Standard Linux introduction books concentrate on the shell functions and describe how to become productively in the file system and in the shell. However, if you are interested in a more detailed approach to the Linux operating system and how its components interplay, you are faced with heavy tomes whose page numbers easily exceed 1000. Notable mentions include Unix Power Tools by Jerry Peek et al., Unix in a Nutshell by Arnold Robbins et al. and the UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook by Nemeth et al. In order to be comprehensive, these books cover both Unix and Linux, and therefore contain in parts less relevant Input, depending to which of the two camps you belong.

Less is more and 'How Linux Works' limits its scope only to Linux-based operating systems with an easily digestible level of detail where one is not in danger of losing orientation. The strength of the book are in the description of the Kernel boot process, the structure and mounting of the file system. For instance, the communication with the file system devices is explained. Furthermore, the initialization of the User space is described, including run levels and the common implementations of the Init process (systemd and Upstart). The next part deals with networking: internet layer, private networks, routing, Firewall, file transfer tools and the most important commands for adminstration. The last part covers in detail the C++ Compiler as well as the building of libraries and packages from source with Make.

Conclusion: This book is a sprint though the Linux ecosystem and avoids unnecessary in depth coverage. There are many clues throughout the book at points where too specialized topics are being discussed, which might be skipped. The text is easily readable and commands/instructions are reproducable at the own work station. I suspect that the author uses Fedora, since not all tools are available in Ubuntu. However, the content is up to date. In case a more detailed references is needed, one of the aforementioned standard books should be chosesn. For beginners, however, this book is the recommended starting point.

To my knowledge it is the latest review of the Google phenomenon written by the former CEO Eric Schmidt and former Senior Vice President of Products Jonathan Rosenberg . The book starts with the introduction of a typical employee the smart creative. Not an average guy/girl who do just want a job at some IT firm, but who is superintelligent and the best of the graduates and have enough crazy ideas of startup-worthy quality. „Don’t settle for anything less“ These are high requirements considering that probably all of Google‘s competitors have a similar target group. And it is also somewhat believable, since Google has achieved the transition from a startup to a tech giant. However, all this talk about disrupting markets and creating the industry of the future should be taken as PR. There is also the viewpoint that such success stories are based on singular events - in this case the advent of the internet technology - that cannot repeated and generalized. As for the rest of the book: it is more a manual of personal management for  software engineer as well as a manual for business leaders and managers of creative groups. It gives insight into how Google manages product development and how they do business and employee reviews (e.g. OKR‘s). There is some generic knowledge, but there are also specific measures given on how Google wants to push innovation and reach their goals, which may worthwhile for startups to adopt.

The Getting Things Done methodology has become a buzzword at my work place, considered as the ultimate solution to personal task and project management. Well then, time to take a look into this classic piece of self-improvement.
There is criticism that this book is too long and that Allen could have described the technique much more condensed. On the hand this is true and it takes some effort to keep reading, on the other hand the repetition of the key principles, in an almost preaching manner, makes it so persuasive in adopting this methodology. Probably, this is the reason why it is so popular. There are no spectacular new insights. For instance, having some sort of physical in-tray, a calendar, an organized email in-box and a check list for tasks are things are so essential and common tools, that no one probably remembers having learned to utilize these things. But the message of the book is strong, really putting emphasis on the right utilization of these basic tools, so that you most effectively manage your work and life.  I decided to follow this methodology and also research and experiment to find the right task manager tools, so that I can implement GTD most conveniently. Because there is no exact practice about how you keep track of your tasks. It could be conventional with Post-its and ticker files or fully electronic with integration of all kinds of software tools.

Good introduction to neural networks mostly. The deep learning is only shortly discussed in the last chapter. I would rather say that it is a very long introductory article to a topic that is getting more and more importance in data science. Though it is a branch of mathematics you don't need to know any maths beyond calculus. It has a conversational type of writing, and explains formulaes in detail. Basically you can read it before going to sleep. Nice thing about the web version is that all graphs and calculations are javascript apps, so that you can play around with the parameters. After reading it you have an idea what machine learning is about, but from the application point of view you still have way to go. The whole book dicusses only one particular application, namely the recognition of hand written digits (NIST database). But how you tackle any kind of image recognition problem is left out.

