What Resources Do I Reference?#

As mentioned in previous sections, I primarily reference textbooks that are often cited as reputable and good sources. One that I reference quite a bit for developing APIs is “API Security in Action.”

Here is a complete list of the various resources I have either completely read and worked through, or used heavily as reference material:

Technical writing, documentation, and docs as code#

Docs for Developers: An Engineer’s Field Guide to Technical Writing
Technical Writing: A Practical Guide for Engineers, Scientists, and Nontechnical Professionals, Second Edition
Technical Writing for Dummies, 2nd Edition
Docs as Ecosystem: The Community Approach to Engineering Documentation
I’d Rather Be Writing: API documentation course
Markdown Guide
Write the Docs: reStructuredText
Write the Docs: Docs as Code
Sphinx documentation
MyST Parser documentation
Microsoft Writing Style Guide
Accessibility for Everyone

QA, test automation, and TDD#

Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing
Testing Web APIs
API Testing and Development with Postman
Complete Guide to Test Automation: Techniques, Practices, and Patterns for Building and Maintaining Effective Software Projects
Effective Software Testing: A Developer’s Guide
Leading Quality: How Great Leaders Deliver High Quality Software and Accelerate Growth
Test Driven Development: By Example
Unit Testing Principles, Practices, and Patterns
Pragmatic Test Driven Development in C# and .NET
Playwright documentation
Playwright best practices
Playwright codegen, screenshots, trace viewer, and CI documentation

Software engineering, architecture, and implementation#

C# in Depth
JavaScript from Beginner to Professional
Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS, 3rd Edition
Design Patterns in C#: A Hands On Guide with Real World Examples
Microservices Design Patterns in .NET
Effective .NET Memory Management
GitHub Actions documentation

Security, APIs, identity, and web application risk#

API Security in Action
Web Application Security: Exploitation and Countermeasures for Modern Web Applications
Cross Site Scripting: XSS Defense Made Easy
CompTIA Security+ Study Guide with over 500 Practice Test Questions
SQL Injection Attack
SQL Injection Strategies
SQL Injection Attacks and Defense
Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition
Solving Identity Management in Modern Applications
OAuth 2 in Action

Databases and SQL#

SQL Essentials for Dummies
Learning SQL, 3rd Edition

AI, LLM tooling, RAG, and agent assisted workflows#

Claude Code documentation
Solutions Architect’s Handbook
LLM by Simon Willison
Retrieval Augmented Generation for Knowledge Intensive NLP Tasks
Retrieval Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey
IBM: What is retrieval augmented generation?
AWS: What is retrieval augmented generation?

I would not say these resources taught me everything directly. A better way to put it is that they helped shape the way I research unfamiliar systems, build documentation patterns, test software, evaluate risk, and use AI as part of a structured human reviewed workflow.