How the Wildbit Team Stays on Top of Their Game

If there’s a consistent theme I hear when talking to customers, it’s that everyone has a hard time keeping up with the changes in our industry. Every day brings new tools, techniques, frameworks, and trends. How does a regular human stay on top of all the changes while actually getting work done at the same time? The fact that most people I talk to mention this problem shows how things move more quickly than most of us can handle.

Trying to stay on top of everything is a mistake. However, taking an occasional step back from the trenches is a good habit to get into. When you do, the trick is to know where the good resources are. In that vein, I turned to my colleagues here to ask what resources they turn to in order to be the best they can be, to always be learning and improving.

The following list is comprised of websites, books, newsletters, podcasts, and Twitter accounts. There were some duplicate suggestions, which are highlighted in bold.

Enjoy!

Andrew (developer)

Newsletters

• hackernewsletter

Websites

• Martin Fowler
• Scott Hanselman
• High Scalability
• LinkedIn Engineering Log

Artem (developer)

Websites

• Dan Luu
• Polymatheia
• <antirez>
• Julia Evans
• thoughts from the red planet

Twitter

• Jonathan Blow
• Gary Bernhardt

Note: It’s important to remember that many talented developers do not publish a blog, but following them on Twitter or GitHub is also a great way to grow your skills and expertise.

Ben (devops)

Websites

• Brendan Gregg
• Kartar.net
• Rob Hirschfeld
• HackerRank (a game of sorts)

Podcasts

• The Ship Show (discontinued, but a lot of good content)
• Food Fight: The Podcast where DevOps chefs do battle
• DevOps Cafe
• The Cloudcast
• Software Engineering Radio

Books

• Learn Python The Hard Way
• Learn Ruby The Hard Way
• Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby
• Every book from James Turnbull
• Safari Books Online

Eugene (designer & front end developer)

Websites

• CSS Tricks
• CSS Wizardry
• NCZOnline

Newsletters

• JavaScript Weekly
• UX Design Weekly
• Web Design Weekly

Garrett (marketing)

Websites

• Codepen

Books

• The Pragmatic Programmer

Igor (QA)

Websites

• The Selenium Guidebook

Newsletters

• Elemental Selenium

Jake (developer)

Websites

• A fresh cup
• Rands in Repose (not totally dev focused, but we all love Rands)
• Raspberry Pi
• GitHub blog
• Netflix tech blog

Podcasts

• The Changelog

Jeremy (QA)

Websites

• hacksplaining
• RoR Security Project
• WatirMelon

Podcasts

• testcast
• test talks
• Ruby 5 (Codeschool)

Mike (devops)

Subreddits

• Sysadmin
• Linux admin
• Linux mentor
• Command line
• Linux programming

Books

• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, 4th Edition
• The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook

Online courses

• Bird Nerd Ranch
• Treehouse

Nick (developer)

Podcasts

• Turing-Incomplete

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It’s important to remember that with all things Internet, it’s vital to separate the wheat from the chaff. The cream from the milk. The sheep from the goa — well, you get the idea. There’s always more resources available than time to consume them.

So I hope this list can give you a few new places to find good content that helps you be better at what you do.

If you have any suggestions of your own, let me know on Twitter.