--- title: Carl's Required Reading | daily.dev description: An engineering leader's curated reading list of articles and books for programmers, organized by topic: coding practices (complexity, abstraction, YAGNI),... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Carl's Required Reading | daily.dev og:description: An engineering leader's curated reading list of articles and books for programmers, organized by topic: coding practices (complexity, abstraction, YAGNI),... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/hlhvOR73J.png og:image:alt: Carl's Required Reading og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Carl's Required Reading **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 9 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An engineering leader's curated reading list of articles and books for programmers, organized by topic: coding practices (complexity, abstraction, YAGNI), platform design, frontend (HATEOAS, React purity, hypermedia), databases (anti-ORM arguments, PostGIS, Postgres performance, pagination), asynchronous programming, Unicode encoding, and recommended books including Designing Data-Intensive Applications, Crafting Interpreters, and The Mythical Man-Month. Starred entries highlight the most essential picks. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why do some engineers argue against using ORMs in production database applications? ORMs are seductive for new projects but tend to cause performance issues and confusion as systems grow, often generating problematic SQL queries that require manual review. Ted Neward's essay 'The Vietnam of Computer Science' is cited as a strong argument against ORMs, and even OpenAI's own writeup on scaling Postgres notes that many problematic queries come from ORM-generated SQL that must be carefully reviewed. _Developers weighing ORMs against raw SQL can track database design debates like this on daily.dev._ ### What is the difference between imperative and declarative programming in React components and hooks? Imperative code tells the computer what to do step by step, common when developers move from backend to frontend work and overuse state and side effects. Declarative code, which modern React is built around, tells the computer what result you want, with every component as a function and side effects handled through hooks only when truly necessary, following React's official rule that components and hooks must be pure. _Frontend developers sorting out React patterns can follow discussions like this on daily.dev._ ### When should I use useMemo and useCallback in React instead of avoiding them? useMemo and useCallback are among the most misused hooks in React, frequently added everywhere by both developers and AI coding agents even when unnecessary. They should be reserved for cases where memoization genuinely prevents expensive recalculations or unnecessary re-renders, rather than applied as a default habit, since overuse adds complexity without real performance benefit. _Engineers debating React performance tradeoffs can follow guidance like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 21 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-13). **TL;DR:** The community is broadly enthusiastic about Carl's reading list, with particular praise for the Grug Brain article and DDIA; the only real friction is a minor factual correction about PostGIS and a philosophical debate about YAGNI. **Sentiment:** 75% positive · 20% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - The Grug Brain article is widely praised for its humor and insight, with several commenters calling it a gem or a favorite read. - DDIA is appreciated as a deep, re-readable resource on database internals. - The list prompted commenters to share and discover complementary articles, suggesting it fills a genuine gap. - The author's responsiveness to corrections was noted positively. **The pushback** - The Grug Brain article's caveman writing style is a barrier for some readers who gave up before finishing. - YAGNI as a principle is criticized for encouraging balkanized APIs that omit reasonable, expected functionality. - A factual error was flagged: PostGIS's foundational type is geometry, not geography. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Commenters are largely enthusiastic, sharing supplementary links and praising individual entries, with only minor technical corrections and a brief YAGNI debate. **Hottest debate:** Whether YAGNI is a useful discipline or a recipe for incomplete, hard-to-use APIs. **Open questions** - Is there a video presentation accompanying the vectorized interpreters slides linked at the end of the list? **Highlights** > I personally hate YAGNI, because it so often leads to balkanized APIs that only implement the "needed" features and omit things that a reasonable person would expect because they weren't needed initially. Far better to have a clear and explicable model that is fully and consistently implemented. > — [MarkusQ on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49216837) > > PostGIS is a great database and its foundational data type is geography. Hate to "well ackchyually" the author here, but I'm gonna. The foundational data type in PostGIS is not geography, but geometry. geography is geodetic layer on top of geometry. I honestly don't use geography that much because it only supports a subset of the geometry functions. > — [seabre on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49217184) > Microservices grug wonder why big brain take hardest problem, factoring system correctly, and introduce network call too seem very confusing to grug This might be my favorite paragraph of text that I’ve read this year > — [olives on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218813) > The Grug Brain article is fantastic, and even better if you run it through an LLM to convert from caveman. This thing is a gem. > — [niko323 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215875) > I'm a fan of the t-rex: > given choice between complexity or one on one against t-rex, grug take t-rex: at least grug see t-rex That section reminds me of The Litany Against Fear. > — [Cerium on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49218869) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49135457) · 158 points · 21 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [6 Must-Read Books for Backend Developers in 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/6-must-read-books-for-backend-developers-in-2026-z31rnzc48) · Javarevisited · 354 upvotes · 2 comments - [The Software Engineering Books I keep recommending](https://daily.dev/posts/the-software-engineering-books-i-keep-recommending-znf1prrwn) · Tech World With Milan · 19 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#react](https://daily.dev/tags/react), [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Carl's Required Reading","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j"},"datePublished":"2026-08-07T22:06:41.026Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:21:49.954Z","description":"An engineering leader's curated reading list of articles and books for programmers, organized by topic: coding practices (complexity, abstraction, YAGNI),...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/23aa08f5903063c08d0962b367751fd2?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/23aa08f5903063c08d0962b367751fd2?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"react,backend,postgresql","timeRequired":"PT9M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Carl's Required Reading"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/carl-s-required-reading-hlhvor73j#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why do some engineers argue against using ORMs in production database applications?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"ORMs are seductive for new projects but tend to cause performance issues and confusion as systems grow, often generating problematic SQL queries that require manual review. 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