Anyone holding the book Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg will feel the weight and take notice of the size. It made me realize that we software engineers are in the business of collecting Grimoires. Anyone who has watched Frieren know that not all Grimoires are created equal. I’d like to talk about some recent ones I’ve collected on my programming travels that feel substantial.
Systems Performance (2nd edition)
Like with many others some of the skills I’ve acquired are related to a need at hand. Perhaps it’s tuning database queries, or running java profilers to discover why a code path is eating too much memory, or measuring a video game. We are often presented with opportunities to want to improve the performance of things. I realized that I wanted to have a larger framework to contextualize my experiences so I discovered the book Systems Performance.
I was blown away by what I found inside.
There are many areas of computers we can measure to improve and this classic surfaces what feels like them all. This offers a perspective on software development that is rich. This book seems like something that can help so many in the field of software engineering.
Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (8th edition)
This is another grimoire that opened my eyes. I’ve learned many things about networking through general development experience building applications or as a platform engineer with kubernetes and I feel I’ve learn so many things. I again wanted a greater framework to contextualize various experiences related to networking.
This is where this book helped me to understand how software connected to the internet really works.
I feel confident now in describing in detail how TCP/IP works. I have an appreciation for how packets get transported from one computer to another, what algorithms are involved, about sockets, or how a web server can service multiple clients to just name a few benefits. This is another book I’d recommend as something most programmers would benefit from reading.
Conclusion
These are tomes I’ve recently added to my collection. Both have gravity in how densely compacted the wisdom inside are. I can’t wait to see what other grimoires I will collect on my journey.