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Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual by John Sonmez

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30 Jun 2015CPOL3 min read 21.5K   2   6
A book review of "Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual" by John Sonmez

This article is in the Book Review chapter. Reviews are intended to provide you with information on books - both paid and free - that others consider useful and of value to developers. Read a good programming book? Write a review!

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I reviewed the book Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual by John Sonmez with 5 stars on Amazon with the following comment:

I believe Soft Skills will indeed become every software developers’ life manual, in a similar way as Code Complete 2 is.

I really enjoyed the book, and am recommending it to all my “IT” friends (just lent it today to a co-worker :)) – John Sonmez really poured his whole life experience into this, and for this, I thank him since I think we all have something to learn from a man who made almost 50 courses for Pluralsight, written a bestseller, retired at 33, was a fitness model, bodybuilding contestant, and who is, well, just pure awesome. Btw, I also found that he’s damn speedy in answering any emails, so kudos for not being a hot headed superstar author as some these days play out to be.

The book is divided in 7 chapters, and it’s packed with awesome content. Those of you who have been following my Books category know that I like to mark the passages that I find valuable from books that I read, like for example:

SoftSkills_highlights

But here, I won’t be putting them online since that would be a whole lot portion of the book, and I don’t want to be chased for some copyright issues smileyGlasses. Instead I’ll just show you the images of the chapters and comment a bit about them.

In the first section, John talks about topics concerning ones career and steps to take in order to make the most out of it. Topics ranging from how to hack the interview, how to actually set goals, work as a freelancer, and even how to quit your job.

1

In the second section, John talks about how to create your blog as a first thing you should do to start marketing yourself. John also has a free email course on how to build a successful blog, so make sure to get that free resource if you’re into starting your own blog, or increasing the views of your existing one.

2

In the third section, John talks about why is continuous learning something you signed up for the minute you decided to make programming your calling. Also, he explains his own 10-step process for learning, which he used to learn and produce almost 50 courses on Pluralsight.

3

In the fourth section, John talks about methods and techniques he uses in order to stay crazily productive as he is. Few of them are KanbanFlow and Pomodoro technique.

4

In the fifth section, John shares his own method of how he retired at the age of 33. He seems to be highly influenced by authors such as Robert Kiyosaki, and you can see my notes from his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

5

In the sixth section, John talks about the importance of fitness in developers' life as a tool for increased productivity and better well-being. Also, he covers few of the tech gear for geeks like me (I love my FitBit).

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Section seven is all about having the right mental attitude, and I’ll quote one of my favorite authors, Napoleon Hill: “You can do it if you believe you can”. If you’re interested, you can read more Napoleon Hill quotes from my notes from his book Think and Grow Rich.

7

After the book, I went on to check out his http://simpleprogrammer.com blog, and what’s awesome is that he gives a free email course on how to build a successful blog. Am currently on week 5, and am really learning some key things on what one should do in order to increase his blog credibility and, well, views. So, hope to see those 100k+ users monthly soon ??.

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License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer (Senior)
Croatia Croatia
I’m an engineer at heart and a jack of all trades kind of guy.

For those who care about titles, I hold a masters degree in computing from FER (and a black belt in karate, but that’s another story…).

During the last years, worked in a betting software industry where I made use of my knowledge in areas ranging from full-stack (web & desktop) development to game development through Linux and database administration and use of various languages (C#, PHP, JavaScript to name just a few).

Currently, I’m a senior software engineer at TelTech, where we make innovative communications apps, and I <3 it.

Lately, I’m very passionate about Ionic framework and am currently in the top 3 answerers on StackOverflow in Ionic framework. I wrote a book about Ionic framework which you can get for free on Leanpub: Ionic framework – step by step from idea through prototyping to the app stores.

Other technical writing:

+ wrote a book Getting MEAN with MEMEs
was a technical reviewer for a book Deploying Node published by Packt
was a technical reviewer for a book Getting started with Ionic published by Packt
After writing 300 posts, this is why I think you should start blogging too

Come and see what I write about on my blog.

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionThanks for the awesome review! Pin
John Sonmez8-Jul-15 11:07
John Sonmez8-Jul-15 11:07 
AnswerRe: Thanks for the awesome review! Pin
Nikola Breznjak8-Jul-15 19:20
professionalNikola Breznjak8-Jul-15 19:20 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
Emre Ataseven4-Jul-15 12:22
professionalEmre Ataseven4-Jul-15 12:22 
Good review, thank you Smile | :)
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nikola Breznjak4-Jul-15 12:29
professionalNikola Breznjak4-Jul-15 12:29 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Emre Ataseven4-Jul-15 12:33
professionalEmre Ataseven4-Jul-15 12:33 
GeneralRe: My vote of 5 Pin
Nikola Breznjak4-Jul-15 12:37
professionalNikola Breznjak4-Jul-15 12:37 

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