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Lifelong Learning: 88+ Resources I Don't Regret as a Senior Software Engineer

Learn how I stay up-to-date with tech and what resources I used to grow to Senior Software Engineer.

Petar IvanovPetar Ivanov
••6 min read
LearningCareer Growth
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The Internet is flooded with content, materials, and resources.

Knowing the most useful newsletters, books, courses, creators, and tools is hard.

In this article, I want to share some incredible resources that I’ve found valuable in my experience and day-to-day job.

Each resource on this list taught me something new and helped me learn and grow as an engineer.

🗞️ Newsletters

As a Senior Software Engineer, I need to keep up with the industry trends, updates, libraries, tools, vulnerabilities, etc, so that I can apply this knowledge at my job.

Here are most of the newsletters I read every week.

Web Development (JS, React, Node)

I use these four newsletters to stay up-to-date with the Web and JavaScript world.

System Design & Architecture

Leadership / Soft-Skills

General Software Engineer Growth

General / Staying up-to-date

I’d suggest avoiding reading all these newsletter at once because you’ll feel overwhelmed.

Depending on your current needs, priorities, and career aspirations, you might want to choose a few of them and come to the rest when needed.

📚 Books

Books are a great way to learn and grow as an individual.

We can learn from a lot of people even though they’re not in front of us.

We can learn from their mistakes and see what lessons they have learned.

However, I’ve found that if I read a book and don’t apply my knowledge from it as soon as possible, the value from reading the book drops drastically.

Think in advance how reading a particular book will help you in your day-to-day tasks, job, and personal life. If you can’t apply the knowledge immediately, postpone reading it.

Each book has taught me something or sparked a new idea and way of thinking.

It’s not necessary to apply everything from each book but rather look for the things that most suits you at the moment and adapt them to your lifestyle.

A great mistake I made in the past was to try to apply everything on 100%.

The true wisdom comes when you find the 10-20% of the book to apply at the moment.

At each phase of our lives we need different things, so think twice before applying anything directly. Be conscious.

Software Engineering / Architecture

JavaScript

TypeScript

Web

Design

Soft Skills / Communication

Writing

Productivity

Life, Psychology, and Philosophy

Creativity

Money

You can also find some more books and their reviews on my Goodreads account.

🎥 YouTube & Videos

Websites / Docs

📋 Recap

  • Don’t try to read and follow everything at once.
  • Think in advance how reading a particular book will help you in your day-to-day tasks, job, and personal life.
  • If you can’t apply the knowledge immediately, postpone reading the book or newsletter.
  • As you might see, there’re no courses. My preferred way is to read and apply what I read immediately in my day-to-day job or side-projects.
  • To retain and store the acquired knowledge, I use my Minimalistic Productivity System based on Second Brain.

That's all for today. I hope this was helpful.

What are the 1-2 resources you’ve found life changing? Share them in the comments 👀 👇

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Petar Ivanov

Written by

Petar Ivanov

Software engineer, author, and speaker. I help JavaScript developers grow from Mid → Senior → Architect — production-grade React, Node.js, and AI systems.

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