Library

The books, papers, and talks that actually moved how I think — on systems, Rust, and the layer underneath. Rated by how hard I'd push them on you, with an honest line on each. Not a shelf I'm signaling with; the ones that changed how I work.

Systems & OS

Operating Systems: Three Easy PiecesEssential
Remzi & Andrea Arpaci-Dusseaubook
Virtual Memory: Page Tables, TLBs, and Linux InternalsEssential
Abhinav Upadhyayarticle
The C10K problemSituational
Dan Kegelarticle

Distributed systems

Designing Data-Intensive ApplicationsEssential
Martin Kleppmannbook
Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed SystemEssential
Leslie Lamportpaper
MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large ClustersWorth it
Jeffrey Dean & Sanjay Ghemawatpaper
A great starting point for reasoning about fault tolerance and distributed state.
The Google File SystemWorth it
Ghemawat, Gobioff & Leungpaper
Also good — and works great in combo with MapReduce.
Database InternalsSituational
Alex Petrovbook
Like it — but a bit too dry and academic.
MIT 6.824: Distributed Systems (Spring 2020)Situational
MIT 6.824video
Time-consuming, but worth it at 1.5x+ for deeper dives on distributed systems.

Rust

The Rust Programming LanguageSituational
Steve Klabnik & Carol Nicholsbook

Algorithms & foundations

Grokking Algorithms
Aditya Bhargavabook
Pretty basic and a bit shallow — did not love it.