Reading 40 Software Books and Comparing Them All Head to Head!

Carter Morgan (00:07)

Hey there, welcome to Book Overflow. This is the podcast for software engineers by software engineers where every week we read one of the best technical books in the world in an effort to improve our craft. I'm Carter Morgan and I'm joined here as always by my co-host Nathan Doops. How are you doing, Nathan?

Nathan Toups (00:18)

Doing great here, everybody.

Carter Morgan (00:20)

Well, thanks for listening everyone. always, you know, if you're on YouTube, like comment, subscribe. If you're on an audio platform, leave a five star review and, know, take the moment right now, especially ⁓ if you're on one of those platforms, actually do those things. Cause I, I know I tune a lot of that out and I've just had a couple of podcasts who've been recommending that to me. like, you know what? I listen to this guy every week. I never liked his videos. So, you know, that really helps the podcast. So take a moment to do that if you can. ⁓ Speaking of podcasts, this is just a fun little thing I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

That I was working on a passion project of my own. will link it for this description. I have a, podcast with my brother. Everyone who listens to this knows I'm a big theme park fan. So we have a new podcast. It's called please remain heated. And you, I was thrilled that no HVAC company stole that domain name. So we have please remain heated.com. but every week we're, ⁓ pitting to theme park rides against each other. And we have kind of like a series of like criteria. We evaluate them on, and then we decide which one's the better ride. So we're having a lot of fun with it. And so if you have listened to this and thought.

You know, love Carter software engineering contest, but I just wish he would talk more about theme parks. If I got the podcast for you. ⁓ and then Nathan, you've also got some new stuff you're working on. We included a little, ⁓ pre-recorded clip of it last week, but you want to kind of talk to the audience about a bit more.

Nathan Toups (01:32)

Yeah, happy to finally announce ⁓ I've started my own business. I'm going back into consulting. It's a company called Rojo Roboto. It's something I've been operating for, I guess, almost 15 years at this point, but now I'm going back full time. Now it's focused in platform engineering and cloud architecture, a lot of the stuff I talk about on here. So if anybody's interested in working with me, I actually have a 10 % discount code at rojoroboto.com slash book overflow. I also have a newsletter.

that I'm excited about. ⁓ It's a weekly newsletter. We just had the first issue come out and it's really short. It's like a one minute, two minute read. One insight, one piece of wisdom and a question and sort of a reflection that you can have for the week. And already had some really great feedback. So I'd love for you to join that as well. yeah, we'll be talking about these new projects more, I'm sure, because they all have a feedback loop back into Book Overflow, which is fun.

Carter Morgan (02:28)

I once had a, I was looking at trying to do some consulting of my own, decided not to do it. And instead, ⁓ wound up joining my current startup. ⁓ but I, I, Michael Feathers, author of working effectively with legacy co-op was nice enough to hop on a call, just a personal call with me. And one thing he mentioned with, ⁓ consulting and doing your own business, like you just gotta get, get out there. You've got to make a name for yourself in the programming world. And so listeners, if, if,

You've been following this podcast, you know, just how gifted and talented Nathan is and all the value he could bring to your organization. So I think Nathan, it's cool that, you know, I think we're seeing this podcast pay off and it's cool that now that you're doing your own thing, like you've got a year and a half worth of backlog of people able to tune in and hear your technical thoughts. So good headstart there.

Nathan Toups (02:59)

Wow.

Yeah,

speaking of cool things the podcast is doing, you want to talk about our new stuff with O'Reilly?

Carter Morgan (03:18)

Yeah,

we've entered a partnership with O'Reilly, which is really cool. We just got connected over LinkedIn, ⁓ but O'Reilly has authorized us every O'Reilly book we read from here on out. We are able to give away 10 free copies and we'll get back with them, but I believe it's 10 free copies per episode. So for longer books, we'll be able to hand out a bit more as we do multiple episodes on them.

and we also are working in other partnerships for our listeners to get free access to the O'Reilly platform for maybe an extended trial period of time. ⁓ we're still working at all of the details with them, but stay tuned in the coming year as we read more O'Reilly books for how you can get some of those for free. We are going to most likely tie it to sharing the podcast in some capacity on LinkedIn or Twitter slash X or honestly, even if you send a screenshot to us, if you share any of your work slack and you got a sufficient.

a number of emoji reactions maybe. ⁓ But stay tuned for the details there and we'll figure it out. And I mean, I just feel like there's a lot of big news at the top of this podcast, but I want to mention it here just because if you're with me on LinkedIn, you might see mention of it here soon. But we are excited to announce my wife and I that we are welcoming a fifth child into our family, our first girl. So that will be coming June 25th. Exciting news for the Morgan family, but. ⁓

As you know, sometimes when life gets busy here on Book Overflow, we read an essay instead of a book that week. So blame it on the pregnancy if that happens. Yes. Yeah. ⁓ okay. So lots of big news for the podcast, but nothing fundamentally changing the podcast. The podcast is actually only improving. So we're excited about that and we're very excited about today's episode. We're doing something that I would wager has never been done in the history of the world.

Nathan Toups (04:46)

Yeah, and the sleep deprivation that you're going to get during the first month.

Carter Morgan (05:07)

which is that we have created a March Madness bracket of every book and essay we have ever read. And we are going to compare them against each other. Now, if you've listened to any of our sort of ranking videos in the past, you know that Nathan and I's opinions on what we've read tend to be, we tend to like the same stuff, but sometimes how much we like it can differ between one or the other. So I knew we would need some tiebreakers. So I wanna take the moment up top to thank.

three of our super fans, if you remember, I issued a call for super fans in a previous episode who took the time to rank every episode we've ever done on a scale of one to five. And should we need a tiebreaker, we will sum up their rankings and compare them against each other. And for some of the books, they've even provided a couple comments of their own, so we'll make sure to read that. But we wanna shout them out at the beginning of the episode, and with their permission, we've included their LinkedIn's in the episode description, so please go connect with them. And like when you connect with us, just...

Say that you're from book overflow and we'll let them accept or reject as they choose. But this is Jose Vialta and this is where I get to butcher your names. Like I butcher the author's name. So please forgive me guys. So Jose Vialta, David Johnson and Nick Severinchik. So Jose, David and Nick, thank you so much for filling out your answers. We will use them if we need them, but Nathan and I have not walked through this together. We don't know how this is going to go. And there's also no criteria for like what makes a book.

better than another one. is completely subjective. We're just making this up. you know, let's see how this goes. Nathan, how's this going to go?

Nathan Toups (06:42)

I have no idea. I'm learning as we go, just like the rest of the audience is. So I'll be the representative of the audience that's also educated since I was actually present at all of these episodes.

Carter Morgan (06:55)

Okay, so I'm using like this bracket Website I'm not gonna like share it or anything like that ⁓ But if I can't figure out how to move things between the different Rounds, I don't know. I'll just do it manually. This was completely randomly generated and some of the seeding is brutal. So We're just gonna go with it and we got a lot of books to get through. This is literally everything we've ever read books and essays ⁓

So we're going to, we're going to find out how this goes. So Nathan, this is a five, let me see. This is six rounds, six rounds in total. Um, round one, I think about half the books got to buy and only start competing in round two, but some unlucky books do have to begin in round one. So let's start with two of those unlucky books. And one is quite unlucky. Uh, hypermedia systems versus 99 bottles of OOP.

Nathan Toups (07:32)

Okay.

Well, you know me, ⁓ I'm a fanboy of HTMX, that's a... HTMX is the clear winner in my book.

Carter Morgan (07:54)

you

Yeah, I 99 bottles of OOP is literally the only book in that we've ever read that we just quit reading halfway through because we didn't like it. So I don't think we need to deliberate on this one too long. ⁓ yeah, this is hypermedia systems, right? Okay. Let me see. I'm submitting the scores. Okay, great. So I gave hypermedia systems score of one and the OOP score of zero. So that has advanced to round two. Okay. Let's get through some of these other ones.

Okay, this is interesting. The practice of programming versus radical candor.

Nathan Toups (08:38)

Oh, not fair, oh man. Are there objective criteria that I'm supposed to be, is there a rubric or? I'm vibing, yeah.

Carter Morgan (08:40)

This isn't fair at all. ⁓

No, there's, there's nothing. This is just subjectively,

which one did you enjoy more? ⁓ the practice of programming is book over full lore. Literally our first episode, not the first book we ever read. That was a philosophy of software design, but, ⁓ the first one we released was practice of programming and Brian Kernahan came on the book or came on the podcast. I really, really enjoyed radical candor. had my criticisms with it, but it's a good read.

There's a lot of applicable advice.

Nathan Toups (09:20)

Yeah, I've been using radical candor a lot, actually, like as a framing of having conversations, specifically ruinous empathy, but I'm gonna go towards practice of programming partially because ⁓ I'm also a huge fan of Rob Pike, which we've not had on the podcast. ⁓ Yes, I mean, I would love to have Rob Pike on, ⁓ but I'm a huge fan of the Go programming language and you can see the sort of...

Carter Morgan (09:38)

I know, he's a white whale for us.

Nathan Toups (09:49)

the seed that was planted, and Brian Kernahan. The book's so well written, even though some things are dated. It's not a fair comparison though. One is incredible career advice. The other one is incredible sort of like advice on craftsmanship of programming. So I'm gonna go with practice of programming. ⁓

Carter Morgan (09:55)

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what? I'll join you. I, we've had Brian Kernahan on the podcast twice. ⁓ he's one of my favorite people we've ever interviewed. ⁓ it's been a long time since I've read this, but just, this is getting the nostalgia points for me. love Brian Kernahan and how can you, how can you boot the first book we ever read out in round one? So radical. Yeah, I know. Right. Again, this is it's whose line is it? Anyway, the points are made up score doesn't matter.

Nathan Toups (10:29)

Yeah, there's some nostalgic biasing the score here for sure.

Carter Morgan (10:37)

⁓ so sorry, radical candor. That is a rough draw, but practice of programming advances forward.

