- About Me
- Ask Me About
- My Years in Books
- My Years in Training
- My Latest Blog Posts
- My Life in Cyberspace
Hi There π,
I am Bala, an enthusiastic explorer, a passionate programmer, and a pragmatic architect with 14+ years of IT experience in the FinTech realm. (more in )
- π What I like to Read/Talk About: Favorite Topics - Software Architecture, Craftsmanship, Productivity, Science & Technology
- β¨ What I Love: problem-solving, book-reading, creating visual arts, continuous upskilling, and disseminating knowledge via tech talks & blogs (just for the love of the tech).
- Software Architecture Practices & Styles
- Design Principles & Patterns
- Test-Driven Development
- Cloud Computing
- Agile Framework
- SRE Principles
- Technical Writing and Blogging
- N-Tier Architecture
- Microservice Architecture
- Event Driven Architecture
- Aspect Oriented Programming
- Object Oriented Programming
- Domain Driven Design_
- Actor Based Model_
footnote...
The above list shows the tools & technologies that I used through building enterprise applications (or hobby projects)- * => not recently used mainly because it was outdated, or my current projects didn't require them
- _ => currently learning and exploring
This is my journey in books since 2010 (ignoring all short reads [pages < 100] and the books that I skimmed only for reference)
Click here to see the list...
- Clean Architecture [βββββ]
- Clean Coder [βββββ]
- Designing Event-Driven Systems [ββββ]
- Implementing Service Level Objectives: A Practical Guide to Slis, Slos, and Error Budgets [ββββ]
- Incident Management for Operations [βββ]
- Complex Enterprise Architecture: A New Adaptive Systems Approach [βββ]
- The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking[βββββ]
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python: Best Practices for Development [40% and the rest is reference]
- Effective awk Programming: Text Processing and Pattern Matching [60% and the rest is reference]
- Learning Shell Scripting with Zsh [ββββ]
- Tmux 2: Productive Mouse-Free Development [ββββ]
- Getting Started with Tmux [ββββ]
- The Tao of tmux: and Terminal Tricks [βββ]
- Painless Tmux: A Sane Person's Guide to Command Line Happiness [ββ]
- tmux Taster [ββ]
- The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts [ββββ]
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones [βββββ]
- Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World [βββββ]
- The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success [βββ]
- The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results [ββββ]
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less [βββββ]
- The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing [βββ]
- The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting [βββ]
- The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future [ββββ]
- Head First Design Patterns
- Apache Maven
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
- So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
- Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
- 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, 13 Olympic Athletes, 29 Straight-A Students, and 239 Entrepreneurs
- Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind
- The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)
- Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done
- The 4-Hour Workweek
- The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman
- Norse Mythology
- Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer
- The Little Blue Reasoning Book: 50 Powerful Principles for Clear and Effective Thinking
- Mid-Career Crisis: Why Some Sail through While Others Don't
- 10 Steps to Mastering Stress: A Lifestyle Approach
- Fish!: A remarkable way to boost morale and improve results
- Business Grammar, Style & Usage: A Desk Reference for Articulate & Polished Business Writing & Speaking
- What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You
- Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook
- Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel
- Don't Lose Your Mind Lose Your Weight
- Losing It! Making Weight Loss Simple
- 13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck
- 13 Steps to Bloody Good Wealth
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
- My Journey: Transforming Dreams into Actions
- The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions
- Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
- What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Mornings--and Life
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
- Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design
- Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code
- Head First Java
- iBATIS in Action
- Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
- Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
- How to Be a Presentation God: Build, Design, and Deliver Presentations That Dominate
- How to Lie with Statistic
- The Curmudgeon's Guide to Getting Ahead: Dos and Don'ts of Right Behavior, Tough Thinking, Clear Writing, and Living a Good Life
- Do the Work
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Changeree Productivity
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- A Brief History of Time
- Cosmos
- Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays
- The Selfish Gene
So far, I took around 100+ Trainings from LinkedIn-Learning, PluralSight, Harvard-Manage-Mentor, and Udemy Platforms on various IT industry and soft skill topics to keep myself updated.
