Resources

Things I actually use. No sponsored content. No affiliate links.

Learning

Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA)

Best book on distributed systems and database internals. Every serious backend engineer should own this.

Paid
Java Concurrency in Practice

Still the definitive reference for Java concurrency. Dense but worth it.

Paid
NeetCode.io

DSA practice. Clean explanations, well-structured by pattern.

Free/Paid
ByteByteGo

HLD system design. Good visual explanations, good for building intuition.

Free/Paid
PostgreSQL Documentation

Not glamorous, but the actual source of truth.

Free

Tools

IntelliJ IDEA

Primary Java IDE. No substitute.

Free/Paid
VS Code

Everything else.

Free
Docker

Local environment parity on every project.

Free
pgvector + PostgreSQL

Vector search development and benchmarking.

Free
Obsidian

Personal knowledge base. All learning notes live here.

Free/Paid

Reference Docs

Oracle RDBMS Documentation

The canonical source for Oracle internals.

Free
PostgreSQL Official Docs

Rigorous and complete.

Free
Spring Boot Reference

Start here for any Spring Boot question.

Free
Java SE API Documentation

javadoc for the standard library.

Free

Women in Tech

Tech Ladies

Job board and community. Actually useful.

Free
Women Who Code

Events and community.

Free
Lean In

For when the soft stuff is actually the hard stuff.

Free