Nathan Toups (10:42)

I used my

radical candor to make my decision though, so that was.

Carter Morgan (10:48)

Okay, here's one. ⁓ The Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Mark Richards and Neil Ford's or the Software Engineers Guidebook by Jorge Oroz. This is brutal. How did this happen?

Nathan Toups (11:07)

Again, this is...

Carter Morgan (11:08)

love software

engineers guidebook. Like I mentioned on the episode that like so many of the lessons I had to learn through like years of trolling Reddit and Twitter or mistakes in my career, all that information is just there for you in a software engineers guidebook. But here's what I'll get fundamentals of software architecture. This is one of the ones we've announced we're going to be rereading some books in the upcoming year. This is the one I've been most excited to reread.

Nathan Toups (11:34)

Right, yeah. And I actually have, ⁓ they also have software architecture at the hard parts. I actually threw that into our backlog, because that's another one of their books. I'm actually going to go with fundamentals of software architecture. So I think we need a tiebreaker from a super fan.

Carter Morgan (11:41)

yeah.

Yeah. No,

I'm gonna give it to fundamentals.

Nathan Toups (11:51)

Really? ⁓ wow, okay. ⁓

Carter Morgan (11:53)

Yeah.

Yeah. I, I love software engineers guidebook. love Jersey. It's so cool for him to come on the podcast, but like fun as the software architecture is just one of the books that I think can level up your career in a huge way. Like just getting exposed immediately to all these different architecture types and like we're doing some stuff at work right now where we're toying around with like event-based architecture. And like, that's something that is kind of top of mind because we read this book and

Nathan Toups (12:05)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Interesting. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (12:21)

Jurgies is great,

but I'm going to give it to fundamentals. So, all right.

Nathan Toups (12:25)

I was actually recently

working with a subcontractor with some work who are, making the transition event based and it's such a fun domain of problems to solve, so yeah.

Carter Morgan (12:34)

Yeah, I know. We're

really excited and we're trying to make sure that it is the right solution for our problem and to not over engineer it, but we're becoming more more confident about it. Okay. This is, think the most brutal of all the seeding and I haven't looked at all the seeding, but this one stuck out to me. Clean Coder by Robert Martin versus a philosophy of software design by John Osterhout. This is cruel.

Nathan Toups (12:58)

No brainer.

This is no brainer on my side. I'm team most your help, but I'm an extra help fanboy.

Carter Morgan (13:03)

I know

that's why I'm saying this is cruel because I really like clean coder. believe it made my top five last year. ⁓ I think I know uncle Bob and some of his advice can be controversial, but clean coder, I think it's a really good vehicle for it. I appreciate some of more narrative driven stuff. There are so many books in this list that I would put clean coder over, but, but I can't do it over a philosophy of software design. think a philosophy of software design is.

Nathan Toups (13:07)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right.

Carter Morgan (13:33)

really, really well written. It'll really challenge a lot of your assumptions about how to make software. ⁓ And again, it was the first book we ever read. And I can't award it. I can't award Clean Coder over it.

Nathan Toups (13:46)

the

Yeah,

it is interesting because I really appreciate Uncle Bob's contributions as well. It's not a statement against, and I think Clean Coder, I still haven't read Clean Code, which is the controversial book. Clean Coder is actually not a controversial book. It's actually full of excellent advice, ⁓ regardless of coding style. It's a way to have accountability in these other pieces. ⁓

Little fun fact in my first newsletter, ⁓ the piece of wisdom actually comes from a quote from John Osterhout talking about ⁓ design it twice. It was a question that Carter actually asked and there's a great little nugget of wisdom in there. so ⁓ yeah, cool feedback loop in general.

Carter Morgan (14:31)

Yeah, this is a philosophy of software design. So, all right. Oh, we're so sorry, Uncle Bob. That was a bum draw.

Nathan Toups (14:37)

So he hasn't,

I also put on our ⁓ backlog for next year. I don't know when we're gonna read it, but ⁓ Uncle Bob has like, yes, The We Programmers, The History of Programming. ⁓ It looks like such a wonderful book, and I would really hope we can read it and then have Uncle Bob back on to talk about it, because he seems so passionate about it. So that would be really cool.

Carter Morgan (14:45)

We programmers.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, two essays. These got pitted against each other. So we've got number one, worse is better, or number two, the Dow of programming.

Nathan Toups (15:09)

⁓ brutal.

Carter Morgan (15:12)

Yeah.

Like I like funny stuff and we don't get to read enough funny stuff in this podcast and the Dow of programming cracked me up.

Nathan Toups (15:22)

Yeah, no, for sure. And again, I also have like a fondness for, I've read so much Alan Watts and the I Ching and other things over the years that I'm like into the Zen and ⁓ Dao De Jing type stuff. ⁓ But worse is better is so important. I'm gonna do this. I'm going to take a contrarian view on whatever you pick, because I wanna see what our tiebreaker is. yeah.

Carter Morgan (15:48)

We want to see what our our listener said.

OK, so let. OK, that's fair. You know what I could I could go both ways, so we're going to put this one to the listeners. OK, so let me see. I just want to make sure I get a tribute. Everyone's comments appropriately.

Nathan Toups (15:51)

Because I'm split 50-50 on this one, actually.

Carter Morgan (16:03)

Okay, so let's start with Nick. So for worse is better.

Uh, he gives it a four. Uh, no comments, just a four. Okay. For the Dow or sorry for worse is better. This is Jose. He gives it a five. Oh, it's going to be tough to beat. David Johnson gives it a three. Uh, so no comments from any of them. Okay. So that's 12. I remember that number. Okay. For our Dow programming. Oh, we get a three from.

Nathan Toups (16:18)

Okay, I'll write this down.

Okay.

Carter Morgan (16:43)

Nick, we get a three from Jose and we get a two from David Johnson. He said, did not care for, yeah, he said, did not care for this, need more down my life. ⁓ So 12 versus eight. All right. ⁓ By virtue of the audience, we are going to award it to Worst is Better.

Nathan Toups (16:54)

So there's a clear winner.

Yeah, which that doesn't make me mad. ⁓ That's a great essay and it a huge impact on the industry.

Carter Morgan (17:11)

I,

under pressure, I might've given it to down, but that's why we had the listeners. We gotta see their scores. Okay. All right. Advanced React versus Made to Stick. I can't, I can't. I love Made to Stick. I love it, love it, love it, love it. And.

Nathan Toups (17:18)

Love it. Yeah.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with that as well. think Made to Stick, Made to Stick as far as like, it has so much staying power. mean, the book's been written many years ago and ⁓ also again, if you're an author who's come on the podcast, ⁓ you're gonna get a little bit of bias from me as well.

Carter Morgan (18:00)

Yeah. I mean,

with me doing this new theme park podcast, it was motivated by the comments from Dan Heath, where he's like, you just got to do what's most fun. And if it's the most fun, you'll work the hardest on it. And you got to trust that flywheel that good things will come.

Nathan Toups (18:17)

That pushed me as well. I I was on the fence. I was actually interviewing for some other jobs. ⁓ And I was also thinking about, I've been kind of like sitting on the fence thinking about this since, I guess, October, I think is when I started talking to Carter Yu about this. ⁓ that actually, that and one other piece of feedback from one of the job interviews that I gave actually interviewed with one of the CEO for a ⁓ job fit. And he was just like,

why don't you just start your own thing? was like, it was at first I was, I was like seven interviews in, so I ended up failing getting the job because he's just like, no, on culture fan thing. But he gave me beautiful feedback as far as just like, dude, do your own thing, man. Like he was very like, it was like the most positive rejection I've ever had. yeah. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (18:46)

Nice.

Yeah.

That's nice. Yeah.

And yeah, I love made to stick and I don't want to talk about a too much because we're going to keep comparing against other books as we go on. ⁓ and I have a feeling just for me that made to stick is going to make it, ⁓ very far in this round or in this bracket. So, we'll give, we'll, we'll save some of its flowers for later, but yeah, made to stick wins this. Okay. Next the agile manifesto versus tidy first.

Nathan Toups (19:15)

Yeah, I can see that. I can see that.

Carter Morgan (19:29)

I think I give it to Tidy First here. I think we read the Agile manifesto more as like a history exercise. And it's cool to see where a lot of the thinking around Agile originated. But Tidy First, think, is a really great book that talks about kind of the business constraints around programming and like, when does it make sense to make things better? And this idea of like optionality and programming that as you...

Nathan Toups (19:31)

Me too.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Carter Morgan (19:57)

If you structure your code well, you give yourself options about what you can build and those options around what you can build have like direct monetary value. ⁓ lots of interesting thinking. love any book that kind of ties, ⁓ the technical aspects. So like the, does this make money aspect? and tidy first does that in a very interesting way.

Nathan Toups (20:16)

Yeah, it's, you in a way we're kind of comparing a thought system to itself, because Kent Beck is also signatory on, ⁓ but I will say, you know, it would tell you something if an idea from 25 years ago had more weight than newer thinking from one of the signatories on the Agile Manifesto. And I think Kent Beck shows his evolution in his thought process really well, because Tidy First is contemporary, but still has that sort of like,

Carter Morgan (20:22)

Yeah, I know,

Nathan Toups (20:44)

lineage from the Agile Manifesto, I think it's more applicable these days. think that Agile Manifesto really was a moment in time when they were trying to kill waterfall once and for all. And Tidy First gives you a framework on your like, how do I prioritize cleanup versus feature development and what's actually going to move me forward? And yeah, I'm in agreement. Tidy First for sure.

Carter Morgan (20:55)

Right.

So we

give it to the study first. Okay. That completes round one. We now move. So yeah, so that was only about half the books or half of a normal round size because a couple of the ones in round two had gotten buys. So yeah, now we're moving on to round two. Let me see how many books remain. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 32.

Nathan Toups (21:12)

Whoa, that was quick.

