I am often asked how do I grow as a software engineer. Apart from using every new task as an opportunity to learn something new, I am regularly checking out the resources presented in this article.
This text was originally published on Hashnode, which is a great place to get information itself.
tl;dr
Random tech talk channel at my company
There’s a great value in people working on similar things doing initial filtering for you. In every organization’s communicator of choice there should be a channel for sharing software engineering resources. We all stumble upon an exceptional article from time to time. It’s good to share it with your fellow engineers. If you’re working at a company and you don’t have such a place - create it yourself! If you’re working alone, start a group with some friends and do the same.
Fireship YouTube Channel
Fireship is a great youtube channel about programming. Jeff Delaney, the host, is skilled at explaining serverless concepts, frontend and pretty much any other topic. He has straight-to-the-point one hundred second long tutorials on every important piece of contemporary technology. This includes obscure languages like cobol and pretty much every frontend framework. His bite-sized videos will help you stay up to date with the latest tech. It’s also really entertaining to do these short tutorials to get a taste of a new language or framework. Jeff also has a lot of intermediate-level videos.
DEV.to
DEV.to is more of a message-board style developer community. It has a large following and more organic stories. If you’re not scared to dive into the ocean of posts and like to read opinion pieces as well, this is a place for you.
Medium
I don’t really go to Medium just to browse. I have a generally good impression of the content hosted there and when they appear in my google results, I often click on the articles. I sometimes google a phrase ending with the site’s name like “serverless framework AWS cognito medium”. I post there as well. They are behind a paywall but the portal serves as a home for many great writers and the revenue-sharing scheme helps people actually make money writing.
ITnext
ITnext is a publishing platform in the form of medium.com publication (shared space for stories following a theme). It clearly distinguishes itself by having strictly technical content. You can find more advanced topics there than on other websites. I like it for system design and DevOps content.
HackerNoon
HackerNoon is a publishing and reading platform for developers claiming to have 3mln+ monthly readers and over 15k writers. I followed them in their early days when they were a medium.com publication. It’s a space for a large variety of technology and programming related content. There are plenty of articles covering a wide range of topics, although their quality is varied.
r/ProgrammerHumor
I am not really a redditor and I am not engaged with the community. But when I want to see some fresh programming memes, I go to r/ProgrammerHumor!
towards data science
I am working primarily on AI-based startups. To stay up to date I’m reading towards data science. They also feature pieces on data analysis and engineering.
I recently discovered twitter as a tool for professional work. You have to spend some time tuning your feed by following the right people but I think the algorithm works pretty well for me. Twitter surprised me with the community that actually follows conversations and exchanges real knowledge. If you’re bootstrapping a startup and love a nomad lifestyle I recommend following @levelsio.
The Verge
The Verge is a mainstream tech news website but I decided to include it here as well. It serves as a source of inspiration and knowledge about the preferences of actual users of the products we develop.
IndieHackers
If you’re interested in the startup space, definitely check out IndieHackers. The community is genuinely interested in conversations and you can learn a lot from them. I have received a lot of valuable tips for my own initiatives there. Recent discovery of mine!
Summary
There’s a bunch of places I learn from daily. Of course meticulously reading every single article on such a long list of platforms is impossible. You need to filter for what is the most interesting to you. I hope some of the described resources are new to you and will help you become a better engineer!
Did I miss some major platform? What do you personally read?