Click here to see the list...
###### **_2020 to present_**- Advanced Comprehension Memory Course
- Python Object-Oriented Programming
- Learning Python
- IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition Essential Training
- Visual Studio Code for Python Developers
- Developing with Visual Studio Code
- AWK Essential Training
- Learning Bash Scripting
- Learning nano
- Learning NGINX
- Learning Apache Tomcat
- Learning SSH
- Linux: Multitasking at the Command Line
- Learning zsh
- Learning Linux Command Line
- Introduction to Linux
- Learning Ubuntu Desktop
- Learning Virtualbox
- Craft a Great GitHub Profile
- Docker and Kubernetes: The Big Picture
- DevOps Foundations: Monitoring and Observability
- Continuous Monitoring: The Big Picture
- Learning the Elastic Stack
- Elasticsearch Essential Training
- Making Quick Decisions
- Problem Solving Techniques
- Time Management Fundamentals
- Time Management Fundamentals with Microsoft Office
- Time Management: Working from Home
- Managing Your Time
- Balancing Work and Life as a Work-from-Home Parent
- SurveyMonkey Essential Training
- Learning Audacity
- Audacity: Cleaning and Repairing Audio
- Design a Compelling Presentation
- PowerPoint: Silicon Valley Presentation Secrets
- PowerPoint: From Outline to Presentation
- Designing a Presentation
- Creative Video Editing Techniques
- Learning Premiere Pro
- Managing Your Personal Investments
- Money in Excel: First Look
- Programming Foundations: Object-Oriented Design
- Programming Foundations: Design Patterns
- Programming Foundations: Test-Driven Development
- Learning S.O.L.I.D. Programming Principles
- Advanced Design Patterns: Design Principles
- Clean Code: Writing Code for Humans
- Pair Programming
- Picturing Architecture: UML (The Good Bits) and More
- Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
- Kotlin Fundamentals
- Gradle Fundamentals
- Getting Started with IntelliJ CE
- Java 9 Modularity: First Look
- Learning Java 9 Modularity
- Java Platform: Working with Databases Using JDBC
- Java: Testing with JUnit
- Understanding the Java Virtual Machine: Class Loading and Reflection
- Learning Cloud Computing: Core Concepts
- Centralized Logging with the Elastic Stack: Getting Started
- Getting Started with Docker
- AWS Developer: The Big Picture
- Scrum Development with Jira & JIRA Agile
- Scrum Fundamentals
- Increasing Productivity by Beating Procrastination
- Productivity Tips for the Busy Tech Professional
- Visual Communication: Creating Engaging and Effective Technical Diagrams
- Introduction to Presentation Design
- Viewing and Manipulating Data in Excel 2016
- OneNote 2016
- Effective Modeling: Letβs Start Here Medium
- Power of Emergent Behaviour in a Complex System Medium dev.to (July-21)
- Multidimensional Scalability Model for Application Medium dev.to (July-21)
- Continuous Inspection: 3 Steps to Manage Complexity dev.to (May-21)
- tmux: 13 Cool Tweaks to Make It Personal and Powerful dev.to (Apr-21)
- Productivity Booster: Command Line Happiness with tmux dev.to (Apr-21)
- Why Kotlin: A Note From a Java Developer dev.to (Apr-21)
- Reliability: Two Mistakes High Medium dev.to (Mar-21)
- To get in touch with me
- To view my professional journey, experience and skill sets
- To view my stance and favourite quotes on programming, design, architecture, technology, and science topics
- To view my tech blogs on design, architecture, and reliability topics
- To view my tech blogs on dev-productivity, programming, frameworks, and dev-tools topics
- To see my consolidated profile and hobby coding playground (all incubation/practice repo are kept private)
- To view what I read and review (it has my curated book reading-lists too)