Learning software engineering

Resources I've bookmarked for learning software engineering. Some I've actually used.

I haven't used all of these resources. Some are listed based on recommendations I've received, for my own future reference.

Books

Fundamentals

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Classic introduction to computational thinking
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software - Understanding computers from first principles
• Algorithms - Core algorithms and data structures
• Types and Programming Languages - Type systems and formal semantics

Systems & Architecture

Low-level Systems

• Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces - OS fundamentals
• What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory - Memory hierarchies and performance
• Data-Oriented Design - Cache locality and memory optimization
• Database Internals - How databases work under the hood
• Programming in C
• The Rust Programming Language - Modern systems programming with memory safety
• RISC-V ISA Specification

Distributed Systems & Design

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications - Distributed systems and data architecture
• Game Engine Architecture
• Software Engineering at Google - Engineering practices at scale
• A Philosophy of Software Design - Principles for managing complexity

Language Implementation

• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools - The Dragon Book
• Crafting Interpreters - Building programming languages from scratch

Operations

• The Linux Command Line - Shell scripting and command-line usage

Videos & Talks

• From Blinky to Bootloader: Bare Metal Programming Series - ARM Cortex-M embedded development
• Data-Oriented Design and C++ - Mike Acton (CppCon 2014)
• CPU Caches and Why You Care - Scott Meyers (code::dive 2014)
• A Practical Guide to Applying Data Oriented Design - Andrew Kelley
• Practical Optimizations - Arseny Kapoulkine
• The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-five-year Mistake - Casey Muratori (BSC 2025)
• Designing a Physics Engine in 5 minutes

Articles & Papers

Performance & Memory

• Borrow checking, RC, GC, and the Eleven (!) Other Memory Safety Approaches
• Gallery of Processor Cache Effects
• The Lost Art of Structure Packing - Memory layout optimization
• Handles vs Pointers - Memory indirection strategies
• Memory access is O(N^[1/3]) - Real-world memory performance
• Untangling Lifetimes: The Arena Allocator - Performant dynamic manual memory management in C
• C++ Design Patterns for Low-latency Applications - Performance-critical patterns

Networking

• Linux IP Networking - Guide to the Linux protocol stack implementation

Courses & Practice

• Computer, Enhance! - Performance-aware programming course
• Ray Tracing In One Weekend Series - Build a ray tracer from scratch
• Rustlings - Small exercises to learn Rust

Tools

• Compiler Explorer - See what your code compiles to
• gdb - The GNU debugger
• valgrind - Memory debugging and profiling
• clang-tidy - Static analysis
• clang-format - Code formatting

Blogs & Channels

Blogs

• Random ASCII - Debugging and performance deep dives
• The Old New Thing - Windows internals and backwards compatibility
• purplesyringa - Systems programming and low-level optimization

YouTube Channels

• Bisqwit - Retro programming and algorithms
• CoffeeBeforeArch - Computer architecture and performance
• javidx9 - One Lone Coder - Game development and graphics programming
• mCoding - Programming concepts across languages
• Tsoding - Low-level programming and language implementation