Software development is one of the professions where you have to keep your knowledge up to date and follow what happens in the field. Staying current and expanding your horizons can be achieved in different ways and one good way I have used is to follow different news sources, newsletters, listening to podcasts and attending meetups. Here is my opinionated selection of resources to learn, share ideas, newsletters, meetups and other things for software developers.
News
There are some good news sites to follow what happens in technology. They provide community-powered links and discussions.
- Reddit Programming: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/
- Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/news
Podcasts
Podcasts provide a nice resource for gathering experiences and new information about how things can be done and what’s happening and coming up in software development. I commute daily for about an hour and time flies when you find good episodes to listen to. Here’s my selection of podcast relating to software development.
General
Software Engineering Daily: ”The world through the lens of software” (available i.a. on iTunes)
Software Engineering Radio: ”Targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast”. (feed)
ShopTalk: ”An internet radio show about the internet starring Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
Full Stack Radio: ”Every episode, Adam Wathan is joined by a guest to talk about everything from product design and user experience to unit testing and system administration.” (feed)
Front-end
Syntax: ”A Tasty Treats Podcast for Web Developers.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
The Changelog: ”Conversations with hackers, leaders, and innovators of software development.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
React Podcast: ”Conversations about React with your favourite developers.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
Brainfork: ”A podcast about mental health & tech”
Mobile
React Native Radio as a podcast (available i.a. on iTunes)
In Finnish
ATK-hetki: ”Vesa Vänskä ja Antti Akonniemi keskustelevat teknologiasta, bisneksestä ja itsensä kehittämisestä.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
Webbidevaus: ”Puheradiota webbikehityksestä suomeksi! Juontajina Antti Mattila ja Riku Rouvila.” (available i.a. on iTunes)
Newsletters
Normal information overload is easily achieved so it’s beneficial to use for example curated newsletters for the subjects which intersect the stack you’re using and topics you’re interested at.
The power of a newsletter lies in the fact that it can deliver condensed and digestible content which is harder to achieve with other good news sources like feed subscriptions and Twitter. A well-curated newsletter to a targeted audience is a pleasure to read and even if you forgot to check your newsletter folder, you can always get back to them later.
General
Hacker Newsletter: Weekly newsletter of the best articles in Hacker News.
Mobile development
iOS Dev Weekly: Hand-picked round up of the best iOS development links published every Friday.
This Week In Swift: List of the best Swift resources of the week.
iOS Dev nuggets: Short iOS app development nugget every Friday/Saturday. Short and usually something you can read in a few minutes and improve your skills at iOS app development.
React Native: Bi-monthly summary of React Native news, articles, issues & pull requests, libraries and apps.
Java
Java Web Weekly by Baeldung: Once-weekly email roundup of Java Web curated news by Eugen Baeldung.
The Java Specialists’ Newsletter: A monthly newsletter exploring the intricacies and depths of Java, curated Dr. Heinz Kabutz.
Java Performance Tuning News: A monthly newsletter focusing on Java performance issues, including the latest tips, articles, and news about Java Performance. Curated by Jack Shirazi and Kirk Pepperdine.
Database
DB Weekly: A weekly round-up of database technology news and articles covering new developments, SQL, NoSQL, document databases, graph databases, and more.
HTML and CSS
HTML5Weekly: Weekly HTML5 and Web Platform technology roundup. Curated by Peter Cooper.
CSS Weekly: A roundup of css articles, tutorials, experiments and tools. Curated by Zoran Jambor.
Web development
Status code: ”Keeping developers informed.” weekly email newsletters on a range of programming niches (links to JavaScript weekly, DevOps weekly etc.)
Web Development Reading List: Weekly roundup of web development–related sources, selected by Anselm Hannemann.
Hacking UI: A weekly email with our favourite articles about design, front-end development, technology, startups, productivity and the occasional inspirational life lesson.
Scott Hanselman: Newsletter of Wonderful Things. Includes interesting and useful stuff Scott has found over the last few weeks and other wonderful things.
MergeLinks: Weekly email of curated links to articles, resources, freebies and inspiration for web designers and developers.
“How to keep up to date on Front-End Technologies” page lists newsletters, blogs and people to follow.
JavaScript
JavaScript Weekly: Weekly e-mail round-up of JavaScript news and articles. Curated by Peter Cooper.
Node Weekly: Once–weekly e-mail round-up of Node.js news and articles.
A Drip of JavaScript: “One quick JavaScript tip”, delivered every other Tuesday and written by Joshua Clanton.
SuperHero.js: Collection of the best articles, videos, and presentations on creating, testing, and maintaining a JavaScript code base.
State of JS: Results of yearly JavaScript surveys
User experience and design
UX Design Weekly: Hand-picked list of the best user experience design links every week. Curated by Kenny Chen & published every Monday.
Sidebar.io: To satisfy your web aesthetics with a list of the 5 best design links of the day. The content is manually curated by a couple great editors.
Userfocus: Monthly newsletter which shares an in-depth article on user experience.
Ops
DevOps Weekly: Weekly slice of devops news.
Web Operations Weekly: Weekly newsletter on Web operations, infrastructure, performance, and tooling, from the browser down to the metal.
Microservice Weekly: A hand-curated weekly newsletter with the best articles on microservices.
Meetups
You can learn much from others and to broaden your horizon it’s beneficial to attend different meetups and listen to how others have done things and watch war stories. Also free food and drink.
Mostly Helsinki based
- Amazon Web Services: https://www.meetup.com/awsfin/
- Frontend: https://www.meetup.com/frontendfinland/
- DevOps: https://www.meetup.com/devops-finland/
- Docker: https://www.meetup.com/Docker-Helsinki/
- iOS: https://www.meetup.com/HelsinkiOS-Mac-and-iOS-Developers/
- Kubernetes: https://www.meetup.com/Kubernetes-Finland/
- Ansible: https://www.meetup.com/Ansible-Helsinki/
- Mobile Developers: https://www.meetup.com/Mobile-Developers-Finland/
- React Native: https://www.meetup.com/Helsinki-React-Native-Meetup/
- JavaScript: https://meetabit.com/communities/helsinkijs
- iOS https://meetabit.com/communities/helsinkios
- Frontend: https://meetabit.com/communities/frontend-fi
- React: https://meetabit.com/communities/react-helsinki
- OWASP: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Helsinki
Tampere (Finland) based
- AWS User Group Tampere: https://www.meetup.com/AWS-User-Group-Tampere/
- Web Dev & Sausages: https://www.webdevandsausages.org/
- TampereJS: https://tamperejs.github.io/
Community chats
- Koodiklinikka Slack-channel (Finnish): https://koodiklinikka.fi/
Feel free to add your favourite resources in the comments below.
