Simple Programmer LLC
500 Westover Dr #12344, Sanford NC, 27330
Copyright 2020 by John Z. Sonmez.
First published by Manning Publications, 2015
Second edition updated and reset, Simple Programmer LLC, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
John Sonmez asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover art: Nicanor Benitez
Cover designer: Bogdan Matei
Editor: Robin de Jongh
ISBN: 978-0-9990814-5-7
Foreword
L ate in the evening of Friday, December 5, 2014 (my 62nd birthday), I received an email from John Sonmez, the author of this book. He wrote asking me to write a foreword by Monday, December 8. In Johns email was a zip file with several dozen Word filesI found this presentation of the manuscript to be inconvenient and annoying, and I didnt have time to generate a PDF of the whole book.
I wasnt pleased to get such a request. My wife had just had double knee replacements and was in rehab. I had a flying lesson Saturday morning and planned to spend the rest of the day with my wife. I was scheduled to board a plane to London Saturday evening and teach courses Monday through Friday. So there was no way, not by Monday. John hadnt given me enough time, and I told him so.
Just before driving to the airport, I found John had sent me a Christmas package of cheeses and ham. It included a card, thanking me for considering writing the foreword. Also, I received another email from John in which he said he had begged his publisher for another day, so he could give me until Tuesday. He sent me several other imploring emails, but I told him that there was no reasonable chance, and that he should expect nothing from me.
I drove to the airport, boarded the plane, slept through the flight, and took a taxi to my favorite London hotel. I was wiped out by the travel and played Minecraft in a stupor until I finally crashed. On Monday I taught a full day, and then had to do some work on the SMC Compiler for Episode 30 of my Clean Code video series on http://cleancoders.com .
Today is Tuesday, December 9. Its the second day of my class, and I just started the students working on a two-hour exercise. I checked my email and found that John had sent me another message with a simple PDF of the whole book. Okay, that would make things easier. I could just open that file and scroll up and down the book. Nice.
Note what Im telling you: John did what was necessary. He thought about what I might need and want. He followed his original request with inducements and helpful aids. He clearly spent a lot of time and effort working to make my job easier, on the off-chance that it would make it possible for me to write this foreword. Even after Id declined and told him it was almost certainly impossible, he continued to find ways to induce and aid me. He didnt give up. He didnt back down. As long as there was a chance, he continued to search for a way.
And that is what this book is about. Its about getting to success. Its about the habits and strategies, procedures and mindsets, and tricks and hacks that you can use to push yourself ever closer to success. Johns actions toward me, after his original request, are an example, and he is an exemplar, of what he has written in this book.
So, with two hours to kill while the students did their exercise, I cracked the PDF open and began to read. Whoa! Look at the topics! He talks about physical fitness. He talks about options trading. He talks about real estate. He talks about spiritual balance. He talks about quitting your job, starting a consulting business, joining a startup, building a product, climbing the corporate ladder, marketing yourself, and the list goes on...
Knowing Id never be able to read the entire book in two hours, and that I wasnt going to write the foreword anyway, I read and skimmed, and read and skimmed again. But as I did, I started to get the feeling that John had a message and that it was a good one! It was a holistic message, one that every software developer (and everybody else, for that matter) ought to hear.
Do you know how to write a resume? Do you know how to negotiate your salary? Do you know how to set your rates as an independent consultant? Do you know how to weigh the risks of quitting your job to become a contractor? Do you understand how to get funding for a startup? Do you understand the cost of watching TV? (Yes, you read that right.)
These are the things this book talks about and can teach you. Theyre things you need to know. I havent read the whole book, but Ive read in the book and skimmed a lot of it, and that was enough, because here I am, writing this foreword, after all. My conclusion is that if youre a young software developer trying to find your way in this complex industry, then youre holding a book that will give you a lot of insight and good advice.
John figured out a way to get me to write this foreword, despite a bumpy beginning, an impossible schedule, and the overall difficulty of the situation. He applied the principles that he writes about in this book, and, once again, gained success!
Robert C. Martin
(Uncle Bob)
Uncle Bob Consulting LLC
Preface
I d love to be able to give you a fantastic story about how I came to write this book. Id like to tell you that I was meditating in the desert when an eagle flew down, landed on my shoulder, and whispered in my ear, You must write a book about soft skills for software developers. Id like to tell you that the book came to me in a dream; that I was awakened by a vision of the outline of the book in the middle of the night and that I started frantically writing chapters, trying to capture what I had seen.
But the truth is that I wrote the book because I felt that I had to.
Throughout my life as a software developer, Ive been on many different journeys. Ive taken some right paths, some wrong paths, and some paths that Im still not sure about. Along the way, I havent had much help or guidance. Ive never felt like there was someone who had cut a trail for me that I could follow. Ive never felt like there was someone who could show me how to be the most successful software developer I could benot just in writing codebut in life in general.
Sure, there have been plenty of people who have influenced my life, and plenty of people whove taught me all kinds of things about software development and more. I certainly owe what Ive accomplished in life, in part, to those people. But Ive never found a single person or guide that condensed all this information into one place. Things like:
