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Hey Builders 👋,
When I started my journey to learn software engineering at age 25
I wasted time jumping between YouTube roadmap tutorials
You know the tutorials that says follow this path to become software engineer in 2025
I know that pain
No clear structure, no clear roadmap.
If I had to start over again
Instead of letting him go through the same trial-and-error
I built him a curated list of 30+ resources.
This is the kind of list I wish I had when I started learning
Today, you get it too.
🚀 Why This Matters
Engineering is more than coding → Anyone can write code, but top engineers know system design, patterns, scalability, and architecture.
The right resources = faster growth → Picking the right 1% of books and newsletters will save years of wasted effort.
It’s the shortcut to freedom → The better you learn, the faster you land higher salaries, promotions, and even freedom to build your own thing.
🛠 The Step-by-Step Process
I split the roadmap into three categories: system design, software engineering, indie hacking
1. 🏗️ System Design & Architecture
📚 Books
Cracking the Coding Interview — Gayle Laakmann McDowell
Web Scalability for Startup Engineers — Artur Ejsmont
Designing Data-Intensive Applications — Martin Kleppmann
Building Microservices — Sam Newman
Monolith to Microservices — Sam Newman
Understanding Distributed Systems — Roberto Vitillo
Fundamentals of Software Architecture — Mark Richards & Neal Ford
Software Architecture: The Hard Parts — Neal Ford & Mark Richards
System Design Interview Vol. 1 & 2 — Alex Xu
Scalability Rules — Abbot & Fisher
📝 Newsletters
2. 💻 Software Engineering & Career Growth
📚 Books
Clean Code — Robert C. Martin
The Clean Coder — Robert C. Martin
The Pragmatic Programmer — Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
Software Engineering at Google — Ferguson, Beyer, Petoff
Modern Software Engineering — Dave Farley
The Effective Engineer — Edmond Lau
Refactoring — Martin Fowler
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software — Erich, Richard, Ralph, John
The Algorithm Design Manual — Steven Skiena
Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) — Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein
Grokking Algorithms — Aditya Bhargava
The Software Engineer’s Guidebook — Gregely Orosz
Accelerate — Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim
Continuous Delivery — Jez Humble, David Farley
📝 Newsletters
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3. 🚀 Entrepreneurship & Indie Hacking
📚 Books
✅ Pro Tip: Don’t read everything cover to cover. Treat this as a menu — pick one book + one newsletter per section and build momentum.
💬 Question for You:
What’s the single best book, blog, or newsletter that shaped your career as a developer? Reply and I’ll include the top community picks in the next edition.
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That’s a wrap! Catch you in next edition. 👋
—Harman