Carter Morgan (21:33)

Okay. So 32 books remain, and this is a traditional bracket at this point. It's just 32 and it halves at each round. Okay. So a hyper media systems returns against working effectively with legacy code. Huh? I found both of these books while enlightening some of our less pleasant reads. And I don't mean that as a, a dis we've just talked about it kind of again, the end to end tests like.

How enjoyable is this book to read end to end? Both these books are very technical. Working in fact with Legacy Code in particular, I just have this awful memory of like, and this is my fault, I put off reading it. And it's like the night before the podcast, I had to read like a hundred pages of this thing. And again, it's a great book and I think about it all the freaking time at work. But yeah, so I, but I think it's more useful than hypermedia systems. I'm sure about that.

Nathan Toups (22:30)

Yep,

I was about to say from a staying power standpoint, I found hypermedia systems enjoyable from a contrarian hot take, but how many of those ideas can I generally apply? think legacy code is applicable because it gives you techniques and tactics to deal with these train wrecks that you might run into and...

Carter Morgan (22:55)

Right.

Nathan Toups (22:56)

Every bit of code will end up becoming legacy code, especially if the test coverages weren't supposed to be, right? That's just the kind of the takeaway.

Carter Morgan (23:02)

Yeah. And this is the book that

kind of, taught me like, Hey, ⁓ you don't, it's not normal to be scared of your code base. Like if you are scared of your code base and you're scared to touch it, then you're working with legacy code and you need to deploy all these tactics to fix that. so. Yeah, that was a really good reframing in my mind of, how to work with legacy code bases. So yeah, I'd give it to working effectively with legacy code here. Are you agreed?

Nathan Toups (23:18)

Right. Exactly, Yeah.

Same, I'm in agreement, man. So far so good, but I can see now these brackets are gonna get brutal as we get further down, because it's all gonna be our favorites coming up.

Carter Morgan (23:31)

Okay.

Yeah.

I know I wonder if

we'll do that. I wonder if we'll listeners. Let us know if this would be a fun tradition each year. If like every year the bracket just gets bigger and bigger and we just do everything we've ever read against each other. OK, so. This next round will determine who matches up against working effectively. They code next we have thinking like a large language model versus refactoring their Martin Fowler.

Nathan Toups (24:04)

Refactoring. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (24:05)

Refactoring. Yeah. Refactoring is a

classic. Um, I think this is another one. Like when we talk about like the central ideas, you got it out of this book. This book helped me understand that refactoring shouldn't be something that you should be able to stop refactoring at any point. You should refactor in such a way where you're just making small changes and you're running the test constantly. And so if you need to stop in the middle and move on to something else, it's not like, like we just hear all the time, like, Oh, I need

Nathan Toups (24:10)

I

Carter Morgan (24:33)

three days to refactor this thing and you can't, I'm not done yet. so I think this really, anyone who uses the term refactoring needs to read this book. And I am a stickler now for the proper terminology of refactoring, which is to make, you change something without changing its behavior. I hear too much refactoring. We're actually rewriting the application.

Nathan Toups (24:55)

Right, yep, agreement. And I think we'll see a bias here, the breadth versus depth. I think if we put up a breadth that has longevity, it's probably going to be a favorite of the two of us. ⁓ But that may not always be true, so we'll see.

Carter Morgan (25:02)

Yeah.

Okay, refactoring wins. Okay, I don't like that have to compare these two. Staff Engineer by Will Larson versus Grok Inc. Concurrency by Cairo Bobra.

Nathan Toups (25:20)

OOOOH

Carter Morgan (25:23)

These are both really, really good.

and very, very different from each other. I enjoyed staff engineer more, but I also just tend to enjoy some of our more career focused stuff. and some of that selfish, like it's easier to read. Grokken concurrency is very well done and his drawings in it are really fun. And I think, I don't know. I think we got to put respect on its name for taking very heady technical challenge.

or technical concept and really explaining it in depth and doing it consistently well throughout the entire book. I would certainly recommend staff engineer to more people, but there's not a concurrency book in the world I'd recommend over Grokken concurrency.

Nathan Toups (26:12)

Yeah. This is a coin flip for me. I think I agree with you as far as the general applicability and I also like Will Larson's, ⁓ his newsletter is phenomenal. I don't know if you're subscribed to it as well, I, was a few months back actually, I realized that it was the same person. I've been reading his newsletter for a while ⁓ and I think that that bias is, but I'm actually gonna pick Grokken Concurrency.

So that's where I think we might need a tiebreaker. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (26:44)

⁓ I think we're going to do a tiebreaker. I cannot bring

myself to pick between these two. So I'm going to make the audience pick. Okay. Nick says Grockman concurrency. has a five. He writes wonderfully well-written and a joy to read quite an achievement considering the subject. also love the whole illustrations. Okay. So that's a five from Nick. Jose gives it a four and David Johnson gives it a four. says pretty specific topic, but I really enjoy the conversation on it.

Nathan Toups (26:50)

Yeah, let's get the audience to pick.

So.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay. Hey, that's, yeah.

Carter Morgan (27:15)

help me with rethinking some code and suggesting ideas to my team. So that's a five, four and four. Okay. That's 13. Ooh, that's going to be tough to beat. Okay. Staff engineer. Nick says two. Oh, that's interesting. I'd love to know why that got so low. Um, five from Jose. So that's seven and four from David. Okay. So that's 11.

Nathan Toups (27:43)

So close.

We almost had a tie.

Carter Morgan (27:44)

So Grokken Concurrency gets it. We're gonna have

to, we'll have to shout out Kyrell for that because Kyrell, that is a huge accomplishment to beat Will Larson. ⁓

Nathan Toups (27:55)

Yeah. If

I had to guess, ⁓ and I think this is great from our sample size, if you're a little more fang or mang and Silicon Valley centric, I think that staff engineer probably resonates with you more. And if you are in the industry outside of that world, it's less because it's very much speaking to the career path, know, dual track kind of world, and that doesn't exist for everybody. And so.

Carter Morgan (28:09)

Yeah.

Nathan Toups (28:23)

I think that's fair and I'm really glad our audience kind of, first of all, both of these books had very high favorability, but Grocking seems like it resonated well. That's awesome. Well, congrats.

Carter Morgan (28:32)

Yeah,

huge, huge accomplishments of Kyroil. That's a, see how far you go in the bracket, but to beat out Will Larson, incredibly impressive. All right, next one. The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim versus Web Scalability for Software Engineers by Artur Edge-Smont. I've wanted to have Artur on the podcast for a while. I think he's one of the few authors I've reached out to multiple times and I've just never been able to get a hold of him.

Unicorn project. I really, really like these. Like I think unicorn project and Phoenix project. I'm off to read Phoenix project one day. Like the narrative structure is fun. Uh, web scalability would win it for me if there was a second edition. Cause web scalability is a little outdated at this point. We talked about this, like no talk about Kubernetes, no talk about Docker and don't talk about like service discovery. Uh, I don't know. What do you think?

Nathan Toups (29:19)

Right.

All right.

I'm clearly on the DevOps side of this, so I'm gonna be Unicorn Project. It's got a special place in my heart, so I'm biased, but I'm unapologetically biased. I'm gonna pick Unicorn.

Carter Morgan (29:40)

Yeah, I think a second edition of web scalability could really win it for me. Um, but I'll give it to you in a core project here too. Um, our tour, come on the podcast, redeem yourself. He's listening to the podcast, but won't come on it. Like, okay.

Nathan Toups (29:44)

Yep, for sure. Yeah.

And Gene Kim, if you want to have a fighting chance for the next bracket, you got to come on too.

Carter Morgan (29:59)

I know. ⁓

Okay, rework versus the practice of programming.

Nathan Toups (30:10)

Rework versus the practice of programming. I know.

Carter Morgan (30:10)

I really liked rework.

I give any, I give, I give extra points to any book where I feel like I had an epiphany with it and rework was another one. This, I read this one right after getting laid off at my last job and looking for another job. And I know Dan Heath, we're giving a lot of credit for this idea of like, do what's fun. But rework really made me think like, Hey Carter, you have plenty of money and you have a lot of opportunity. And so why.

Nathan Toups (30:20)

Yeah.

Carter Morgan (30:39)

Why are you like trying to like max out compensation or prestige or whatever? Like just do it sounds fun. Do what you think would be an enjoyable way to spend 40 hours a week. And so this was pivotal in me taking my current job, which I have not regretted. So I, for me, I would give it to rework and I hate to do that to our friend, Brian Kernahan, but you know what? Jason Fried is also our friend.

Nathan Toups (30:45)

Right.

No, no, no, this is,

yes, exactly. And I have a fondness for 37 signals. Some of my friends should grin that they're just like, please stop talking about how cool they are.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna go with rework too. It pulls two different parts of me and I think it is, it's kind of weird to have the business and sort of motivation, inspiration side of things versus the practice of programming which is, again, it's in the ivory tower upper echelon but I'm gonna go with rework. This is controversial, let's do it. Let's own it, let's own it.

Carter Morgan (31:17)

that's brutal.

All right.

Do rework. think if we do this again next year, I think we'll have regions and we'll have, cause we, kind of talked about like we have our culture and career and technical. so maybe we will pit those guys against each other until they, they match up and like the semifinals or something. So, but Hey, bracket's already made this train has left the station. So rework wins. Yeah. Okay. Team topologies versus finite and infinite games. ⁓

Nathan Toups (31:51)

Great.

Yep, yep, it's a global bracket. Yep, here we go.

Carter Morgan (32:06)

I can't give up the finite infinite games.

Nathan Toups (32:06)

As much as I loved finite and infinite games as a troll

to you after the fact, obviously Team Topologies has become really important to my consulting stuff too because I do think that optimizing for flow-oriented feature development and stuff is actually a really important part of how I'm engaging with folks. yeah, Team Topologies is awesome.

