Good books for deep hacks
This is more reading material than some Master's programmes.<p>Here's a shorter alternative:<p>Choose a few languages, play with them for a few months, get to the point where you can write some idiomatic code. Focus on SOLID code and what that means idiomatically in those languages. Learn strengths and weaknesses of each. It's never enough to just learn one language, I think, in the same way no good musician should only ever learn one genre. Do you really want to be like the woman in the bar in Blues Brothers ("We do both types of music, Country <i>and</i> Western")?<p>Learn how to debug and profile. Ideally, learn how to write automated performance tests (along with unit and integration tests) that run on every build so you can keep track of what's going on for those critical pieces. Don't aim for 100% test coverage, aim for enough coverage to help you catch yourself from regressing working code.<p>Learn just enough git to create a repo, create branches, push and merge, and all that. Anything more complex? Google it when you need to like the rest of us.<p>Now go build something. Want to do something with chat? Sure, go read up on IRC and XMPP and Signal and Wire and all that. Want to do something with email? Sure, go read the RFCs and scramble around that area. Interested in UX? Go and read guidelines for your favourite app store and do that, even if you never plan to submit there: it's good advice.<p>The idea of reading 110+ books first in the hope you'll then start your epic hack sounds to me like epic procrastination.<p>Here is one of the most iconic pages from punk history: <a href="https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/5/23/1337810776607/sideburns940.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2...</a><p>Code is punk. Go start a band.