Introduction
This blog entry is a follow up to the previous Career (TBD) blog.
It’s a set of references for your continuing education.
Fortunately the internet is filled with educational resources for Software Engineering. Most are free or a reasonable price.
O’Reilly
O’Reilly gained a reputation for publishing technical books. Their brand usually includes a drawing of an animal on the front cover.
O’Reilly expanded beyond printed books with an online version found at oreilly.com. It hosts thousands of books and videos including titles that were not original published by them. It’s a great resource, but it’s a subscription service. Here are a few subsription options:
- If you’re lucky, your employer will provide a subscription. My last employer provided a subscription to all developers for several years, but they have since canceled it.
- Subscribe yourself from their various Plans; however, it’s a bit pricey. You can try a Free 10-Day Trial to see if you like it.
- Join the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and sign up for their Skills Bundle Add-On, which includes a partial O’Reilly subscription plan along with a Skillsoft Percipio subscription. The ACM O’Reilly plan is not the full O’Reilly experience, but it includes the entire O’Reilly 60,000 book and video collection, plus Skillsoft Percipio, for about half the price of a complete O’Reilly subscription. The ACM and O’Reilly relationship has been … fluid over the past ten years. ACM membership benefits used to include restricted access O’Reilly subscription by default. Then it transitioned to full access with basic ACM membership, which was an incredible deal. Then it transititioned to limited book/video access with basic membership, which still an incredible deal. Then it disappeared completely, which was very disappointing. And now the current availability is back to book/video access, but only with the addition of the Skills Bundle Add-On, which is still a good deal. I’m sure it will change again in a few years.
Blogs
Many software professional share their experience and knowledge via blogs. Search for almost any software topic on the internet, and it will surely yield many blog references.
Videos
Some software professional share their experience and knowledge via online videos.
Videos span many types from how-to videos to educational videos. Many conferences have a video channel posting their content as well.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Modern Software Engineering Channel
- The Legacy of SoCraTes
- Alpha Code - Stopped abruptly.
- Tim Roughgarden Lectures
- Vaughn Vernon
- Emily Bache
- Easy Theory
- Alistair Cockburn
- Code Aesthetic
- Reducible
- Coding Blocks
Conferences
- O’Reilly
- GOTO Conferences
- DEVOXX
- GeeCon
- Nordic APIs
- Jfokus
- WOW!
- FlowCon
- NextDayVideo
- APIStrat
- Microservices Summit
- Design Ops Summit
- InfoQ’s QCon
- https://www.youtube.com/@mendercon
Podcasts
Podcasts allow you pick up new information on the go. You can listen to them in the car, while exercising or elsewhere.
Their main limitation is a lack of visuals, but this doesn’t seem to be a major issue for most good podcasts. Many podcasts also have websites for subsequent reference.
Here are some I follow on my playlist. Some of them are still active. Some have retired. Most were evergreen, but with the advent of AI maybe not quite so much:
- Soft Skills Engineer - A weekly advice podcast where the two hosts answer questions about careers and less about technology.
- Coding Blocks - Conversational style among three softare developer friends and coworkers. They retired it a couple years ago, but several of us on their Slack group are doing a relisten.
- Tabs and Spaces - The British version of Coding Blocks. The podcast has also been retired. I was a guest on three episodes:
- What They Didn’t Teach You in University - Where we discussed what you learn and don’t learn about computers in academia. It’s similar to what I wrote in You Studied Computer Science. Your Career Will Be Software Engineering.
- Do you-ou-ou a-wanna test like me-e-e? - We were discussed automated testing. It’s similar to what I wrote in my Automated Testing Blog Series.
- Jim’s Greatest Hits - I thought were were going to discuss Software Contracts, but since we recorded three days I retired, we pivoted a day or two before recording to talk about my career.
- The Engineering Room - Interview formatted podcast with industry leaders interviewed by Dave Farley
- Legacy Code Rocks! - Interview formatted podcast focusing upon legacy code. I was a guest in Economics of Technical Debt with Jim Humelsine , where we discussed why legacy code is inevitable.
- Level-Up Engineering - Interview formatted podcast about the industry. Each episode has a great landing page.
- Pragmatism in Practice - General discussion about the industry from Thoughtworks.
- Technology Podcast - Technology discussion about the industry from Thoughtworks.
- Smart Talks with IBM - Cutting edge work at IBM.
- Clean Coders - General industry discussion.
Webinars
- ACM
- O’Reilly
- Lightbend
Online Communities via Slack, Discord, etc.
Share your experiences and learn from others. Here are a few Software Engineering social media groups I’m a member of along with my user name:
- Coding Blocks Slack: Design Pattern Evangelist (Jim)
- Legacy Code Rocks! Slack: Jim Humelsine
- We Do TDD Slack: Jim Humelsine
- Software Crafters Slack: Jim Humelsine
- Tabs and Spaces Discord: Design Pattern Evangelist (Jim)
Social Media
My Slack and Bluesky examples. Linkedin, etc.
MOOCs
- https://missing.csail.mit.edu/
Others …
https://www.thoughtworks.com/en-us/insights/podcasts/technology-podcasts/themes-technology-radar-34
https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar
https://matt.might.net/articles/books-papers-materials-for-graduate-students/
Summary
TBD