Carter Morgan (32:32)

Yeah, I haven't

been able to use it as much ever since I joined a startup where we have one software engineering team. But as we grow, I'm going to come back to this a lot. like we said, Finite Infant Games is just the episode where you trolled me. So ⁓ I can't give it there. No, know.

Nathan Toups (32:46)

It wasn't intentional, it wasn't intentional until

I got like two chapters in and I was like, Carter's gonna hate this book so much. And you're like, I hate this book.

Carter Morgan (32:52)

No, I love.

Our audience said like, want to hear more from you guys when you don't like something. And they got that and, ⁓ in flying colors and in that episode, okay. Team topologies wins moving on mastering open telemetry by Steve Flanders versus fundamentals software architecture by Mark Richards and Neil Ford. ⁓ I look, I, I appreciate it. Mastering open telemetry. ⁓ I think it was really cool that it was written by Steve Flanders who like, like, listen, like

Nathan Toups (32:59)

Yeah

Carter Morgan (33:22)

Fundamentalist architecture has a lot of great thoughts on event driven architecture, but, Mark Richards, Neil Ford did not invent event driven architecture to read mastering open telemetry by one of, doesn't call himself the inventors, but the founding member of Othel, ⁓ is really, really, really cool. But we also talked about this book where it's, there's a lot of content to it and it's designed a little bit to be more reference material. talked about how.

Maybe it could have been a little more focused to a specific audience. Fundamental software architecture is a book I feel like I give to almost anyone and they get value out of it. Mastering open telemetry is a book where I think you only get value out of it if you have some very specific questions about open telemetry. I don't know if that's fair to criticize it on that dimension, but those are my initial vibes.

Nathan Toups (34:13)

Yep, I think from a lasting power standpoint, I think we're already seeing this too. Steve Landers actually has had some really good LinkedIn posts about where things are going. And for instance, how do you do large language model, agentic telemetry is just different. ⁓ How do we get context from, know, ⁓ rum stuff in the browser up into the other things. Those are still unsolved, which means.

Carter Morgan (34:28)

I am.

Nathan Toups (34:39)

the book will be outdated. There needs to be a second edition that comes out in a couple of years where fundamental software architecture, it's got lasting power. So I think that kind of tips it in how it's written. So I'm in the same boat fundamentals, software architecture.

Carter Morgan (34:51)

Yeah,

and that taught me the term distributed monolith, which I have seen so many times and yeah.

Nathan Toups (34:57)

yeah, that's such a good own. mean, if you just like mic

drop on somebody, be like, yeah, I'll be like, this is the worst of both worlds.

Carter Morgan (35:03)

This is a distributed monolith. ⁓

Okay. What is chat GPT doing and how does it and why does it work by Stephen Wolfram versus beyond vibe coding by Adi Osmani.

This is interesting, our two AI books.

Nathan Toups (35:24)

These are actually,

yes, they're two AI books, they're evenly matched too in that they really expand upon concepts that you kind of have been wondering about, but you didn't know even how to verbalize. I didn't even know how to start asking how does a large language model work until I read Stephen Wolfram's book and I'm like, ⁓ wow, I learned so much. think I got it, honestly reading the LLM, Wolfram's book helped me with.

beyond vibe coding, I...

Carter Morgan (35:53)

Yeah.

I would give this to Wolfram. ⁓ This is another one, which I've been very excited to reread. remember understanding, like I really, really understood the parts about like, it explaining that large language models are guessing machines and talking about temperature and how it assigns the next token. And then it got into like the mathematics behind the transformer model. And that kind of went over my head.

Nathan Toups (36:10)

Mm-hmm.

Carter Morgan (36:22)

And so I've been excited to read this one again, because I just want to understand that a little better. But I think in this era of AI, I have recommended this book several times, people, and I've said, like, you really should understand what's going on underneath the hood here. It makes your ability to work with these tools. It's much more intuitive. I'd give it to Stephen Wolf from here.

Nathan Toups (36:45)

Yeah, I found that the Beyond Vibe coding though has been more applicable to specifically what he calls context engineering. Like I'm going to actually pick Beyond Vibe coding. So I think we need a tiebreaker. We're gonna, I agree with all of your arguments, but I still think that Beyond Vibe coding has had more help in 2025 for me.

Carter Morgan (36:52)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ okay. We gotta go to the fans.

Okay. So Nick gives, what is Shadgy BD doing? A five. So this one I've actually read, or this isn't one I've actually read, which is at the top of my reading list. I like to understand how the systems I use work under the hood. And from your guys review, this feels like a great entry point. It is a great entry point, Nick. Okay. ⁓ Jose gives it a four and David gives it a two. He called it niche. Interesting.

Nathan Toups (37:32)

Okay.

⁓ okay,

okay, okay.

Carter Morgan (37:39)

So that's

11. Okay, so we got a fighting chance for ⁓ beyond Vibe Coding.

Nathan Toups (37:43)

Did they find Beyond

useful or hype machine? So let's find out what they think.

Carter Morgan (37:49)

⁓ Nick

gave it a one.

Nathan Toups (37:52)

Yes.

Carter Morgan (37:53)

Sorry, sorry, baddie. But Jose gives it a four, that's five. And David gives it a three, says, bought the book and started reading episodes were great, made me excited, having implement, just have a, he says having implemented anything for minute, but I'm guessing he meant haven't. So that's, so what is that? That's four, one, and a three, that was an eight. What did the other one get?

Nathan Toups (37:57)

Okay?

Five six seven eight nine ten eleven so yep ⁓

Carter Morgan (38:23)

11, okay, ChachiBT wins.

Okay, thank you audience.

Nathan Toups (38:27)

I'm not mad with that. I think the audience, that's

a fair assessment. Yeah, I think ⁓ also Wolfram's interview was so cool. I got to fan out on that one too.

Carter Morgan (38:38)

I've been trying to get Addy on the podcast. are mutuals on LinkedIn, but he's a busy guy, as you can imagine. Okay. Building evolutionary architectures by Neil Ford, Rebecca Parsons, Promotes, Sada Lage, lots of names and a philosophy of software design.

Nathan Toups (38:57)

UGH, NO!

Carter Morgan (38:58)

The book that

started the podcast versus the book that broke the podcast, ⁓ building evolutionary architectures. If you aren't familiar is the book where we tried to finish it in one week. Cause like 180 pages and we had been trying to do 200 pages a week and we're like, this is too deep. so that's when we started setting a strict 150 page limit for ourselves. I love building evolutionary architectures. I wish I were in a role where we needed this more often.

Nathan Toups (39:17)

Mm-hmm.

Carter Morgan (39:26)

We're still flying by the seat of our pants a little, there's just enough low hanging fruit on like kind of the traditional DevOps side that we haven't really needed something like this. I can see how this book would be so stinking useful, especially if you're at like a scale up or, you know, maybe like a series C, series D company that's growing rapidly. ⁓ but I, how can, how can we go against Sean Osterhout here for on a philosophy of software design?

Nathan Toups (39:26)

All

Yes, it's

funny and it's brutal because I quote both of these books all the time. Like I literally, I was having a conversation with a founder. So it's funny, I have this idea of like, and this has kind of been the core of Rojo Roboto, I want to shift left on these DevOps practices for evolutionary architecture for earlier stage startups. Cause I've seen these, I've seen these really awful growing pains and you don't, you want to dance on the edge of not being premature optimization.

Carter Morgan (39:53)

Yeah.

Yes.

Nathan Toups (40:15)

but giving the ability to evolve a system. I was actually, the CEO is actually an architect. And so we were talking about, you know, it's like, if you build a building, would imagine if you knew you were gonna do an expansion later, he's like, yeah, you terminate plumbing and the power, you put it there because you know that you're gonna build onto the building later. And I was like, that's exactly what building and evolutionary architecture is. You just say, I'm not building this other building right now. I don't even know what the building is gonna be, but I might want to.

Carter Morgan (40:36)

Right, right.

Nathan Toups (40:42)

And so it's just easier to wire up the stuff so that I have the choices later. And there's a lot of really interesting things where you just put a little bit extra effort and you do a little bit more. And so I talk about evolutionary architecture all the time, but I talk about philosophy of software design more. I think Osterhout is going to win for me, even though I have had so much wonderful use out of evolutionary architectures, really.

Carter Morgan (40:59)

Yeah.

Yeah, we talk a lot at my work about that threading the maturation curve, which is like, how do you, yeah. How do you not prematurely optimize? But at the same time, I think there are some decisions that have been made at my company and just that are made in general where it's like, you should have done this from the beginning. And, you know, like it, it maybe would have looked a little premature at that point, but if we had just done something like this from the beginning, we would not be having all these headaches right now.

Nathan Toups (41:16)

Mm-hmm.

Carter Morgan (41:38)

and building up evolutionary architectures helps you understand what some of those decisions are and when to make them. ⁓ But I'm given, wins. cannot in this round give it to anything but a philosophy of

Nathan Toups (41:54)

This is hard. This is good. We need to have hard conversations. This is important for our health.

Carter Morgan (41:55)

I

This is

this is radical candor a book which we eliminated in the first round ⁓ Okay Recoding America by Jennifer Polka versus just for fun by David Diamond and Linus Torvalds Like Recoding America was interesting. This is one of the few books that I consider a bit of ⁓ whiff on the podcast I I felt like we I think we did get devoted two episodes to this and

Nathan Toups (42:01)

Right? Yeah. Exactly. that's brutal.

Carter Morgan (42:28)

Maybe didn't resonate with our audience as much as I liked it too. I really enjoyed just for fun. think about this all the time. Just the other day at work, I. To announce the reveal of our baby. ⁓ I set up like a fun kind of like treasure hunt, but I embedded, I clear this with, with our manager before doing this, but I embedded it in one of our internal tools. And so just like on like one of the tabs you can choose from on the side showed up in different color. It showed up as treasure hunt with three question marks. And then that linked out to.

