Some Blogs I Like

Finding good programming blogs is a tricky business. Here is a list I have curated over the last couple of years.

8th Light
The current home of Uncle Bob. My first experience of Uncle Bob was reading his book "Clean Code". I find his posts instructive, informative and entertaining. It's also worth looking for some of his keynote speeches. Previous homes include Object Mentor and Clean Coder.

Martin Fowler
Martin Fowler calls it a Bliki (a cross between blog and wiki). Fowler is most famous for his book Refactoring but there is a lot of other interesting stuff in his bliki about writing software. He is also a good keynote speaker.

Vanilla #Java
These guys are into optimising Java applications. There is a lot of interesting stuff about benchmarks and optimisations but what I really like is their posts about the corner cases in Java. Their optimisation work necessitates a low level understanding of how Java works. They show it off wonderfully with challenges and examples.

The Code Whisperer
Some thought provoking posts.

Corey Haines
Some thought provoking articles. You should look up some of his keynotes especially if you like cats and Comic Sans, or even of you don't.

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programmers
Lots of interesting stuff here. I have to admit I need to get through the backlog. I accidentally bookmarked an article and then wondered why I never saw updates.

Chris Said So
Some interesting articles on a range of development topics.

Coding 2 Learn
This is a fantastic blog by a high school CS teacher. It's superbly written, passionate and opinionated. We need more teachers like him. Check out his "Every Lesson Should Be A Hackathon" post. You won't regret it.

Lambda the Ultimate
This takes a more theoretical approach to the whole business of programming.

Rapid Red
Bruce Tate, another keynote speaker, is the author of Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. His blog contains some further thoughts about his book as well as some programming stuff and some non programming stuff.

About Programming - Yegor Bugayenko
Yegor has some dogmatic opinions about what makes good OO design and backs them up with well thought out arguments. What's interesting to me is considering just to what extent I agree and whether the advice really should be applied universally.

andrewsw's Blog
Right on this site, Andrewsw has some fantastic articles. My favourites are when he explains how to get started with some technology. There are lots of similar blogs out there. Most are crap but this is a good one.

ongoing by Tim Bray
A recent discovery. Tim blogs about everything. Luckily he has a (long) list of categories. He's a good writer and has some thought provoking articles.

Plumbr
The blog is advertising their performance monitoring plugin for Java applications. But I love their marketing strategy. The articles have lots of interesting findings and insights into Java performance, even for people who don't care about their product.

Here are some that I wish were still being updated.

Situated Geekery
Some well-written and thought provoking posts.

Let's Play: Test-Driven Development
It's a video blog showing the TDD development of an entire application in Java. I have never had the chance to pair program so it was valuable for me to at least watch what someone else is doing.

Software Engineering Tips
These articles smack of a veteran who has seen it all. Battle-hardened and jaded. You'll find tips that keep your software working. When it fails, you'll have everything you need to piece things back together again.

12 November 2014