HACKER Q&A
📣 xupybd

Programming Audio Book Recommendations


I listen to audiobooks when driving, mowing the lawn or other manual tasks.

I've found some great books such as clean architecture and the pragmatic programmer.

I've also found some terrible books such as grokking algorithms.

I'm sure this community will have some recommendations to help avoid the terrible books.


  👤 billti Accepted Answer ✓
I'm currently listening to "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" [1] on my commute and it really does work well as an Audio Book (I can attest to the positive reviews). Highly recommended if you are dealing with any requirements in the space (scale, replication, consistency, SQL vs NoSQL, etc.)

[1] https://www.audible.com/pd/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applicat...


👤 orlandohill
Manning have many programming audio books. I'd recommend buying directly from their website if you want any that include code samples or illustrations. It's a bit more expensive than from Audible, but they often have sales offering 40% off.

I normally use the liveBook format with liveAudio narration for books with code samples, and download the ebook and mp3 files for other books.

https://www.manning.com/liveaudio-landing

You can also find more audio books by the same publisher as Clean Architecture and Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Upfront Books. There's a link when you view Audible from a web browser, and you can filter by Computers & Technology.


👤 MathCodeLove
I loved "Algorithms to Live By" by Brian Christian and tom Griffiths. It's not quite as focused on the technical side of things as the books you listed, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.

👤 Valdy
Was listening to Data Lake architecture last week. Ran out of my audible credits early this month so used this website, I think it was called Narration Box or something to turn the ebook into audiobook. Not to shabby but it was TTS at the end of the day, so I guess it almost works. The book's pretty great though.

👤 snarkypixel
Biographies of developers or successful/failed projects are great to listen to I.e. Masters of Doom and the like.

👤 valbaca
"Algorithms to Live By"

"The Phoenix Project" / "The Unicorn Project"


👤 smithza
On The Metal is a great pod for hw/sw interface stories.

👤 dolmen
Changelog.com has multiple weekly podcasts about programming: http://changelog.com/podcasts

As a Go programmer I recommend Go Time: http://changelog.com/gotime There is a huge archive of past episodes (last episode is #188) that are as interesting (or more) than the latest ones.


👤 user123456780
Clean Code - Robert Martin. <-- this is without a doubt the number one book to read in my opinion

Working With Legacy Code - Michael Feathers


👤 machinehermiter
I second Designing Data-Intensive Applications.

Deep Learning with Python by François Chollet I think works as an audiobook as well.

I am a big non-fiction audio book fan and so much depends on the voice actor. I bad read can ruin the best content while Robertson Dean made Alan Greenspan's The Age of Turbulence into an enthralling adventure story.


👤 swyx
My careers book focuses on the non technical side of technical careers and has an audio book! https://www.learninpublic.org/

👤 thomasthomas
Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality

👤 sigg3
Which Clean Architecture, specifically?

Cheers!


👤 chana_masala
I agree that the Pragmatic Programmer is well done in it's audio form, and I also agree that Grokking Algorithms is terrible.

I am currently listening Designing Data Intensive Applications and it's phenomenally done - the author clearly worked with the narrator to adapt the content to audio format, and the narrator seems to have experience or familiarity with the subject because he pronounces the technical jargon very naturally.

I hope to find other software related audiobooks as good as DDAI is.