Another to a website I had built and, but I, to make sure that no one knew who did it, I just changed my gate username on the commit and my email to anonymous. And it made people flip out and like, and our manager and CEO jumped into the Slack thread immediately. And we're like, Hey, don't worry. This is not a threat. It's not a security vulnerability. This is someone internally at the company did this. It's fun. Right. But

Nathan Toups (43:22)

That's hilarious. That's hilarious.

Carter Morgan (43:25)

One engineer in particular was upset that that had happened. I was like, I don't know, man, take it up with Linus Torvalds. He invented Git. Why does he let you change your username willy nilly on a commit? Anyhow, long story, but I like Just For Fun. I think it was really, really cool to figure out how Linux was created. And I think it was really cool to learn about Linus and who he is as a person. So I give it to this, Just For Fun.

Nathan Toups (43:53)

I loved Recoding America. I think Recoding America was actually a recommendation from Brian Kernahan. ⁓ Yes, and I learned a lot actually about, it was kind of cool to see that Obama era where there was these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed folks who were like, can we make government work? Like, can we actually like inject stuff? ⁓ So I thought that was an interesting glimpse, but.

Carter Morgan (43:57)

It was.

Right.

Nathan Toups (44:18)

And I guess maybe we're a Just For Fun oriented podcast, because we keep bringing this up of like, hey, let's have more fun. It's not all about money and not all about these other things. ⁓ Linux and Linus Torvalds and the whole story behind it was huge. So that one wins for me too. Just For Fun is the winner in my book.

Carter Morgan (44:35)

Yeah. All

right. You know, if we do this bracket again and like, let's say like our, my startup goes bankrupt and Rojo Roboto doesn't take off. And then we're like, we're just like, screw it. All these books that told us have fun. These books are getting last place. It won't happen because we.

Nathan Toups (44:48)

Right.

All right. I'm gonna get

a swoopy emo black hairdo.

Carter Morgan (44:58)

Okay. ⁓ System design interview by Alex Jue versus Worse is Better by Richard P. Gabriel. Worse is Better has more interesting ideas that explores. System design interview is very useful and there are some things I've really taken away from this. Like ⁓ we talked about this about like, and I think our accountability episodes, like back of the envelope math. Like this is something I find, I've been doing a lot of system design interviews for, we're hiring right now.

And I wish candidates would do this. I wish when they're talking about like what database to choose that they would be doing some back of the envelope math about how much data we'll be storing and what, you know, how much we think it'll grow. And especially if any candidate can start busting out like the different pricing tiers on AWS, like, you know, even if you have like ballpark numbers, like this is a, a startup, these are really important considerations to us. I'm

I'd be very, very impressed if any candidate did something like that. ⁓ so I like that. ⁓ worse is better is more timeless. I don't know. What do you think?

Nathan Toups (46:09)

I'm picking Worse is Better. Yeah, and the reason I'm choosing Worse is Better is yes, I think from impact on the industry, it was really opened up some great discussions. ⁓ If you're getting ready for a systems design interview, that's exactly the book you should be reading. Like this is where your brain should be, understanding back of the envelope stuff, ⁓ understanding the sort of like the dance. But again, it's very Silicon Valley oriented in that it's part of that courting ritual.

Carter Morgan (46:10)

Worse is better.

That's true. That's true.

Nathan Toups (46:38)

Um, you know, that's, I will tell you that I did, I did an interview track recently where I should have read through this book because I didn't realize that we were going to do systems that interview stuff and, I winged it and it was fine. Like I actually, I ended up getting, uh, like an offer, but, um, I also know I didn't perform at the level I should have because I was like, Oh yeah, there's like a game to this and I should have done that. But.

I'm gonna go with worse is better, whimsically.

Carter Morgan (47:09)

All

right. Worst is better. I don't feel strongly enough about system to design it, interview to disagree. Okay. Worst is better. When's that? All right. Thinking in systems versus looks good to me. ⁓ looks good to me. I really like looks good to me. And I really liked this one of the few times that's in like Cairo Bobra. We've gotten to highlight a new author on the podcast. ⁓ Adrian Baganza, ⁓ wrote the comprehensive book on code reviews, which I did not think could be done. And she did it. ⁓

Nathan Toups (47:28)

Mm.

She did an awesome

job. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (47:39)

And Thinking in Systems is the one episode where a listener said, you guys could have read Dune and had the same episode because we just talked about so many things that weren't the book. Yeah.

Nathan Toups (47:47)

Yeah,

I understand the importance of the systems book, but I think I see where you're going with, looks good to me, was the winner in my book.

Carter Morgan (48:02)

Yeah, I'll give us looks good to me. Great work, Adrian. ⁓ I feel like this book, that book has come up several times in the podcast and Adrian Burgonza as well ⁓ about just, yeah.

Nathan Toups (48:04)

Yep.

My daughter made a Python

joke the other day and she goes, she goes, dad, one plus one is 11. And I was like, I was like, okay, tell me about this. She's like, yeah, if it's a string, cause in Python you can add the string of one plus the string of one, makes 11. And I was just like, this is the nerdiest thing you possibly could have said. And it's because of Adrian Baganza also wrote a beginner's Python book and Lyra loves it.

Carter Morgan (48:25)

You

Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Toups (48:40)

Lyra's really, yeah, yeah.

Carter Morgan (48:40)

that's awesome. Okay, this is brutal. The DevOps handbook versus made to stick.

This isn't fair. These two should match up in like the semi-finals.

Nathan Toups (48:54)

Yes, I'm going

to be on, again, my bias is ⁓ DevOps stuff, so I'm going to pick DevOps Handbook. I think I know where you're going to go with this, which means.

Carter Morgan (49:04)

I gotta do Made to Stick. I love Made to Stick. think, and again.

Nathan Toups (49:06)

Yep, I'm not mad that

that's your conclusion, but the DevOps handbook, again, has also been really important for me for getting the consulting stuff off the ground. ⁓ Yep. Yeah, so blame it on Nick, Jose, and David if you don't like the answer.

Carter Morgan (49:17)

⁓ this is brutal. We're going to make the audience do this. ⁓

Okay.

Okay. I should have remembered the scores they gave to each one of these. ⁓ but actually maybe we haven't done this. Okay. ⁓ Nick for made to stick gives it a four says this is pretty high up in my reading list. I remember the episode well, which is a good indicator of the book success. And I I've said that with made to stick to the fact that you remember the book as you read it kind of helps prove the concept of the book. So that's a four made to stick from Jose a four David Johnson made to stick a five.

Nathan Toups (49:46)

Mm-hmm.

Carter Morgan (49:54)

Very useful on how to present ideas at work and in life. Bookbot suggested it to others in leadership. 13 for made to stick. ⁓ this is, this is gonna be tough. DevOps handbook. Three from Nick. Okay, that's all the points you can afford to lose. Jose, a two? Jose, explain yourself. It's a five. Okay, we'll do David just for completion. He gave it a five. Yeah.

Nathan Toups (50:03)

That's going be hard to beat.

Okay.

David's my boy.

Carter Morgan (50:22)

said, pretty much anything Gene Kinn is on, I'm for it. I would agree. ⁓ that's not fair to the DevOps handbook. Not fair that it had to go up against the Titan that is made to stick, but the audience has decided and made stick lives. See you another day.

Nathan Toups (50:34)

Life isn't fair, right? This is a,

okay, I'm not mad with that. I put my flag down where my happy room died on that hill and ⁓ made stick wins.

Carter Morgan (50:48)

Okay, The Good News Factory by Kent Beck versus Unix, a history and a mem-

Nathan Toups (50:58)

Mmm.

I'm gonna... Unix, a history and a memoir I've quoted so many times, because I'm just like, oh yeah, did you know that... And then I would talk about some piece of history, sometimes to an audience that was receptive of it, and sometimes you're like, dude, what? But no, I loved this book. I hope it gets high up in the brackets. yeah, so that's where I'm going.

Carter Morgan (51:17)

Yeah.

This has,

whenever we do an author interview, I always try to find a meaningful quote from it and then stick it at the beginning of the episode as like a teaser for what's to come. And this one has my favorite of all of them. I don't remember it exactly, but it's just Brian Kernahan talking. Cause I believe I asked him the question like, so Unix was invented by just a couple of guys and it changed the world. Could there, could that still happen today? And he's basically talking like, yeah, like I think it could. Like I think smart and motivated and talented people.

We'll continue to discover things that change the world. Yep.

Nathan Toups (52:00)

Look at Transformer paper, right? It kind of sat dormant

for a bit. Nobody even could wrap their heads around it. Now it's fundamentally shifted everything. Gosh, you're right. ⁓ man. Imagine having that pressure. You wrote this one paper and it's like, NVIDIA being a multi-trillion dollar company is ⁓ tied to it.

Carter Morgan (52:07)

Yeah, the basis of the entire US economy.

All right, Unix, I see a memoir wins that round. Okay. The 12 factor app versus tidy first.

Nathan Toups (52:32)

⁓ I'm team 12 factor. I love tidy first, but I've said I've used an abused 12 factor so many times. ⁓ I think it's worth defending the other book, but I'm going to be clearly on 12 factor.

Carter Morgan (52:34)

Team 12 Factor.

Yeah, I'll give it a 12 factor. I'm not as much of a 12 factor fan boy as you are, ⁓ but this is another one that I'd be happy to revisit. ⁓ And Tidy First, yeah, is great, but I think there's something about 12 factor that just packs a punch in a very small, very small package.

Nathan Toups (53:05)

If you

want to find a really good refute of 12 Factor, Internet of Bugs is not a fan of 12 Factor, and he has a really good episode, because I was doing research about it, and I was like, man, he has some really good hot takes. I even debated in the comments, which I never do, ⁓ but I'm a big defender of it, and I understand where he comes from, and I think that, of course, anybody's going to say it's the no true Scotsman thing, which is like...

Carter Morgan (53:13)

interesting.

Yeah

Nathan Toups (53:31)

I think that there's some misrepresentations or probably some poorly implemented environments that he was in. But I think it's also good critique if you also feel that maybe 12 factors not what it's all cracked up to be, go listen to him because he makes great arguments.

