How to Stay Updated as a Developer

As developers we have to always stay up to date with the latest technology for us to better make informed choices in what specific methodology or technology we can use for our jobs. Staying up to date means that we can be more efficient in doing our jobs. It doesn’t mean that new technologies are better but they usually are since they are usually created to make our lives better. If you need more reasons on why you need to stay updated I asked a question at programmers.stackexchange.com specifically for that. Here are some of the answers given by the awesome programmers in the community:

New technologies surface for a reason. Usually that reason is because they are more efficient or powerful at accomplishing a particular task.

There is still value to be had in sticking with old technology for the sake of legacy systems, but when they eventually reach their end of life you’ll be behind the game.

Business reasons aside, constantly learning new technologies keeps you on your toes and will open your eyes to different ways of approaching tasks, even in old technologies and so on, so forth.

Anonymous

Learning new things very often help you see the things that you already know from a different perspective, in the same way that learning a new language helps you learn more things about your current language.

Dasblinkenlight

And here’s a bit of advice from Telastyn:

Trying to learn everything new all the time is going to lead you to be poor at many things, perceived as a flighty tinkerer. Learn a few things well, and focus at least on knowing what exists, even if you can’t use it effectively.

telastyn

Anyway, enough with the reasons let’s jump in to the main topic of this article. Here are some of the resources that can help you stay updated. Feel free to add some more in the comments, thanks!

Newsletters

Twitter

Google Plus

Conferences/Videos

Of course we cannot go to every developer conference so here are some sources where you can watch videos from conferences on your free time.

Podcasts

You can still stay updated even while sitting on the toilet.

Blogs

Delicious

Feeds

Services

Twitter, Hacker News, Github, Google Alerts, and Digg is pretty much a given already. Here are a few of the new services that you should be using.

Sources

Please feel free to comment the resources that you’re using if I haven’t mentioned them here. Thanks!

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