Maybe you don’t have the time or will to read those damn 6 books every year. And maybe that’s fine (for you). I will give you a list of 6 blogs that you can add to your RSS reader. If you care a little about software engineering, new technology trends, and enjoy reading well-written, usually lengthy articles (as I do), IMHO you should be checking these.
No, mine isn’t in the list :) You can proceed without fear now.
- Paul Graham: Paul founded Viaweb in the mid 90s, and later sold it to become Yahoo! Stores. He then created Y Combinator, a successful venture capital firm. His writings are, to say the least, controversial (you usually agree or not with him, but he never leaves you indifferent). I cannot help thinking that his points are excellent. I also enjoyed his Hackers and Painters book; he is an excellent writer and loves to share his knowledge, both about programming and startups.
- Steve Yegge: he works at Google, and lately has got some attention thanks to his Rhino on Rails project. He has been interviewed by Dion Almaer (of Ajaxian fame) and the video is on YouTube. His blog is really interesting. His are not just “rants”, as the title says; it’s first hand experiences, funny and oh so true about our daily world of software engineering.
- Reg Braithwaite: I discovered Reg’s blog while writing my now legendary Erlang post last year. His articles have a distinct human touch, and I enjoy every word in them. I cannot but recommend his blog.
- Steve McConnell: he is the author of “Code Complete”, a major landmark book in the history of software engineering, and his “10x Software Development” blog is a natural continuation to that book. This blog is full of advice, not only for pure coding stuff, but also about project management and estimation tasks.
- Martin Fowler: his “bliki” (a cross between a blog and a wiki) is, well, an absolute reference. I do not have to present him. You should have read everything he’s written so far by now. You must have, actually.
- Scott Berkun: not strictly about software engineering, but rather about project management. Scott knows his stuff, and he knows how to explain it. If you care about your projects, you should hear what he says.
Finally, Joel Spolsky also deserves to be listed, but in my opinion, his best articles are those from the 2001-2003 era. He is more concentrated in his company now, and so he still writes new, interesting stuff, but not at the same rate. You might want to check it out by yourself! The archives are plenty of treasures worth reading.
A couple more? OK! Here you go: Coding Horror, Yariv Sadan (about Erlang), Scott Stevenson (about Cocoa), Presentation Zen (about… well, presentations), and finally the O’Reilly Beautiful Code blog.
Finally there were much more than 6, but hey, happy reading anyway! Feel free to leave me your preferred ones in the comments below.