Nerd Gems 💎

Updated: 2022-03-07

This is a list of valuable (to me) developer resources that I’ve managed to stumble across (books, courses, friends and fellow programmers, hacker news, lobste.rs, university).

• Architecture
• AI and ML
• Awesome
• C
• Cloud
• Containers
• Cheat sheets
• Culture
• Databases
• Development
• Diagramming
• dotfiles
• Encoding and Serialization
• Git
• Golang
• gRPC
• Hardware
• Humanities
• Jobs
• Languages
• Linux
• Mongo
• Monitoring
• Networking
• Open source
• Papers
• Python
• Security
• Shell
• systemd
• Text wrangling
• Talks
• Testing
• TypeScript
• Web

Architecture⌗

• .NET Microservices: Architecture for Containerized .NET Applications a fantastic resource for working with the modern .NET stack (post 2022)
• Communicating Sequential Processes Tony Hoare’s seminal 1977 paper on concurrency and CSP
• Why Segment Went Back to a Monolith microservices come with serious tradeoffs
• All software sucks complexity is the bane of all software, simplicity is the most important quality

AI and ML⌗

• Andrej Karpathy on The spelled-out intro to neural networks and backpropagation: building micrograd a 2.5 hour step-by-step spelled-out explanation of backpropagation and training of neural networks. It only assumes basic knowledge of Python and a vague recollection of calculus from high school.

Awesome⌗

• awesome-baremetal
• awesome-kubernetes
• learn-anything/books

C⌗

• Easy Makefile a Makefile boilerplate to hit the ground running
• Handmade Hero an educational series by Casey Muratori that teaches low-level game programming techniques by example
• Eskil Steenberg on How I program in C

Cloud⌗

• mcm Minimal Configuration Manager
• Packer a tool for building images for cloud platforms, virtual machines, containers and more from a single source configuration.
• CloudBoost a complete serverless platform for your app.
• The Google Cloud Developer’s Cheat Sheet every product in the Google Cloud family described in under 4 words
• Ask HN: Is Your Company Sticking to On-Premise Servers? Why?
• Using AWS CodeBuild to Execute Administrative Tasks

Containers⌗

• OKD: The Community Distribution of Kubernetes that powers OpenShift
• The Docker Handbook
• 25 Basic Docker Commands for Beginners
• Setting the Record Straight: containers vs. Zones vs. Jails vs. VMs
• Docker Security Best Practices tools and methods to help secure Docker
• Kubernetes Workshop tons of details for getting started
• 10 Most Common Mistakes When Using Kubernetes
• lens kube IDE
• kubeseal how to safely store secrets in git if you want to use them in k8s
• Container Technologies at Coinbase great history on how the industry got to containers, an why kubernetes isn’t used
• A Practical Introduction to Container Security
• Webtop full desktop environments in officially supported flavors accessible via any modern web browser

Cheat sheets⌗

• Linux Commands - A practical reference an amazing cheat sheet, quick reference
• The Ultimate List of SANS Cheat Sheets when it comes to quality cyber-security training and certs SANS is world leading. They have an amazing collection of thoughtful and useful cheat sheets from topics such as Writing Tips for IT Professionals, Windows to Unix Cheat Sheet, to using pieces of software such as nmap, netcat, burb. Its a treasure trove!
• Lenny Zeltser’s IT and Information Security Cheat Sheets speaking of thoughtful cheat sheets, lots of wisdom here

Culture⌗

• Why we’re leaving the cloud
• You Are Not Google if you’re using a technology that originated at a large company, but your use case is very different, it’s unlikely that you arrived there deliberately; no, it’s more likely you got there through a ritualistic belief that imitating the giants would bring the same riches.
• GitLab’s Guide to All-Remote the remote manifesto, tips and tricks and remote resources
• Why we at $FAMOUS_COMPANY Switched to $HYPED_TECHNOLOGY
• Habbits of High-Functioning Software Teams characteristics and habits of the highest-performing dev teams

Databases⌗

• Things I Wished More Developers Knew About Databases
• SQL Coding Standards
• PostgreSQL Course: A Curious Moon learn PostgreSQL the way the pros do: on the job and under pressure. You’ll assume the role of interim DBA at aerospace startup Red:4, exploring data from the Cassini mission!