This is a book which I would gave whole-heartedly 5 stars. The author tells a fascinating story and  provides background information on the history of Unix really made it a good read. Admittedly, unlike a programming book you can easily try out the commands and have quick a return of investment. Because this what it is about: Unix commands. Though it is not a reference, it strikes the right balance between detail and what you really need to know later as a programmer or a DevOps engineer. I would also highly recommend it as Beginner's course on Linux in general. I also read it in less than 5 months, which is fast compared with computer books of similar length. So it must be good.

As the title already suggests this is a introduction to PHP and MySQL, with both parts being sharply separated. The 4th edition dates back to 2010, so it's not the up to date with todays technologies. For example it introduces the package management with PEAR while the today standard is Composer. It features the Zend framework as the example for a PHP framework, while today Symfony and Laravel gets most of the shares in users. After introducing the basics, a lot of topics are presented in a Cookbook fashion. The chapters are short so it doesn't hurt reading them, despite having a low chance of applying them in real life. In scope, it competes with the 'PHP Cookbook', that deals with advanced topics more comprehensively.

The MySQL is just right. It provides basic MySQL administration as well as a the PHP-SQL interface. Interestingly, it skips all the CRUD operation syntax and MYSQL functions and introduces higher concepts like views and cursors. Just right for a developer using the PHP/MySQL stack, but probably not enough for MySQL administrator.

I read the Symfony code book to learn Symfony 3 and to better understand the different development concepts in the recent Drupal 8 release compared to Drupal 7. Now Drupal 8 heavily utilizes Symfony's concept of structuring the code into configuration files, PHP code and Twig template files. But Symfony is a Web framework by itself, designed to provide basic functionality for building MVC applications, including templating, user management, security and database connection via the object-relational mapping framework Doctrine.

This book is not very long but covers all areas. It is sufficient to get started on writing a simple application like a blog, though this already can be achieved with out-of-the-box solutions. It avoids going into much detail and mainly provides only individual code snippets, not full-featured examples. The latter is provided by the Symfony Cookbook. From my experience, as soon as you want to actually program something more advanced you are forced to look up Cookbook or google Stackoverflow. It really gives you are raw overview of how the framework is built. Though it guides you to coding quite quickly, it will not serve as a in-depth reference or definitive guide.

This book, being first released in 2007, is a timeless piece and valuable for different reasons. It is the ultimate representative for PHP in the Patterns series for programming languages. Giving a strong introduction to object-oriented programming and then bridging over to the Patterns. Technically difficult parts are the Enterprise and Database architecture chapters in the middle part. These are really advanced and I can't say that I took something away from it. There, starting from the WOO example, a program to organized Venues, Spaces and Events the author builds a Framework, introducing components as Registry, Mappers, etc you would also find in modern PHP frameworks like Symfony or Doctrine. So it would be best to re-read this part if one is experienced with a framework.I enjoyed the last part where he introduces the ecosystem: PHPUnit, PEAR, Git, Phing, Jenkins with a simple sample application at hand which was fun to follow. I recommend to read this book after maybe one year of programming excercise in PHP and after having a detailed glimpse at the architecture of frameworks or CMS solutions based on PHP (and perhaps MySQL).

The introduction book by the PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf. Good for beginners. Provides a good balance between raw commands on the one hand (the function reference at the end is notable) and illustrative examples and code snippets on the other hand. Thus, that they can be used in immediate pratical applications. However, it does not cover advanced or enterprise topics such as frameworks and patterns. I am also reading 'PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice' which is complementary to this book.
A drawback is that some chapters are just too short, failing to give even an overview. They might as well have been cut.

Clean Code by Robert C. Martin can be recommended for beginners as it defines a conventional guideline for clean coding that provides a good orientation for less experienced programmers. Though many aspects more or less self-explanatory, when working in team, it is still worth be reading from the point of view of a senior software developer. It introduces principles of designing Java classes and methods like Single Responsibility Principle, Law of Demeter, Dependency inversion principle and so on. While it has the conversational tone typical for most programming text books and reads well in the first third of the book. But then the level increases and the reader is more committed in following the code snippets. Highlight is a refactoring chapter that improves code step by step without braking it.

One of the strengths is repetition of the key aspects of clean coding, thus making sure that the reader gets the message. Given its significance and acceptance in the community it should be read quite early before delving into a more specific book about patters for instance.