Non-technical books for coders?
Would like to get recommendations on books that helped you as a coder that weren't about tech itself. For example, "The Clean Coder" by Rob Martin, taught me some tricks how to behave on my day job, and "rework" by Jason Fried inspired me to start making my product, so I soon will be able to leave my day job I hate :D
While still heavily tech related, one of my favorite "professional" books is "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" by Steve McConnell.
I had a stroke trying to read the first page of this book and now ded
Is estimating should really be that hardcore? D: Or is that about something different from "I will do this feature in 2 days oh crap it's been two weeks and it is still not done" kind of estimating?
Lol -- like a lot of things, I'd say that it depends. :)
If you're working on a side project by yourself or with a friend, then it's probably not a big deal if your feature that was going to take 2 days takes 2+ weeks.
In business, it becomes a bigger issue, and you should have some rigor in your estimation processes -- maybe it's still not a big deal if one feature out of 100 takes 10x longer than expected (you should have built some flexibility into your roadmap to deal with cases like this anyway), but if HALF of the features are taking 10x longer than expected -- you're going way over schedule (and budget).
The book has a lot about how estimation is hard and no one is going to get it right, (If I remember correctly, 75% accuracy is pretty impressive?) but on some projects/teams it's well worth the effort to get it as close as possible.
I recommend "Story Brand" by Donald Miller. It's about the right way to communicate your offer. Great for developers and everybody else.