We’ve all heard the adage “you are what you read.” It makes a lot of sense, after all, you read what interests you, right?

So as a software developer, what do you read? We polled some of our developers to see just who and what they were reading to stay up with the current events or trends in the industry, to see where things are going, etc.

The list was extensive, and frankly, bordering on the excessive. But there’s no such thing as too much information right?

With that in mind, I decided to take this list and shrink it to our top five topics, and the ONE blog from each that we got the most from. Feel free to disagree, in fact, give us your favorites that we may have missed!

Without any further ado…

OSTechnical’s 5 Best Blogs if you’re a Software Developer

  1. Microsoft – There’s only one place we could find to go for this one, and that’s here to Scott Guthrie’s blog. Guthrie is the Product Manager for the .NET Framework, so why would you go anywhere else?! Given that he has over 15 years with Microsoft, there’s a treasure trove of content available for a software developer looking to see what he’s got to say about .NET, or Microsoft in general! There’s only one problem we’ve found; he doesn’t blog that regularly anymore.
  2. SQL/Database – Ok, so maybe I wasn’t completely honest when I said we’d found the single best place for all of these topics. But, in my defense, when it comes to SQL, there are almost too many subjects to cover within this single topic. With that in mind, we found an aggregator, where anyone can go to find lists of themes and blogs and (lions and tigers and bears!) more. Check out topsqlblogs.com where you can keep up with the industry news and trends, other blogs, etc.
  3. iOS Development – Similar to SQL, there’s a lot of different places to go when it comes to finding blogs to follow related to Apple or more importantly dev in the iOS world. There are plenty of spots for novices, mid-level users, and even experts. We chose to stick with the more advanced side of the spectrum, and for that, a great spot to be is at objc.io, where you can find a range of subjects from best practices, advanced techniques, and more related to iOS and OS X development!
  4. Android – We had to share the Google side of the spectrum, as we’re a PC and a Mac shop here at OST! Similar to iOS there is a wide-range of beginner blogs to advanced developer blogs. But this time, there is the most obvious place to start, the Google Developers Blog. Right? This blog is truly your one-stop shop if you’re looking to dive into Android, or if you’ve been swimming in it for years.
  5. Coding – Ok, so this one is a little too broad as well. There’s clearly a zillion (well, that might be stretching) different topics you can cover in a coding blog. For today, let’s stick with JavaScript. The best resource we found from all of our developers who work in JavaScript, was jQuery4u. This team has been around for a long time, and the amount of content they have generated from code demos to video tutorials and more is fairly crazy. But, even better, they’re still updating it frequently, so you’re always able to find new information.

 

I know, this was a lot to take in, but this is just the tip top of the iceberg when it comes to the resources we found and our consultants sent us. Happy reading everyone!

Do you have any better options? Let us know in the comments below!