Which books would you recommend?

Alex PadulaFounder & Architect @TidesDB

Do you have any book recommendations?

Mostly papers. Going through a paper is probably the best thing you can do. And for me, lectures. And actually getting in and trying to write it. You can read a book or follow a tutorial, but if you don't sit there and try to write it, you're probably not going to fully understand it. You can also grab a whiteboard and draw how a B-tree or an LSM tree works, teach out loud, write out loud. What you read is easy to forget.

Cornelia BiacsicsPrincipal Program Manager @Microsoft

On the personal side, are there any books or resources you'd recommend?

In my early career, like 20 years ago or even more, my former account manager recommended a book to me. The title is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It sounds a bit weird or bad, because, you know, "influence people." But it's a really, really good book about collaborating with people, with a lot of examples. It's about the fundamental ideas of human nature and collaboration. It's one of my favorite books. I would also recommend The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I don't agree with all of its content, but it gives some good ideas and examples of how to look at certain challenges.

Elisa UsaiSenior Delivery Manager @dbi services

Is there a book or resource that particularly shaped you?

Not really. I think, in our profession, sure, there's always the certification "Bible", and it's cool, it's interesting, and it teaches you technically. But again, coming back to everything I said before, I think our profession is learned especially through experience. When there are difficult projects, tricky migrations, production incidents, being on call, waking up in the middle of the night, having to think fast, architecture choices, trade-offs between performance, security, cost, deadline, whatever, I think that's what really makes a good professional. There's no recipe like that, in any case, if there is one, I'd love someone to share it with us too, but I'd say it's really about experience.

Flora BarrieleOracle Database@AWS EMEA Black Belt

A few books that helped you?

Yes. For books, I have a few classics I could give you the references for. Troubleshooting Oracle Performance, by Christian Antognini OCA: Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Associate Study Guide, by Biju Thomas But those are starting to get dated :-) What helped me enormously was mainly content produced by the community. I did almost my entire career on Oracle, so when I talk about community, it's mostly the Oracle community, but a lot of other communities, like the PostgreSQL community for example, are also very well developed.

Yves ColinCustomer Engineer Data Management @Google

Outside of your studies, were there resources that helped you master this area, the engines, the analysis?

Yes, a lot of books inspired me, whether recent or older. Back then, on Oracle RAC for example, there were gurus like Tom Kyte or Jonathan Lewis. Their books were really well made and went well beyond the Oracle product itself: they truly explained the underlying concepts in detail, like how MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control) works, what it actually is and how it's handled in the engine. Then, for everything related to system performance analysis, an essential resource for me is Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg. It's a true bible for understanding how the operating system interacts with hardware and databases.

Damien ClochardCo-founder & Product Owner @Dalibo

Are there resources, books, blogs, that helped you master PostgreSQL?

Not really. I'd say there are enormous amounts of resources out there, so I wouldn't point to one specific place, what you can do with Postgres is just immense. I'd rather suggest going into a domain that genuinely interests you, whether that's vectors, geospatial, anonymization. It's vast, these are whole worlds. Even within the Postgres community, there's no single specialist who knows everything. So I'd say: go find the zones that interest you. Each little world has its own resources.

Ege GüneşTeam Lead, Kubernetes Operators @Percona

Can you share your three favorite books?

My favorite book is actually a relatively lesser-known one called Unsong by Scott Alexander. It's available online and can be read through a website. That's probably my all-time favorite book. For the second, I'd mention The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. That series has had a lasting impact on me and has remained one of my favorites for years. For the third, I'd choose The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. It's another series that has always been very special to me.

Matt CornillonData Cloud & AI Specialist @Google

Are there resources that helped you a lot?

One thing that brought me a lot is meetups and conferences. I learned an enormous amount there, both during the talks and in informal discussions with people during networking. It is often in those exchanges that you discover topics, feedback, or ways of thinking you would not have found elsewhere. So if there is one piece of advice I would give, it would be to go to these kinds of events, on the topics that interest you. And it is not limited to open source. Many companies and vendors also organize very interesting events. For me, conferences and meetups remain among the best catalysts for knowledge and learning.

Cedric VillemainPresident / CEO @Data bene

Do you read tech books?

I'm not even sure I've actually read three tech books in my life. I've never read a tech book from cover to cover. I have some that I browse through. The two books on my shelf are TCP/IP and Design Patterns. And I think the more interesting one is Design Patterns, by Eric Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. Computing is actually very simple. It's zeros and ones. And at the software and developer level, there are just a few development patterns.

Mikaël FrancoeurSoftware Engineer @Turso

Do you have a top 3 books?

One book that took me probably a year and a half to finish was Crafting Interpreters. It’s an incredibly accessible and well-written book. Much like the formal verification material I mentioned earlier, it’s not just about interpreters or programming languages. It also takes many interesting detours into how computers and programming work in general. I really loved that aspect of it. The second one is Cracking the Coding Interview. It’s not really a book you read cover to cover, but it’s stayed with me over the years.

Franck PachotDeveloper Advocate @MongoDB

Do you have any books to recommend?

Honestly, I am not a big book reader. I mostly consume blogs, forums, and technical discussions online. And when I really want to understand something, I go and read the official documentation from beginning to end.