In this blog post, I list some gem-like web pages that are worth reading if you want to become a better software developer. They’re not simply some sites where you can read about the hype of the week, instead they include insightful material that actually makes you see software development from a whole different perspective.
The need for mentioning the following sites arises from the fact that most web sites and blogs I find in the net usually make me think the writer either tells me some basics about programming I learned years ago or tries to convince me to use some new, brilliant technology which usually involves XML and/or Java. I often get the feeling I’m not part of the target audience and look for things that do a better job on motivating me. As it is quite difficult to find such sites, I’ll spend the few minutes to list some of the sites I’ve found interesting.
Some time ago I stumbled upon a web site called Joel on Software. It’s basically a blog by an experienced software developer, with interesting stories about our industry for us all to read about. It was actually the first software related web page I had found in a long time that managed to inspire me. My favorite article is “Can your programming language do this?“. As another example, if you’ve ever wondered about the Hungarian notation – or cursed at the coding guidelines that force you to use it, even if you can’t see the usefulness behind it, go read what Joel has to say about its history and things may become more clear, although not necessarily less frustrating.
I was glad to find such a page and was hoping to find more. Later I stumbled upon the page of Paul Graham. He shares some similarities with Joel – they both have founded a start-up company and written a lot of nice texts about software development. As a programming language enthusiast, I especially find the essays by Paul Graham involving Lisp interesting.
Some days ago I was looking for a new book on software development to buy and came across Clean Code by Robert Martin. I haven’t bought the book – yet – but searched for some related material and stumbled upon a presentation by Robert Martin titled “What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too” as well as a blog post drawing parallels between the aforementioned languages and functional languages, namely Lisp and Haskell. The presentation seems very insightful and makes me not only want to learn more about the history of programming languages but also get a copy of the book.
Gaining interest on the new, modern software development techniques I read about TDD and BDD. And when you read about acronyms as these you can’t help coming across the webpage of Martin Fowler sooner or later. Here I also found an interesting text about DSLs, which I feel is an increasingly important – and interesting – topic.
Sites like these help me learn about the new developments in our industry and also make me a better, more efficient developer while still preserving the fun factor. Keep it up!
Open game programming 