The SolarWinds Geek's Required Reading List

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Back in April, we helped you get ready for summer by offering some suggestions for summer reading. It ended up being one of the most read posts of the year, with nearly 2,300 views and over two dozen comments.

We already knew that THWACK was a community of avid readers, but the level of interest and nature of the comments showed us that you had a real thirst for Geek-recommended and Geek-approved sources of information.

So now, with the end of summer in sight, we thought we would create a companion to the "SolarWinds Summer Fun Reading list" to help you get back in the work mindset.

We wanted to collect a required reading list for the IT professional and budding monitoring engineer, so our choices reflect books that have stood the test of time in terms of skills, philosophy, and ideas that have deep relevance in the world of IT.

These picks are designed to help you get up to speed with some of the foundational concepts and history of IT generally, and monitoring specifically, including processes, technology, tips, tricks, and more. These are the things we at SolarWinds believe any IT pro worth their salt should know about or know how to do.

  • The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
  • The Practice of System and Network Administration; The Practice of Cloud System Administration, by Thomas Limoncelli
  • The Psychology of Computer Programming; An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, by Gerald M. Weinberg
  • Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date, by Robert X. Cringely
  • Linux for Dummies, by Emmett Dulaney
  • Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides
  • Network Warrior, by Gary A. Donahue
  • The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win, by Gene Kim and Kevin Behr
  • Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive, by Bruce Schneier
  • The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, by Robert Martin
  • Commodore: A Company on the Edge, by Brian Bagnall
  • The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, by Alan Cooper
  • In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, by Merrill R. (Rick) Chapman
  • Bricklin on Technology, by Dan Bricklin

Meanwhile, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the SolarWinds-specific titles that are out in the world:

As your summer tan fades, we hope this list will help you feel like you are ready to brush the sand from your feet, trade your shorts for a trusty pair of cargo pants, and return to the data center with new skills and renewed passion!

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