Another great week for reading. For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve seen the name John Carmack pop up I’ve took note. You see, John Carmack is one of the greatest software developers to ever live. Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture features both John Carmack and another talented developer named John Romero. It was only a matter of time until I blitzed through this book. The two Johns created video games and changed the world in the process. The book details their devotion to their craft and provides an inside look at the dynamics within the company. The book is a solid read for anyone remotely interested video games or software development in general. It’s amazing what people can do. Carmack’s skill in creating video game engines mixed with Romero’s vision led to an empire.

Beyond books, I completed two courses on Pluralsight this week. The first was [Docker Deep Dive][doc] which is a nice healthy dose of Docker. There’s a ton of great information in the course. One thing that the course did well was informing viewers details on the inner workings of the Docker Architecture. Some of the information might not be directly utilized when using containers but is interesting and helpful to know. The other course was about creating ASP.NET Core APIs that use IdentityServer4. It’s a quick course where a developer walks through a production API he created for a payment processing service. While presenting the code, best practices for working with APIs are discussed.

Finished

Pluralsight Course(s): [Docker Deep Dive][doc], Play by Play - Creating APIs for Developers with Identity Server 4

Book(s): Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

Currents

Pluralsight Course(s): React 16 - The Complete Guide

Book(s): Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

On the Next…

Each day of this month, I’ve spent some time on freeCodeCamp solving challenges. Some days I’ll do a lot, others not so much, but I always complete at least one. I’m a professional software developer, but I wanted to go through the exercises and see both how far I could get and how much I could learn in a month’s time. So far, it’s been a nice experience. I would say in terms of learning for a professional developer the challenges won’t provide much in terms of difficulty, but the informational content is great. The tutorials for each challenge are well written and there are a lot of details that I was glad to learn or review. I’m going to continue completing at least a few challenges each day and see where I’m at when the week ends.