Upcoming Tech Books to Read in 2026

Published on 2 February 2026

Here are the technical books I plan to read this year. As of the time of writing, none of them are published yet, they all are expected in 2026.

Writing this down publicly serves as a commitment device. Maybe you'll find something worth adding to your own list.

There is no particular order.

The Coder Cafe, Teiva Harsanyi (Manning, Spring 2026)

I read Harsanyi's 100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them back in 2022 and found it genuinely educational for honing my Go skills. This new book takes a broader approach and covers "66 timeless concepts for software engineers", each explained in a few pages.

Some topics in it interest me (CAP theorem, property-based testing, fail-open vs fail-closed patterns, database isolation levels), and other things I believe most developers have heard of but rarely get properly introduced to (including me). We encounter these concepts in blog posts, on Hacker News, Stack Overflow answers, so we end up being only familiar with them, but that's pretty much it. This book should help fill those gaps and give me proper introductions to these important "timeless" concepts.

Systems Programming with Zig, Garrison Hinson-Hasty (Manning, Fall 2026)

After a Rust project last year (a link shortener with Axum), I came away... not loving it. I love the concepts, but I just didn't like writing Rust. I still need a low-level language, particularly for isolated functions called via FFI, which I currently write in C (once in Rust). Zig has always intrigued me as a potential alternative.

I tried Advent of Code in Zig last year, but as Loris Cro pointed out in his blog post on the topic, AoC isn't really the optimal context for learning Zig. To really see why Zig is a gamechanger, I need a project where error handling, system integration, and resource acquisition matter. This book takes a project-based approach focused on actual systems programming (e.g., an interpreter, a graphics engine), which should help me to properly evaluate whether Zig fits my needs.

But, one concern: Zig isn't at 1.0 yet, and the language is still very fast-moving. Even a book written against v0.16 (upcoming) might age poorly pretty quickly.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition, Martin Kleppmann & Chris Riccomini (O'Reilly, February/March 2026)

I've always wanted to read the venerable first edition of the DDIA, but never took the plunge. For a friend of mine, it is the only technical book worth his shelf space. With a second edition arriving after almost 10 years, it feels like the right time to finally commit.

I've worked on various "data-intensive" applications throughout my career but never systematically studied them through such a well-regarded reference. While the core concepts are largely timeless and always relevant, the new edition adds coverage of some topics relevant to me: cloud vs self-hosted tradeoffs, vector embeddings and full-text search, event sourcing, and durable execution workflows.

More SQL Antipatterns, Bill Karwin (Pragmatic Bookshelf, March 2026)

Looking at the table of contents, this book addresses exactly the modern antipatterns I see today: JSON overuse, NoSQL-style thinking forced into relational databases, fear of JOINs, premature denormalization.

The content resonates with me because I use SQL every day, and since PostgreSQL added the native JSONB type, I've enjoyed working with somewhat hybrid schemas: SQL structure with JSON for truly flexible business data (but never relations or references in the JSON).

I've used SQL since the beginning of my career and I've never stopped learning. Database engines and SQL techniques keep evolving, and staying sharp requires continuous study. This book should help.