Development⌗

• What To Code inspiration and ideas
• Why the developers who use Rust love it so much

Diagramming⌗

• Excalidraw beautiful web based diagrams
• PlantText PlantUML (text) based diagram generator

dotfiles⌗

• HexDSL
• LukeSmithxyz
• uoou

Encoding and Serialization⌗

• The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
• Illustrated jq tutorial jq is a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor
• Cap’n Proto
• Google Protocol Buffers

Git⌗

• Better Git configuration links and resources on configuring & using git
• Automate Repetitive Tasks with Custom git Commands how to write custom git commands

Golang⌗

• Everyday Golang
• Containerize Your Go Developer Environment – Part 1
• Communicating Between Python and Go with gRPC
• GoFakeIt: A Random Fake Data Generator over 120 functions for generating things like names, emails, locations, user agents, …
• Exploring the Container Packages (list, ring, and heap)
• LearnGo: A Large Collection of Go Examples, Exercises, and Quizzes
• Writing Go CLIs With Just Enough Architecture
• A Go RabbitMQ Beginners' Tutorial
• Getting Hands-On with io_uring from Go
• RobotGo: Native Cross-Platform GUI Automation control the pointer, keyboard, read the screen, to automate many computer-based jobs
• Diving Into Go by Building a CLI Application
• Immutability Patterns in Go
• Writing An Interpreter In Go

gRPC⌗

• gRPC - Best Practices

Hardware⌗

• Backblaze hard drive stats
• Build an 8-bit CPU by Ben Eater a programmable 8-bit computer from scratch on breadboards using only simple logic gates
• nand2tetris a distilled version of the book The Elements of Computing Systems, By Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken (MIT Press), contains all the project materials and tools necessary for building a general-purpose computer system and a modern software hierarchy from the ground up

Humanities⌗

• The Chomsky List
• A definitive guide to Noam Chomsky: 10 books to get you started
• RATM reading list

Jobs⌗

• Inspired corp

Languages⌗

• Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom Ever wanted to make your own programming language or wondered how they are designed and built? If so, this book is for you.

Linux⌗

• Linux Commands - A practical reference an amazing cheat sheet, quick reference
• 16 Linux server monitoring commands you really need to know
• Best 15 Unix Command Line Tools
• An In-Depth Guide to iptables covers pretty much every angle of iptables, from basic rules to NAT’ing to protocols and interfaces.
• mdadm Cheat Sheet practical commands when running software raid on Linux
• Async IO on Linux: select, poll, and epoll thorough write-up on ‘select’, ‘poll’ and ‘epoll’ system calls, and how to measure them.
• The first 5 things to do when your Linux server keels over including hardware troubleshooting, checking the running state of applications
• How io_uring and eBPF Will Revolutionize Programming in Linux well explained history of Linux syscalls and their limitations, and how io_uring is a game changer by allowing async I/O via a pub/sub model
• bashtop gamified TUI resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes
• Time on Unix how time and localization works on Unix
• Tmux for mere mortals good defaults, modifying the keybindings to boost usability
• Tips for cleaning up a Linux server low hanging disk space fruit, like removing old kernels, pruning unused Docker space, clearing logs
• Shell productivity tips and tricks faster command line tips

Mongo⌗

• Quick reference cards
• Aggregation pipeline quick reference

Monitoring⌗

• Zabbix
• whatfiles logs the files programs CRUD, also traces new processes
• logtop reads stdin, can sort on any field and is updated in realtime

Networking⌗

• PacketLife Cheat Sheets
• The Packet Pioneer Chris Greer on TCP Fundamentals Part 1 TCP/IP Explained with Wireshark
• 59 Linux Networking commands and scripts the ultimate network tools goto list.
• Introduction to tcpdump and wireshark
• hping3 send arbitary TCP/IP packets to network hosts
• Setting up a Linux mail server
• linker∙d dynamic linker for microservices, taking care of the communication work needed to interact with distributed services, including routing, load balancing, and retrying.
• Manually Throttle the Bandwidth of a Linux Network Interface introduction to the tc tool for bandwidth shaping.
• connbeat agent that monitors TCP connection metadata and ships the data to Kafka or Elasticsearch, or an HTTP endpoint
• The Ultimate PCAP all protocols in a single PCAP
• What Every Developer Should Know About TCP
• SSH Tips & Tricks 2FA, securely forwarding agents, quitting from stuck sessions and using mosh or tmux
• High Availability Load Balancers with Maglev CloudFlare on their load balancing stack, BGP, Maglev connection scheduling, IPVS, UDP encapsulation for faster delivery
• Networking for Game Programmers: UDP vs TCP

