Mentoring - Online Technical Resources

As I stated in my last mentoring post, one thing new professionals need to learn is how to stay technically current and continue to grow their skills in the absence of formal training. Here's a list of some online technical resources and tools I think any new professional would find helpful.
  • Martin Fowler's Bliki. Martin Fowler always has interesting things to say about object oriented design, agile development, and software development in general. He is a thought leader and always says smart things.
  • InfoQ This site has a ton of info about a ton of software development topics. What I like most about this site is that there are a lot of videos. I learn better this way. It’s nice to watch someone explain a topic and see the examples. Here’s a Martin Fowler presentation on InfoQ about SOA and ESB.
  • StackOverflow. This is basically a Q&A site for software developers. It’s fairly new and high quality. If you really get stumped on how to do something or want a wider range of opinions, this is the place to go. People answer your questions then vote up the best answers.
  • Delicious, not a technical resource as much as a tool to save and organize the things you find online. When you find something helpful on the web, save it here so you can find it again later. It’s also somewhat helpful to search other people’s bookmarks for common tags if you’re not having much luck with a Google keyword search. Here’s a link to my bookmarks.

A suggested "book" reading list is coming soon....

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