Carter Morgan (53:46)

Okay, next book or next round, I ⁓ In the Plex versus Slow Productivity.

I really enjoy these like journalistic narrative books. I've actually been reading a lot of these in my spare time. I just read one. This was a autobiographical by Mark Randolph, the founder of Netflix. ⁓ I'm reading one right now called Hatching Twitter, which is of course about Twitter. One of my favorite books is The Everything Store, which is about Amazon and the Plex definitely falls in that same vein. This is probably one of the few books that I would read. Well, actually both of these books are books I'd probably read outside the podcast just for fun.

Nathan Toups (53:55)

⁓

Wait.

Carter Morgan (54:24)

But slow productivity, this, this idea of like pseudo productivity was a big wake up call to me. Um, there was a part of me that just felt like, as long as I'm at work and I'm doing things that are work related that I would not do in my spare time that I'm working. Right. And just kind of realizing like, no, you need to be doing things that really move the needle. You need to be doing things that actually deliver business value. Um, big wake up call for me, maybe an embarrassing wake up call for me, but it was a wake up call nonetheless. And I believe this one, this was my favorite book of 20, 20 for.

Nathan Toups (54:47)

Mm-hmm.

It was.

Carter Morgan (54:52)

So I gotta give

it to slow productivity.

Nathan Toups (54:55)

So I'm on the fence on this one. I, huge fan of Cal Newport. think that you're absolutely right. In the Plex there's the same CEO who failed me in that culture interview and says, why aren't you doing your own thing? Is mentioned inside of In the Plex. And maybe I'll, maybe I'll write a blog post about this one day. Cause I think it was one of those like, I've never seen someone use radical candor, true Silicon Valley style until I had this conversation.

Carter Morgan (55:10)

Ooooo

That was Larry Page who

failed you.

Nathan Toups (55:24)

Yeah, I wish. No, it was not. But it's someone who's like in a passing reference because I was looking

at his resume and I was like, this is weird. I saw someone go do this. ⁓ yeah, I'm sure I'll write about it eventually. I'm going to go with Intheplex, which means, again, listeners, go to the audience. I also put Crypto, which is another Stephen Levy book on the history of encryption, ⁓ public key encryption, and it's going to be a good one. So think we'll have maybe next year, maybe the year after. We'll see.

Carter Morgan (55:39)

Ooh, we gotta go to the audience. Okay, let's.

that could be cool.

Okay, slow productivity. Nick gives it a five saying, the essence of this book wasn't new for me, but it was only after reading this book that the message sunk in and my behaviors changed. Maybe it was because of those sticky anecdotes. So slow productivity, ⁓ which got a bonus from made to stick it sounds like. Okay, so productivity gets a four from Jose. So that's a nine. And from David.

Nathan Toups (56:04)

Wow.

Carter Morgan (56:24)

A four. So 13. And the, it's gonna be tough to beat. And the plex, unfortunately from Nick gets a two. ⁓ it gets a three from, ⁓ Jose. So that's five and it gets a three from David. So that's eight. What was it? Was it, is that nine versus eight or no, no, that's 13 versus eight. Okay.

Nathan Toups (56:25)

Okay, that's, yeah, that's.

Okay.

No, no, no, that's 13 versus

eight. So I think that's a totally fair, I think SILDA Productivity's deserved winner. yeah, again, I think we have a Silicon Valley anti-bias amongst our listeners, which is again, completely fair. Yeah. Right.

Carter Morgan (57:06)

Yeah. That's fine. Most people do not work in Silicon Valley.

Okay. That wraps up round two and now there are 16 books remaining. ⁓ sorry. Is that correct? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, Yep. 16 books remaining ⁓ as we begin round three. Okay. Working effectively with legacy code versus refactoring.

I gotta give this the refactoring. It's more easily digestible. It's more easily applicable. Yep.

Nathan Toups (57:34)

Same, easy, that's an easy one. I love

both books, but from a general longevity standpoint, ⁓ yeah, I'm gonna say refactoring. ⁓

Carter Morgan (57:44)

Refactoring is a classic in the industry. And I think the fact

that to even stand on the same stage, refactoring is a huge accomplishment. But for me, it's refactoring. I'd recommend this to more people. I mean, working effectively with legacy code. from each other. They have a circular dependency. They reference each other. ⁓ Yeah. ⁓ know, working effectively with legacy code. Look, that book is going to get you out of a bind if you're deep in the weeds of working effectively with legacy code. ⁓

Nathan Toups (57:54)

And I think we learned about Legacy Code book from refactoring. So, yes, they do, they both.

Yep.

Carter Morgan (58:13)

But refactoring, think it's just one where you could read it and pretty immediately take away some good patterns and behaviors that are going to make you a better engineer. And I think you got to reward a book that does that. Okay. Grok and concurrency versus the unicorn project.

⁓ gosh.

Nathan Toups (58:33)

I'm going to go with... ⁓ This is not...

Carter Morgan (58:37)

Dang it,

it's not easy. I did not, when I asked the audience to give us their feedback on the books and use our scores, I did not anticipate how often I would need this just to bail us out so that we don't have to make a tough decision.

Nathan Toups (58:50)

Right, and I will say, we should,

I'm thinking this for next year, we should do the Marquis Brownlee thing where we should probably make a public poll where they all fill out the bracket and then we'll discover what the user's choices are for this. I think our audience is big enough that we could do that because like, he did that and then he has his brackets for like iPhone cameras or whatever and so I think that it's always fun to, or not iPhone, sorry, smartphone cameras. The iPhone never wins actually, but that's.

Carter Morgan (59:00)

yeah.

Yeah, that'd a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah.

Nathan Toups (59:20)

Hmm.

I love these books for different reasons.

Carter Morgan (59:26)

I know, very, very different books.

Nathan Toups (59:29)

I'm biased because...

I'm gonna, I think Grokken Concurrency is gonna be the winner here for me. You're surprised by that, I know. I'm on team DevOps, but Grokken Concurrency, data engineering is one of those things that is like, it will next level your engineering abilities if you understand how to do embarrassingly parallel and how to right size workloads. ⁓ And the book's just beautifully written, so.

Carter Morgan (59:39)

Grokking concurrency. I know.

Yeah.

I think I would say Grokken Currency is more impressive from like the fact that someone wrote this and wrote it well. But I enjoyed the Unicorn Project more and that's not fair because the Unicorn Project is a book that's designed to be enjoyed more. It's just, it's a narrative. ⁓ I listened to this one on audiobook and really liked it. So we got to go to the audience. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna choose between these two. So, or maybe I just did. At any rate, we're gonna go to the audience. Okay, Unicorn Project.

⁓ did we already tally these? We might've. So sorry if we did this again, we're doing this again. we should be memoizing this. Unicorn Project gets a two from Nick. It gets a two from Jose and it gets a five from David who says this set of books really helped really got me into getting CSED going on my struggling team. That's awesome to hear. ⁓ so nine overall.

Nathan Toups (1:00:41)

It's all good.

Nice.

Carter Morgan (1:01:03)

Grokken concurrency. ⁓ Yes, so we already did this. ⁓ So five from Nick.

Nathan Toups (1:01:05)

Let's see.

think 544 is what that one was. clear winner. Yep, amazing. yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:01:12)

Is it 544? Okay, Grakken concurrency. Kyrell, you are killing it. We're going to have to tell them about this. Um,

cause this is, this is really impressive. Um, okay. Rework versus team topologies.

Nathan Toups (1:01:36)

I'm gonna be on team topologies. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:01:38)

What?

This is where we need the audience. Cause I think I'm going to go rework. I, yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:01:43)

Yep, that's understandable. right. These

are not, there's no loser at this point, because these are all books that we've picked before, so.

Carter Morgan (1:01:49)

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. ⁓ interesting. Okay. So we got to go to the audience here. Rework. Nick gives a one. Nick, I'd love to know why you gave that a one. ⁓ Jose gives it a three and David gives it a three. So that's seven. that's not going to be too hard to beat. ⁓ Team topologies gets a two from Nick. ⁓

Nathan Toups (1:02:09)

Mm-mm.

I love Nick. I'm loving this.

Carter Morgan (1:02:16)

I know, right?

Four from Jose. He said, didn't read but really liked the episode. So that's six. Okay, so unless it gets a one from David. Okay, I'm sorry, trying to find this here. Five, okay, says great discussion on setting up teams for success. Okay, team topologies. Lives to see another day. Very, very impressive. Okay, so team topologies.

Nathan Toups (1:02:31)

Okay. Yeah.

Winner. Winner, winner chicken dinner. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:02:43)

I think it's so funny when we get to these books that are like really far in for us. And then we see like, what did Nick give us? It's like one. We just have terrible taste. Okay. Fundamental software architecture versus what is Shatchity-Bee doing and why does it work? I really like fundamentals. And I know I've said that over and over again during this episode, but I think this is a, like, this to me is like, if you're breaking out of that cocoon from like,

junior, mid-level, just give me the tickets. I understand one code base really well to like, okay, how do you build systems? What do our systems look like? What patterns are they following? Like Fundamentals of Software Architecture is such a great book to help you achieve that transformation in your career.

Nathan Toups (1:03:12)

Yep.

I agree, I'm in the same boat. So not controversial to me. It's fundamental to software architecture and it's a heavy hitter.

Carter Morgan (1:03:36)

Yeah.

It's like you say at this point, we're really just comparing great books against great books. Sorry, Steven, but we're going to give it to fundamentals software architecture here. Okay. A philosophy of software design versus just for fun.

Nathan Toups (1:03:53)

philosophy of software design.

Carter Morgan (1:03:54)

I think so. Just for Fun is a great book. ⁓ But A Philosophy of Software Design is, I think it's really impressive that it's the first book we've read and we keep coming back to it. ⁓ Yeah, this is a book that I think is gonna survive generations in a way that Just for Fun won't. So I gotta give it to A Philosophy of Software Design. Worse is better versus looks good to me.

