Episode · The Pragmatic Engineer · 2026-03-04
Gergely Orosz & Boris Cherny: books mentioned on The Pragmatic Engineer
Building Claude Code with Boris Cherny
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Gergely Orosz discussed Programming TypeScript by Boris Cherny. Boris Cherny recommended Accelerando by Charles Stross and Functional Programming in Scala by Paul Chiusano and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Programming TypeScript
Discussed“You wrote the first ever TypeScript book with O'Reilly. Yeah. I found that book translated in Japanese in this little town in Japan.”
Where to get it
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Accelerando
Accelerando by Charles Stross is a hard science fiction novel that explores a rapidly changing future characterized by advanced technologies like intelligent wearables and radical shifts in human society.
Recommended“For people that are new to sci-fi and you want like a little bit like harder sci-fi I really love Accelerando by Stross. This is a book I would totally recommend. It's like essentially the product roadmap for the next 50 years.”
Where to get it
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Functional Programming in Scala
Functional Programming in Scala by Paul Chiusano and Runar Bjarnason is a technical guide that teaches functional programming principles and encourages readers to think deeply in types.
Recommended“And then on the technical side, I would strongly recommend functional programming in Scala. Even if language choice just doesn't matter as much anymore, I think there is this arts to functional programming that just teaches you how to code better.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“At some point I kind of fell down this rabbit hole. I wrote this like I wrote I wrote a book about, you know, a programming language. TypeScript.”
“I've gone down a Cixin Liu rabbit hole. So, he's the Three-Body Problem guy but he actually has like a lot of other really good books. I really love his short stories.”