Rule of Tech

technology shall have no dominion

Learning and Staying Current in Software Development

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 in the field and expanding your horizons can be achieved with different ways and one good way I have used is to follow different news sources, newsletters, listening podcasts and attending meetups. Here is my opinionated selection of resources to learn, share ideas, newsletters, meetups and other things for software developers. Meetups and some things are Finnish related.

News

There are some good sites to follow what happens in technology. They provide community powered links and discussions.

Podcasts

Podcasts provide nice resource for gathering experiences and new information how things can be done and what’s happening and coming up in software development. I commute daily about an hour and time flies when you find good episodes to listen. Here’s my selection of podcast relating to software development.

General

  • Soft Skills Engineering: “Weekly advice podcast for software developers.”
  • Software Engineering Daily: “The world through the lens of software” (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.” (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.” (iTunes)
  • The Changelog: “Conversations with the hackers, leaders, and innovators of software development.”
  • React Podcast: “Conversations about React with your favorite developers.”
  • Brainfork: “A podcast about mental health & tech”

In Finnish

  • Webbidevaus: “Puheradiota webbikehityksestä suomeksi! Juontajina Antti Mattila ja Riku Rouvila.”
  • Turvakäräjät: “Ajankohtaista kyberiä, kansantajuisesti. Käräjillä mukana Antti Kurittu, Laura Kankaala ja Juho Jauhiainen.”
  • Herrasmieshakkerit: “Käsittelee tietoturvaan ja vääjäämättömään kybertuhoon liittyviä asioita ja ilmiöitä. Oppaana Mikko Hyppönen ja Tomi Tuominen.”
  • Koodia pinnan alla: “Suomenkielinen podcast pinnan alla tapahtuvasta ohjelmistoteknologian magiasta. Puikoissa Markus Hjort ja Yrjö Kari-Koskinen.”
  • Koodarikuiskaaja: “Jos se liittyy ihmisten väliseen kanssakäymiseen ja devaajan ammattiin, se liittyy tähän podcastiin.”
  • Kahvit näppikselle: “Tämä podcast on kiinnostunut teknologiasta – mutta myös ihan kaikesta muusta.”
  • Koodikahvit: “Koodikahvit on podi, jossa istutaan alas kahvikupposen äärelle keskustelemaan IT-alasta, koodauksesta ja kaikesta siihen liittyvästä.”
  • Futucast: “Yleissivistyspodcast, joka käsittelee laajasti eri aiheita Suomen tunnetuimpien ja mielenkiintoisimpien vieraiden kanssa.”
  • ATK-hetki: “Vesa Vänskä ja Antti Akonniemi keskustelevat teknologiasta, bisneksestä ja itsensä kehittämisestä.”

Newsletters

Normal information overload is easily achieved so it’s beneficial to use for example curated newsletters for the subjects which intersects the stack you’re using and topics you’re interested at.

The power of 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. Well curated newsletter to 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

Cloud

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.

Java

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: 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.
  • Versioning: “Daily knowledge devs and designers need to get ahead of the game.” SitePoint’s daily newsletter, which features the latest web development news.
  • Hacking UI: A weekly email with our favorite 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 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.

Twitter

Following fellow developers and other people and accounts on Twitter is good way to know what’s happening right now. Here’s a selection of accounts I (@walokra) follow. In no particular order.

Development

  • @ThePracticalDev: Great posts from the amazing dev.to community, with some opinion and humor mixed in.
  • @CommitStrip: The blog relating the daily life of developers. Official english account.
  • @baeldung: Author of restwithspring.com and learnspringsecurity.com, passionate about REST, Security, TDD and everything in between.
  • @martinfowler: Author and international public speaker on software development, specializing in object-oriented analysis and design, UML, patterns, and agile software development methodologies.

Infosec

  • @troyhunt: Pluralsight author. Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for Developer Security. Online security, technology and “The Cloud”. Creator of @haveibeenpwned.
  • @briankrebs: Independent investigative journalist. Writes about cybercrime. Author of ‘Spam Nation’, a NYT bestseller. Wrote for The Washington Post ’95-’09
  • @mikko: CRO at F-Secure ● TED Speaker ● Revɘrse Engineer ● Supervillain
  • @TinkerSec Infosec Hacker things
  • @Anakondantti: Mostly software security related, but occasionally other things too. I’m a white hat hacker at team ROT.
  • @SunTzuCyber: If Sun Tzu had written “The Art of Cyber War”, these would be his quotes.
  • @lennyzeltser: Advances information security. Grows tech businesses. Fights malware. // VP of Products @MinervaLabs. Author and Instructor @SANSInstitute.

React scene

  • @jevakallio: @FormidableLabs, React/Native engineer, comedian, speaker, writer, improviser, Twitter Developer Expert™. Artisanal small batch free range shitposting.
  • @bebraw: Award winning founder of @survivejs and @jsterlibs. I also organize @ReactFinland.
  • @ReactJSNews: The latest React news and articles.

Design / UX

  • @steveschoger: Designer for @TightenCo and @taylorotwell ❯ Maker of heropatterns , heroicons  and zondicons  ❯  ? Design Tips
  • @UX_Grant: ? Senior Designer @ booking.com . ? Creating, Learning, Sharing ? Maker: MakersMusic.co  ?
  • @jonikorpi: Making multiplayer games using the web platform, as @vuorodesign. Previously web design at @kiskolabs.
  • @lukew: Humanizing technology. Founded: Polar (Google acquired) Bagcheck (Twitter acquired) Wrote: Mobile First, Web Form Design, Site Seeing. Worked: Yahoo, eBay, NCSA.
  • @autiomaa: Helping people, with design & technology. Front-end development, visual design, photography. Learning something new every day.
  • @skrug: Best known as the guy who wrote Don’t Make Me Think (now in its 3rd edition!) and Rocket Surgery Made Easy.
  • @jnd1er: Don Norman. Design thinker, company advisor, professor, columnist, author, … Latest book: Design of Everyday Things, Revised and Expanded.
  • @mpietila: User experience etc. Occasional smart-assery & besserwisserism. I have a history of seeing what they did there. Head of design at @qvik.

Database

Miscellanous

Java

  • @mreinhold: Chief Architect, Java Platform Group, Oracle.
  • @jodastephen: Java Champion. Developer at OpenGamma. Occasional blogger and speaker. Best known for Joda projects and JSR-310

Technology News

Meetups

You can learn much from others and to broaden your horizon it’s beneficial to attend different meetups and listen how others have done things and watch war stories. Also free food and drinks.

Mostly Helsinki based

Tampere based

Community chats

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