Nathan Toups (1:03:57)

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Carter Morgan (1:04:22)

Hmm

Nathan Toups (1:04:24)

I'm gonna go with Worse is Better just for its staying power. ⁓ Though it is interesting that we're actually comparing an essay to a book, but I think if you only could come away with one piece of information, understanding why worse things win is ⁓ actually a more important core concept. ⁓ Though I think if you want your teams to like you, should go with Looks Good to Me.

Carter Morgan (1:04:27)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, not fair. Not a fair matchup, but I'm going to give it to Worst is Better.

We'll give it to Worst is Better. Okay. Made to stick versus Unix, a history and a memoir.

I'm gonna give it to Made to Stick. You know how much I love this book. my gosh! Is Made to Stick just gonna muscle its way up the bracket because I keep... ⁓

Nathan Toups (1:05:06)

I'm gonna go with Unix, so it sounds like we've got a tiebreaker this time.

I think it will, I think it will. So I know I

do have made to stick, made to stick is almost impossible to beat. don't remember, we haven't done Unix. Made to stick is a four, a four and a five. Yeah, yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:05:24)

What is made to stick kit, do you remember?

my gosh, that's a 14. Okay.

So, ⁓ Unix of history and a memoir, we get a three, so it can't beat it, but I'll just to thank our listeners who contributed. Nick gives it a three. Jose gives it a three. David gives it a two. So it doesn't really help me with my current job. It's not supposed to David. It's a classic. yeah, those who came before us.

Nathan Toups (1:05:53)

It's a way to honor your elders.

Okay, well.

Carter Morgan (1:05:58)

Made to stick.

I have the audience on my side.

Nathan Toups (1:06:01)

Watch this be

Magestic versus Grok in concurrency. That would be like the funniest. ⁓

Carter Morgan (1:06:05)

That's crazy if that's what happens. ⁓

The 12 factor app versus slow productivity.

So productivity is really good. Yeah, I'll give it there too.

Nathan Toups (1:06:19)

I'm actually gonna go with slow productivity. As much as I love 12 factor,

I think that this is so much wisdom packed in there that's generally applicable.

Carter Morgan (1:06:28)

Yep. Okay. So we're at AFD. ⁓ Okay. We have now made it to round four. What is that? This is, there's, okay. So it's the quarterfinals before the semifinals. So refactoring versus Grokken concurrency. ⁓

This might be where grokking falls out.

Nathan Toups (1:06:48)

I think you're right. I I'm have to go with refactoring. We're the adversary and I would imagine if they're really battling things out, you know, I, but I.

Carter Morgan (1:06:51)

Yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:07:03)

Yeah, refactoring is the winner for me.

Carter Morgan (1:07:06)

Yeah, there's no shame. Cairo, if you're listening, you lost to Martin Fowler. I mean, that is insane.

Nathan Toups (1:07:13)

Right. Right. Yeah,

you've made it pretty far into this. It's amazing. I would have worn your t-shirt. I would have worn your t-shirt to the competition. I'll put it that way.

Carter Morgan (1:07:20)

Yeah. Okay. Refactoring. Team? Yeah.

Team topologies versus fundamental software architecture.

Fundamentals. Yeah.

I'll give it to fundamentals. ⁓ it's crazy. as we're getting further and I've watched other kind of like March Madness brackets from other people across categories. And it's interesting because as you get further in them, you spend less time deliberating just because you've kind of like pre-deliberated in the rounds leading up to it. But I don't feel good about some of this, man. I don't feel good about so quickly riding off team topologies. Yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:07:58)

No, I feel a little dirty. It's

the radical candor part where you're like, need to give this feedback.

Carter Morgan (1:08:06)

⁓ a philosophy of software design versus worse is better. I feel like this is a little easier. Philosophy of software design. Yep. ⁓ man. Okay.

Nathan Toups (1:08:11)

philosophy of software design.

Carter Morgan (1:08:19)

And now we come to made to stick versus slow productivity. ⁓

Nathan Toups (1:08:25)

Okay, I actually, so between these two made to stick. I think that, yep.

Carter Morgan (1:08:26)

This is tough.

You'll do made to stick? Okay, then I'll

do made to stick too. I really like slow productivity, ⁓ but made to stick is just, there's a lot of staying power here.

Nathan Toups (1:08:36)

So this is an interesting one.

we had been in, our audience is also divided on this. Both of these have a 5-4-4. So I think this is a tough one because slow productivity, ⁓ Nick gave it a five and then Jose and David gave it a fours. But on made to stick, it's Nick gave it a four, Jose gave it a four, and David gave it a five. So we would have been doubly stuck. I don't know how we would type breaker the type breaker.

Carter Morgan (1:08:44)

⁓ interesting. So.

Interesting.

Oh man.

I think if I had to come down to the tiebreaker, it's still what it made to stick because Dan came on the podcast.

Nathan Toups (1:09:07)

That's true. That'll be the second tier if the guest came on the podcast. if they came on the podcast and they get an even score, I think we'll have to flip a coin or something.

Carter Morgan (1:09:17)

just the seating, the seating is rough here. So, okay, we are now at the semi-finals, refactoring versus fundamentals of software architecture.

Nathan Toups (1:09:38)

Fundamentals. I'm going with fundamentals.

Carter Morgan (1:09:41)

Yeah.

Fundamentals, something Mark Richards said on, when he came on the podcast, he said that, ⁓ weirdly enough, the audio book for this sells really well. But I think that's a sign of like how accessible it is. I think, look, we, we lean toward, yeah. did you? Yeah. I think we lean a little more on like breadth here and refactoring is the definitive book for that specific category of how you refactor something.

Nathan Toups (1:09:54)

Yeah. I listened to the audio book for that.

Carter Morgan (1:10:11)

But fundamentals, mean, it's going to be hard to learn as many software concepts and as efficient a package that are relevant and are going to make you a better engineer than fundamentals of software architecture. So I'll give it to fundamentals.

Nathan Toups (1:10:28)

Right.

I'm gonna commit to making a visualization of this bracket ⁓ and when the tiebreakers came from the audience because I think it would be really cool to look at. ⁓

Carter Morgan (1:10:39)

That would be cool. I'll send you a screenshot

of the ⁓ bracket tool that I'm using. Okay. A philosophy of software design versus made to stick.

Nathan Toups (1:10:55)

philosophy of software design for me.

Carter Morgan (1:10:57)

Uh, part of me, one thinks like we're a software podcast and so I have to give it to a philosophy of software design. just, enjoy me to stick more. Um, here's my thing with philosophy of software design. Off the top of my head right now, what are the principles I could teach you from a philosophy of software design? Design it twice. Comment.

⁓ Interfaces or modules should be deep or what? What's the idea? Something should be shallow. Is it interfaces should be shallow, but module should be deep? Is that the principle out of that? ⁓

Nathan Toups (1:11:30)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

And all of this is about tackling complexity, right? Like that's the fundamental idea behind this is that these are all trade-offs and things that we're doing as far as understanding how complexity interacts with our systems. ⁓ I don't actually know what the audience thinks about philosophy of software design. I wouldn't mind at this point it being between those, unless you have, I'm gonna be on philosophy of software design. If you're conflicted, I'm happy to.

Carter Morgan (1:11:44)

Yes.

Yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:12:07)

punt this to the audience.

Carter Morgan (1:12:09)

I want to see what the audience has to say. Look, we're getting down to the finals here. And there's just a part of me that feels like this is a software engineering podcast. And I don't know if I in good conscience can put made to stick in the final round. So I'm leaning towards the philosophy of software design, but let's see what the audience has to say about this. ⁓ Just for posterity sake.

Nathan Toups (1:12:30)

Yeah. Yeah,

I would love to know what Nick, Jose, and David have to say.

Carter Morgan (1:12:36)

Okay, so Nick, so what is, so major stick is 14 or 13? 13.

Nathan Toups (1:12:41)

13, it's ⁓ made to stick is

Nick for Hosea for five for David.

Carter Morgan (1:12:48)

Okay. Nick gives a philosophy of software design, a five saying Bob Martin was the most influential voice in coding for me. And this was the first book to radically challenge my thinking and approach to software development. And you know, I really liked it. And I really liked that because I think Bob Martin gets a bad rap, but like there's something to be said for starting somewhere. And I think if you're just going to kind of completely wing it in, in how you structure your code versus.

Nathan Toups (1:12:51)

Okay.

Wow, what a cool piece of feedback.

Carter Morgan (1:13:15)

Clean Code by Bob Martin. Clean Code is the better option here. And I also think it's fine to say like, you know what, and then I read some other books and I saw some other opinions and I changed my mind, right? So yeah, I think that's great feedback, Nick. So five for a philosophy of software design. Okay.

Nathan Toups (1:13:35)

What's those A's say? Whoa, there's a possibility that this might get a perfect score.

Carter Morgan (1:13:37)

A five for philosophy of soft design.

⁓ but David Johnson's gonna take that away from us a four for that 14.

Nathan Toups (1:13:48)

That's

the closest thing we've had to a perfect score.

Carter Morgan (1:13:51)

So that would beat out

Made to Stick and yeah, I love Made to Stick. But this is a software podcast, dang it. And we have to award the software book and we have to put two software books in the finals. So Made to Stick, I love you. Maybe my favorite book of all, my favorite non-fiction book of all time, but I have to give this to a philosophy of software design.

Nathan Toups (1:14:02)

Yep.

Yep.

Carter Morgan (1:14:18)

Okay, let me submit it. Okay, this brings us to the final round. Fundamentals of software architecture versus a philosophy of software design. Let's pause for a moment and reflect here, Nathan. Did you think this is how we'd wind up?

Nathan Toups (1:14:37)

No, and this is the final standoff.

Carter Morgan (1:14:39)

This is the final, it's just

the last two.

