I often start several books at once.
Some impress me after the first chapter or so, and I keep reading.
I will keep it short. These books are my favourites for 2020:
1 - Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, by Haben Girma (2019)
Link: https://habengirma.com/book/
Developing for iOS with accessibility in mind is hard if you do not know how it feels to have a disability and why it is so important to write accessible apps.
This book is well written and funny. And also an eye-opener!
From the Apple Books:
This inspiring memoir reminded us that there’s no such thing as can’t. Eritrean-born author Haben Girma’s hearing and vision are impaired—and progressively worsening—but that hardly slows this real-life hero down. Girma has overcome her family’s fears for her safety, accomplished huge academic feats—she’s the first deaf-blind graduate of Harvard Law School—and modelled perseverance, confidence, and independence in a world that gives her very little support. In puzzling out solutions to innumerable problems, Girma has forged her own path, becoming a disability rights advocate who lights the way for many.
2 - Einstein in Berlin, by Thomas Levenson (2003)
Link: https://thomaslevenson.com/einstein-in-berlin
I followed some MIT courses online during the lockdown and this book got mentioned. It has been written by a Thomas Leveson, who is highly regarded as a scientific writer. This book is not just a biography but explains and give insight into Einstein's theories.
From the book's website:
Those eighteen years in Berlin saw Einstein reach the height of his scientific career; he made his greatest discover there, the account of gravity known as the General Theory of Relativity and went on to give birth to modern cosmology, help lay the foundations of modern quantum theory, and much more besides. He rose to global fame. He witnessed and even became a symbol, of Berlin’s post-World War I cultural renaissance. And he was a committed political activist from the earliest days of the war, playing a part and serving as a witness to Germany’s descent into Nazism.
3 - Permanent Record by Edward Snowden (2019).
This book is very interesting for a developer interested in security and I think is a must-read!
From the book's cover sleeve:
Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
4 - iOS 14 Programming Fundamentals with Swift Swift Xcode and Cocoa Basics by Matt Neuburg (2020).
Link: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/ios-14-programming/9781492092087/
I had many programming books in Swift but this one stood out and I kept using it for reference during the advent of code. Well explained with lots of examples.
5 - Sapiens by Harari
I had read this book in 2019 but reread it in 2020 too. It did open my mind about many things that I took for granted. Essential.
From the author's website
Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.
6 - The source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Not a book, but this blog post merit a special mention, because it initiated a very deep descent into a rabbit hole from which I did not fully recovered yet:
Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Side note
- I don’t want to link to Amazon if I can help it. If you decide to buy a book from this list, please buy it from a local bookshop.
- The image for the article is Bret Victor's picture of his bookshelf (not mine).