Friends and External Resources

Inspired by this page on The Reactionary and this page on codeshare, I’ve put together a list of awesome external references and content creators that I though you should check out.

This, by it’s very nature, is going to be an evolving list. So you’ll need to check back from time to time.

Podcasts

CodingBlocks

Allen, Michael and Joe put out an amazing podcast, with new episodes being released every few weeks. It’s an essential listen if you want to learn more about programming in general, C# or .NET things.

They describe their podcast as:

We are a few guys who’ve been professional programmers for years.  As avid listeners of podcasts and consumers of many things code-related, we were frustrated by the lack of quality programming (pun) available in listenable formats.  Given our years of experience and real-world problem solving skills, we thought it might be worth getting into this world of podcasting and “giving back” a shot

After listening to their podcast for almost 3 years, I joined their amazing Slack group. On the back of that decision, I started chatting to the amazing folks there and created this very blog.

I also managed to score some sweet CodingBlocks.NET stickers as you can see here:

Cynical Developer

James runs the Cynical Developer podcast. Every two weeks he puts out an interview with a framework or technology champion, asking them to talk about their framework or technology of choice; the good, the bad, all of it.

The interviews are in depth enough to get you an introduction to the technology, with discussions on where they can be used, how they stack (CS pun intended) up against other technologies and where to get more information on them.

James described the podcast on his about page, as:

The Cynical Developer Podcast aims to help you to improve your development knowledge and career, through explaining the latest and greatest in development technology and providing you with what you need to succeed as a developer.

 

Covering Desktop, web and mobile development, mainly around the .Net Stack but often looking into other software and frameworks.

Also, if you weren’t aware, I was on the Cynical Developers Podcast.

Just so that you know.

Programming Throwdown

Patrick Wheeler and Jason Gauci talk listeners through a different programming language, framework or technique every two weeks.

They go into detail about the history and where the language/framework of choice is used the most, they also talk about their daily lives and some of the work that they’re doing recently. Each episode is 40 minutes to 1 hour long (just long enough for most commutes), and is really informative.

They describe their podcast in this way:

Programming Throwdown attempt to educate Computer Scientsts and Software Engineers on a cavalcade of programming and tech topics. Every show will cover a new programming language, so listeners will be able to speak intelligently about any programming language.

 

Blogs

The Reactionary

Zac writes about all things ReactJs, and he really is quite the expert too. He isn’t just a ReactJs master though, he’s a full stack .NET/C# developer, too.

Proving that you really can have it all.

His personal statement on the blog’s mission is quite simply:

At the Reactionary you’ll find a number of tutorials, opinion pieces, conversations around best practices and more! If you wanting to get a truly deep Grok of the React.js library then you need look no further

His tutorials, explanations, book reviews, and videos (this guy puts out a tonne of content) really are extremely simple to follow, and reading/watching them will make you a master of all things ReactJs is no time.

He also wrote an article for this blog as part of a collaboration project, which you can read here.

codeshare

codeshare is a blog which is run by Paul. He is an amazing C#, MVC and Umbraco developer, but his blog isn’t just about those things. He has a lot of useful advice and tools for anyone wanting to get into the software development business, and things that you can do to improve your blogging experience.

As his about page states:

codeshare.co.uk is here to provide code examples, thoughts on technology and experience learned by being in the Software industry for many years and is mainly focused on Web Development.

 

The majority of articles are about developing websites using .NET, MVC and Umbraco, with examples in C#, but you will also find information about great tools which help you as a developer.

 

There are also video tutorials aimed at those of you need to know how to get started with something or are just interested in a certain technology.

Paul has recently started putting out videos, too. They are definitely worth watching if you want to see how a developer might go about his daily tasks, or to learn how to do things with Umbraco or plain C# MVC.

Luke Warren

Luke is a C# and .NET developer with a fantastic blog, and has covered a large number of topics.

Along with Paul and Zac, he has an uncanny ability to take a topic, add a sprinkle of humour and have it all make sense – even though his posts are extremely detailed.

He doesn’t have a mission statement or an about page, but he does have a description of his blog in the header:

Software Development Tips and Stories When I feel Like It

And he sticks to it

On both points

His blog is filled with wonderful tips and stories that will help to elevate your development knowledge to the next level. Seriously, this is a guy to follow as he starts to post more articles.

When he gets the chance to add more that is.

Coding Horror

Coding Horror is a blog written by Jeff Atwood. If you’ve made it this far through this list, I’m going to assume you know who that is.

If not, then you’ll know of his two biggest projects: Disqus and Stackoverflow

Not to reduce his achievements down to those to things, though

He writes about pretty much everything related to software development or modern technology.

His About page has this to say:

I needed a way to keep track of software development over time – whatever I am thinking about or working on. I research things I find interesting, then document my research with a public blog post, which I can easily find and refer to later.

Scott Hanselman

Scott is the Principle Program Manager for Outreach and Community at Microsoft.

Which is among one of the longest job titles I’ve ever heard

He’s definitely a polyglot programmer, and writes about everything related to development. Not just .Net Core (which is the team that he’s in charge of), either.

His About page reads like this:

I’m a teacher. I speak all over to whoever will listen. I have written code that you’ve used. I’ve been blogging for over a decade, coding for twice that, and podcasting for over half that. I code, write, speak, empower, promote, braid, learn and listen – usually not in that order.

You should definitely read his blog if you’re at all interested in software development as a career. His advice is golden, and extremely useful.

He hosts several podcasts, too. My favourite being HanselMinutes