Nathan Toups (1:14:43)

You know, looking back, makes total sense. But I didn't think...

Carter Morgan (1:14:46)

It does not surprise me to see,

yeah.

It does not surprise me to see John Osterholt here. It does surprise me to see fundamentals here. Not because it's not an excellent book, but just because we haven't talked about it in a while. We haven't read it in a while. It's one of the very first ones we read. So to make it here all the way to the finals.

Nathan Toups (1:14:59)

No.

Mm-hmm.

It's funny that both of these books are some of the earliest books that we've read and we've had so many of the authors on. ⁓ Actually, we've had all the authors of these two books. you know, I want to know. So here's the deal. I want to know what the audience feels. I know we do know philosophy of self-assigned. I don't think we've gotten their feedback on. On fundamentals, so let's let's see what they say to.

Carter Morgan (1:15:11)

Yeah, we have, yeah, we can't even use that as a tiebreaker. Yeah.

on fundamentals. Okay.

I think we got to commit Nathan that you and I will be the deciders on this. This is our podcast, but we do have to find out what the audience thinks.

Nathan Toups (1:15:35)

Yes.

I would

like to know what they have to think. Yeah. Okay.

Carter Morgan (1:15:41)

Nick gives fundamentals a five.

Jose gives fundamentals a five.

Nathan Toups (1:15:47)

Oof.

Carter Morgan (1:15:50)

David gives fundamentals a five! That is a perfect score. Fundamental for all developers and developer adjacent roles. ⁓

Nathan Toups (1:15:53)

Wow. Wow.

So

what I will say here is.

First of all, we're in alignment with our audience. I'm very proud of us for getting the two book. Like it would have been really sad if like, you know, something that they really didn't like ended up making it to the final. And yeah, I mean, we're so close to a type of career. I feel like if David probably was, you know, taking this at a different time of the day, he probably could have given Philosophy of Software Design a five as well. And then we'd be in a really a big pickle.

Carter Morgan (1:16:11)

Yes.

Yeah.

Just while I'm thinking about it, want to, cause now we, for everyone that made it to the semi-finals, we now know their audience scores except refactoring. So I just want to do for refactoring. Nick gave it a four. ⁓ Jose gave it a four and, ⁓ David gave it a five. So that's a 13. So, so everything that made it to the semi-finals did very, very well with our three super fans. I think this completely shocks me.

Nathan Toups (1:16:56)

Okay.

Mm-hmm. Amazing.

Carter Morgan (1:17:07)

but I'm gonna go with fundamentals over philosophy of software design.

Nathan Toups (1:17:12)

I think I am too, and I'm so conflicted about this, because ⁓ I'm such a Philosophy of Software Design fanboy. I think it could have gone either way. ⁓ But I think Fundamentals, well deserved. This was great book.

Carter Morgan (1:17:29)

Yeah, A Philosophy

of Software Design is a very opinionated book and that's really cool to see. But by nature of it being opinionated, it may grow outdated. You can disagree with parts of it. ⁓ Fundamentals, just think is like...

Nathan Toups (1:17:33)

Yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:17:45)

This is like the best bang for your buck book we've ever read there. And I think, ⁓ who I believe was this David who said, yes, for fundamental software architecture, fundamental for all developers and developer adjacent roles. That's high praise. And I think it's, I think that's why you got to give it to it. Fundamental software architecture. Can we do it? Can we crown it the winner?

Nathan Toups (1:18:11)

crowned.

Carter Morgan (1:18:12)

Crown, okay, I did not anticipate this, but fundamentals of software architecture, at least in this year, 2025, is the best thing we have ever read on Book Overflow.

Nathan Toups (1:18:15)

No.

Carter Morgan (1:18:27)

at least when you put it up in this bracket, bracket sequencing, but Hey, I mean, it had to fight its way through some tight ends. Let's, let's take a moment to appreciate fundamentals journey here. ⁓ it did get lucky or no, no, no, I didn't even get lucky. did not have a first round by it beat. So first off, it comes out swinging, beating the software engineers guidebook. Then it beats mastering open telemetry. Then it beats what a shadow beauty doing and why does it work? Then it beats team topologies.

Nathan Toups (1:18:31)

Yeah.

Great.

Carter Morgan (1:18:56)

Then it beats refactoring to ultimately beat a philosophy of software design. Very, very impressive. And let's give a philosophy of software design some flowers too. This, let's see, also did not get a first round buy. ⁓ Beats clean coder, beats building evolutionary architectures, beats just for fun, beats worse is better, beats made to stick.

Nathan Toups (1:19:10)

Amazing book.

Carter Morgan (1:19:22)

and then get to beat by fundamentals. You know what? actually feel good about that because I think fundamentals had the tougher journey to the top.

Nathan Toups (1:19:29)

It did and ⁓ it did beat out another Neil Ford book. Yeah, this is awesome. And honestly, I couldn't be happier about the final two books that we had to put up against each other. They're both phenomenal books. And I think we're also in alignment with our audience, which is cool. I think very narrowly, audience, it preferred fundamentals as well. And so... ⁓

Carter Morgan (1:19:33)

Yeah. Consolation prize.

Yes.

Yeah.

Did it get, was this perfect? A perfect score from the audience? 15.

Nathan Toups (1:19:58)

This was the only

book that we found so far that was perfect score. I bet it's the only book that got a perfect score if I had to guess.

Carter Morgan (1:20:03)

I

bet it is. ⁓ Well, that's very, very impressive, very cool. And I am proud of myself for the restraint and not just muscling made to stick through to the very end. So.

Nathan Toups (1:20:14)

So hey, ⁓

maybe we'll do a follow-up or something. We're still figuring out the O'Reilly stuff, but this is an O'Reilly book. So maybe we can figure out a follow-up, some kind of follow-up thing to do this. Actually, you know what? I can do this. We will send, ⁓ we will have a prize for our super fans. we will, our three super fans, huge appreciation here. We're gonna,

Carter Morgan (1:20:21)

That's true.

Yes, our three super fans.

Nathan Toups (1:20:43)

We'll talk to Uriely and we'll get y'all something cool from them as a thank you. Yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:20:46)

We'll get you guys something cool. ⁓

And you know what? Let's flex our O'Reilly muscles right now because this is a winner. ⁓ If you share this, the podcast on LinkedIn, you can share this episode ⁓ or any episode. And we have a LinkedIn like company page for Book Overflow. So you can tag us there or you can tag Nathan or I on LinkedIn. Or if you tag me on Twitter or the podcast on Twitter, ⁓ we ⁓ will get you if you're one of the first 10. ⁓

Or we'll say seven because we're to give three to our super fans. We will get you a copy of fundamental software architecture. ⁓ And if yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:21:20)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, first seven to reach

out to us, we'll make it happen. If our super fans already own a copy of fundamentals, we'll hook you up with something else. yeah.

Carter Morgan (1:21:33)

Great. Okay. Hey, ⁓ so fun to do this. And I think we'll have to do this again next year as it grows and just kind of see, you know, if we keep doing this every year and fundamentals just keeps winning every year, maybe we'll quit doing this, but for now, ⁓ this was fun and thanks so much everyone for a great year as for chronologically, I believe this is the last episode you'll get from us in December. ⁓ and then we're to go dark for the holidays. ⁓ we have, ⁓ yeah, I believe this last episode you're hearing from us.

But thanks so much for a great year, everyone. Uh, we love doing this. Um, we're going to keep doing this as long as it's fun. And, oh, I want to make sure I shout this out before we, um, before we sign off one of our, he was not a super fan who contributed to the episode, but he did give us a generous $20 super thanks on YouTube. Um, we already made sure to respond to him there and it is not a requirement of this podcast to give us $20. Um, but we like to say about this podcast, makes

enough money that we never have to talk about it, both in a good way and a bad way, right? And we, so when our fans do contribute monetarily, that means a lot to us. And so I just want to make sure we shout out. This is from Francisco underscore nine eight Francisco really kind of you to contribute to the podcast. And it means a lot to us fans when you do reach out and if it's not monetarily, if it's just a comment, if it's a like, if it's a connection on LinkedIn.

Just letting us know that you like what we're doing because you know, it's a, is an effort to put on this podcast, but ⁓ knowing that there are people out there listening and enjoying it really does mean the world to us. So thanks for a great year. Nathan, anything you want to tell the audience before we sign off for 2025?

Nathan Toups (1:23:14)

No, we really appreciate you. It's been fun to grow this together. We love the feedback, especially, I think most of our negative feedback is, please fix the audio. We're continuously working on it. But yeah, be honest. ⁓ Books are special episode ideas. We're doing that. And we do think that we're going to have some more community-focused stuff. We haven't figured out exactly next year, but it may be something like a Discord or something. ⁓ We'd love to get more.

Carter Morgan (1:23:23)

Yeah.

Nathan Toups (1:23:44)

you know, space to talk to y'all. So sounds awesome.

Carter Morgan (1:23:47)

Yeah. And, ⁓ you can also connect with us on LinkedIn. I've had more people reaching out and doing that. And my work is doing a competition for LinkedIn impressions. And so I appreciate all of you who look at my stuff. ⁓ yeah, thanks a ton guys. ⁓ we'll keep doing this as long as it makes sense to keep doing this. ⁓ but you guys listening and contributing is part of what makes it makes sense to keep doing this. So, super fun. ⁓ again, contact us at contact at book or flow.io. ⁓ I'm on Twitter at Carter Morgan or the podcast on Twitter.

flow pod and Nathan ⁓ is pivoting from function imperative to rojo roboto and concentrating all of his thoughts there and so what do you say is it rojo roboto.com slash newsletter where they can see your

Nathan Toups (1:24:26)

Yeah, rohoroboto.com

is the landing page. And then if you want to subscribe to my newsletter, it's rohoroboto.com slash newsletter.

Carter Morgan (1:24:30)

Nice.

Okay, that is a wrap on 2025. We'll see you next year for 2026. Thanks everyone.