The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

Success in today's IT environment requires you to view your career as a business endeavour. In this book, you'll learn how to become an entrepreneur, driving your career in the direction of your choosing. You'll learn how to build your software development career step by step, following the same path that you would follow if you were building, marketing, and selling a product. After all, your skills themselves are a product. The choices you make about which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge itself; don't let those choices be accidental. We'll walk through all aspects of the decision-making process, so you can ensure that you're investing your time and energy in the right areas. You'll develop a structured plan for keeping your mind engaged and your skills fresh.

Chad Fowler is an internationally known software developer, trainer, manager, speaker, and musician. Over the past decade he has worked with some of the world's largest companies and most admired software developers. He loves to program computers. As part of his role as CTO of InfoEther, Inc., he spends much of his time solving hard problems for customers in the Ruby language. He is a co-organizer of RubyConf, RailsConf, and RailsConf Europe, and he is the author or coauthor of a number of popular software books.