Open source⌗

• Google Open Source 2000+ OSS projects managed by Google
• NSA on GitHub

Papers⌗

• Coming soon

Python⌗

• Python Design Patterns
• Inside the Python Virtual Machine
• Full Speed Python from Superior School of Technology of Setúbal
• Intermediate Python

Security⌗

• OST2.FYI OpenSecurityTraining2’s mission is to provide the world’s deepest and best cybersecurity training. That our classes are free is just a bonus!
• The Ultimate List of SANS Cheat Sheets when it comes to quality cyber-security training and certs SANS is world leading. They have an amazing collection of thoughtful and useful cheat sheets from topics such as Writing Tips for IT Professionals, Windows to Unix Cheat Sheet, to using pieces of software such as nmap, netcat, burb. Its a treasure trove!
• Lenny Zeltser’s IT and Information Security Cheat Sheets speaking of thoughtful cheat sheets, lots of wisdom here
• Linux reverse engineering 101 collection of resources for linux reverse engineering.
• Explain like I’m 5: Kerberos
• OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practices
• SSHHeatmap script that generates a heatmap of IP’s that made failed SSH login attempts using /var/log/auth.log

Shell⌗

• Byobu multiplexer, enhanced profiles, convenient keybindings, configuration utilities, and toggle-able system status notifications for screen and tmux
• Makeself a self-extracting archiving tool for Unix systems, in 100% shell script
• 5 Types Of ZSH Aliases You Should Know alias suffixes & global aliases, plus other neat tricks
• Bash aliases you can’t live without

systemd⌗

• Why I Prefer systemd Timers Over Cron
• journal-triggerd runs trigger on systemd’s journal messages
• How to automatically execute shell script at startup boot on systemd

Text wrangling⌗

• CyberChef the ultimate open-source (by GCHQ) text wrangler you’ll ever need, life changing
• desed beautiful TUI that provides users with comfortable interface and practical debugger, used to step through complex sed scripts
• sed One Liners huge collection of useful sed examples
• xsv CLI for indexing, slicing, analyzing, splitting and joining CSV files

Talks⌗

• Rich Hickey on Simple Made Easy
• Mike Acton on Data-orientated Design
• Jonathan Blow on Programming Aesthetics learned from making independent games
• Eskil Steenberg on How I program in C
• Rich Hickey on Hammock Driven Development
• Brian Will on Why OOP is Bad
• Abner Coimbre on What Programming is Never About
• Scott Meyers on CPU Caches and Why You Care
• Jeff and Casey Show on The Evils of Non-native Programming
• Jeff and Casey’s Guide to Becoming a Bigger Programmer
• Hadi Hariri on The Silver Bullet Syndrome
• Bryan Cantrill on Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development if illumos
• Rob Pike on Concurrency Is Not Parallelism
• James Mickens on JavaScript
• Liz Rice on Containers From Scratch
• James Mickens on Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is Possible?

Testing⌗

• Smocker simple HTTP mock server, uses YAML to define mocks and responses
• MockServer for any system you integrate with via HTTP or HTTPS MockServer can be used as: a mock configured to return specific responses for different requests, a proxy recording and optionally modifying requests and responses or as both a proxy for some requests and a mock for other requests at the same time

TypeScript⌗

• The Consise TypeScript Book

Web⌗

• HTML5 UP makes spiffy HTML5 site templates that are HTML5 + CSS3, customizable and 100% free under the Creative Commons
• How I built a modern website in 2021
• Certbot automatically use Let’s Encrypt certificates
• Ask HN: Is There Still a Place for Native Desktop Apps?
• topngx parse and aggregrate statistics from NGINX access logs