running 3e: Brikman
  • ⭐ Site Reliability Engineering + The SRE Workbook (free)
  • ⭐ Observability Engineering: Majors, Fong-Jones, Miranda

Security

  • πŸ“– API Security in Action: Neil Madden
  • πŸ”Ž OAuth 2 in Action: Richer & Sanso

AI engineering

  • ⭐⭐ AI Engineering: Chip Huyen
  • ⭐ Hands-On Large Language Models: Alammar & Grootendorst
  • πŸ“– Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch): Sebastian Raschka
  • πŸ“– Designing Machine Learning Systems: Chip Huyen

Reading order for the 24 weeks

W1–4: Effective Java Β· Learning Go Β· OSTEP (parts) β†’ W5–9: Let’s Go Further Β· Spring Security in Action Β· Use the Index, Luke β†’ W10–14: DDIA Β· Understanding Distributed Systems Β· SDI Vol 1 & 2 Β· Microservices Patterns β†’ W15–18: K8s Up & Running Β· SRE Workbook (SLO chapters) Β· Release It! β†’ W19–22: AI Engineering β†’ Always on your nightstand: A Philosophy of Software Design, The Missing README

Graph View

Backlinks