You Are Not Your Stack
A book about untangling your identity from your technology choices.
Written by Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic.
Somewhere along the way, “I work with React” became “I’m a React developer.” And that small shift changed everything — how you learn, how you argue online, how you job hunt, how you feel when a new framework drops and yours starts looking old.
This book is about noticing that shift, understanding it, and gently undoing it.
Table of Contents
- The Moment You Became Your Stack
- Hello, I’m a [X] Developer
- The Mass Psychology of Framework Choice
- Your Stack Is Not a Personality
- The Tribal Wars
- Why Learning a New Language Feels Like Betrayal
- The Imposter on the Other Side
- How Senior Developers Actually Choose Tools
- The Polyglot Mindset
- Learning Curves and Self-Compassion
- Going Deep vs. Going Broad
- The Tools That Outlast the Trends
- Your Stack on Your Resume
- Talking About Technology Without Becoming It
- The Burnout of Over-Identification
- What Software Development Actually Is
- The Technology Graveyard
- Staying Relevant Without Losing Yourself
- Building Things That Matter
- The Developer You Already Are
About This Book
This book is open source and CC0 licensed. You can read it here, fork it, contribute to it, or print it out and leave it on your coworker’s desk.
Read it online at cloudstreet-dev.github.io/You-Are-Not-Your-Stack.
“The tools change. You remain.”