Indie – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Mastering JIRA for Agile Projects: A Practical Guide with Real-World Examples (Confluence Included)

By Scott J. Pearson | December 18, 2025December 18, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Jira is becoming a leading tool for project management at larger businesses, and using it is a skill required for many jobs. This book teaches you how to master Jira processes to manage projects under Agile or Scrum paradigms. Half of this book focuses on Confluence software, which my workplace does not use. Therefore, half of the book was irrelevant to me. However, the Jira sections gave me a formal training that I lacked. It…

Artificial Intelligence Indie

The Complete Guide to Microsoft Agent Framework: Build, Test & Manage AI Agents that Integrate Seamlessly with Azure, M365 & Business APIs

By Scott J. Pearson | December 17, 2025December 17, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book seeks to teach readers how to write Python or .NET code to perform certain tasks as Agents within Microsoft’s AI platform. Unfortunately, it’s heavy on code and light on concepts. I wish it’d teach more about how to integrate with Azure’s web interface instead of the command line alone. It does succeed at showing many examples of how to code agents, but it lacks a deep conceptual explanation of how agents integrate with…

Artificial Intelligence Indie

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) & Vector Databases: A Practical Guide for AI Developers

By Scott J. Pearson | December 17, 2025December 17, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is how artificial intelligence prioritizes facts in a given domain over and above all the information the basic, foundational model offers. It allows businesses, scientists, and others to prioritize their custom knowledge instead of making up answers. It’s an extremely powerful tool that most AI users don’t understand. This book tries to explain the basics of a RAG system in Python code. Unfortunately, despite a grasp on the basics of RAG, it…

Indie Program Management Software-Technology

The Technical Program Manager Guide: Navigating the Path to Success

By Scott J. Pearson | December 6, 2025December 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Traditional program management consists of guiding a suite of programs for business success. As IT has recently become ascendant in the marketplace, that paradigm has applied to software in a role called the technical program manager. Leading tech companies, like Meta, Apple, and Amazon, have made ample use of this position in their business strategy. The problem is that there is no set career progression into this role. Arpit Agrawal tries to demystify this role…

Indie Software-Technology

29 Guidelines for Successful Pair Programming

By Scott J. Pearson | September 23, 2025September 23, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Among software engineers, pair programming occurs when two coders join together to write code together. It’s an incredibly efficient and focused means of knowledge transfer. However, developers are also known for having prickly, sometimes difficult personalities, and these personal hangups can get in the way of effective pair programming. Author Oozie Ligus has logged over 700 hours of time pair programming and offers his advice on how to build an effective relationship. Following “extreme programming”…

Artificial Intelligence Indie

Computational Linguistics & Artificial Intelligence

By Scott J. Pearson | July 19, 2025November 8, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I work in software applications in biomedical research. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural interest impacting my work and team. I’m always looking for thoughtful explorations of the topic. I stumbled upon this book on Amazon and thought I’d give the audiobook a try. I’m glad I did. Though Daniel Dinkelman’s work is far from perfect, it provided a helpful survey of the research landscape across the landscape in computational linguistics and AI. It concisely…

Indie Software-Technology

Software Architecture for Developers: Designing Scalable & Maintainable Systems for the Real World

By Scott J. Pearson | July 9, 2025July 9, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

This book provides a succinct overview of the subjects a software architect interacts with on a regular basis in today’s world. That is, it portrays a high-level snapshot of the field in 2024. It summarizes what the current technologies are and lists the different conceptual frameworks software technology uses. Microservices, cloud computing, software as a function, and the packages that oversee it fill the lists that Steve Abrams provides. Its main weakness, however, is that…

Indie Software-Technology

Advanced JavaScript Unleashed: Master Advanced JavaScript Concepts like Prototypes, Symbols, Generators & More

By Scott J. Pearson | June 4, 2025June 4, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

Like many web developers, I learned about modern JavaScript/ECMAScript soon after it came out in 2015. JavaScript is the programming language that has powered interactive webpages since Netscape Navigator was a thing. Now, it’s the world’s most used programming language for all sorts of non-browser-based applications, including mobile apps, web servers, and full-stack development. Therefore, understanding how it works and why it works becomes a priority for most software engineers. Grasping the implementation details can…

Indie Presentation Visualization

Seeing with Fresh Eyes: Meaning, Space, Data, Truth

By Scott J. Pearson | May 6, 2025May 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

I read anything that Edward Tufte writes. This “father of data visualization” has taught classes at Yale on the subject for decades. His books have also taught the reading public how to present data more effectively in the digital age. This work represents his fifth book. While his other books focus on getting the data right, this one’s subject meanders around transforming presentations into a form of art that provokes an audience response. I enjoyed…

Indie Presentation Visualization

Visual Explanations: Images & Quantities, Evidence & Narrative

By Scott J. Pearson | January 19, 2025May 6, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” so the saying goes. Thus, an effective visualization, enriched by information, must count for so much more. But a misconstrued visualization, unfortunately, can lead to horrific outcomes from misinterpretations. How can we refine our visual thinking so that we can infer correct deductions while ignoring misplaced sketches? Visualization guru Edward Tufte teaches us how to reason about our world through informative displays in this helpful guide, replete with…