5 Recommendations to Stay Curious in a World Shaped by Code: Mateusz Ziarko's Watch & Read List

Staying sharp as an engineer, for me, has never been only about following the latest frameworks or keeping up with release notes. The resources I keep coming back to – and the ones I find myself recommending to colleagues – tend to mix technical depth with genuine human stories. Some are about the future of AI, some about the chaos of real IT work, and some about what it actually means to push past the limits of what you think you're capable of. I hope there is something here for everyone.

1. Andrew Ng on the Future of AI and AGI – "This Is World" (YouTube)

Anyone who has ever tried to understand neural networks knows this guest. Few people have done more to make deep learning accessible to the wider world, and this episode catches Andrew Ng at a fascinating moment – just days after he had developed his own personal interpretation of the Turing Test. He talks openly about where artificial intelligence and AGI are heading, in a way that is both technically grounded and refreshingly honest about the uncertainties involved.

The episode is currently available with Polish dubbing, and I hope an original English-language version will appear on the This Is World channel in the future. Either way, I think it is essential viewing – a rare chance to hear one of the field's defining voices think out loud about what comes next.

2. From a Viral Meme to SpaceX – A Story of Going Beyond Your Comfort Zone

You might already recognise this podcast's guest from a well-known corner of the Polish internet – a photo that circulated for years, featuring him among programmers with cups of tea. But his actual career has long outgrown that moment of accidental fame. Reading through his list of achievements, it is genuinely hard to believe it all belongs to one person's CV.

In this episode, he talks about how going far beyond his stated competencies – and refusing to give up – allowed him to contribute to one of the most demanding engineering challenges I can imagine: helping SpaceX achieve the precise docking of the Dragon spacecraft. For me, this is the most honest and motivating kind of story – not about being the most qualified person in the room, but about what stubbornness and curiosity can unlock when you let them.

3. The Phoenix Project – Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford

Not everything on this list is a video – and I make no apologies for that. The Phoenix Project is a business novel that follows a fictional IT manager's frantic race to rescue a failing project, and it has become something of a rite of passage in the industry for good reason.

What strikes me most about it is how universal the dysfunction feels. The longer your career in tech, the more situations in this book will sound painfully – sometimes hilariously – familiar. I think of it as a mirror: it doesn't just describe broken processes, it helps you recognise the ones you are living through right now. Whether you are just starting out or have years of scar tissue, there is something in here that will make you nod, wince, or laugh out loud.

4. Wojciech Zaremba on the Future of Language Models

If you want to understand where large language models are going, the best strategy is to listen to the people actually building them. Wojciech Zaremba is one of the Polish engineers at the very forefront of that work, and this conversation is one I keep recommending to anyone who asks me where to start with AI.

Beyond the technical side, this is also where I first heard about Worldcoin – a reminder that talking to people operating at the frontier of technology has a way of introducing you to ideas you did not know you needed to understand yet. I find that quality rare in any podcast.

5. Clean Code – Uncle Bob's YouTube Series

For anyone beginning their programming journey, my recommendation is simple: start here. Robert C. Martin – Uncle Bob – has a real gift for making best practices feel obvious in retrospect. Through accessible language, strong analogies, and a delivery that keeps you engaged even on difficult topics, he covers everything that matters when it comes to writing code that other people – including your future self – can actually understand.

Naming conventions, function design, the philosophy behind readable structure – it is all here, explained in a way that no textbook I have found quite manages to replicate. I genuinely wish someone had pointed me to this series on day one.