About

In this handbook, I gather my experience in software development. To understand how everything is organized here, one needs to start afar and say few words about the philosophy of this developer's notes, handbook, or digital garden – call it what you will.

Philosophy of handbook

Let's imagine we want to create certain product in our digital world. For example, it cloud be an application that helps people or a system that helps generate profit for a business. Also it cloud be something tangible, like a robot or a physical device. Or perhaps we want to create an educational service or a game for entertainment.

I won't continue with more examples, but let's highlight something common. All ot this involves computers and computing. Essentially, such systems work with a set of data, store this data, and perform computations on it. This roughly outlines what we are creating.

Now, let's define who «we» are and what exactly we do. We are software engineers. We create all these systems that require computation and data storage. We also maintain these products in working order, meaning we support them.

Since the products are so diverse, the industry is divided into many areas. This could be backend development, robotics, game development, machine learning, etc.

Moreover, the scale of products can vary greatly, hence we need for management and coordination of developer groups (and need to interact with teammates inside this groups). We also have to go through interviews if we are looking for a job. Or we might start such business ourselves and interact with customers.

All of this requires a variety of skills. With this handbook, I'm not trying to cover everything, but I want to record a snapshot of my experience in all this wonderful world.

Structure

For the handbook to be cohesive, it needs a backbone, a structure on which I can string my notes. So, here is my perspective on all this and an attempt to give structure: TOC.