Someone asked me today where developers hang out on the Net. Excluding platform-specific sites like MSDN, here’s my first go at a top ten list, in alphabetical order – but I’d love to hear other suggestions.
Coding Horror Jeff Attwood’s site. Both Attwood and Spolsky are on the Stack Overflow team
Dzone – DIGG for developers, also includes Javalobby, which was set up on a wave of indignation back in the nineties when Microsoft seemed to be endangering Java’s run-anywhere promise, now a general Java discussion site.
Joel on Software I don’t always agree with Joel Spolsky, but he’s an excellent writer and deserves inclusion if only for his piece on leaky abstractions.
Reddit programming – another DIGG for developers, actually I prefer this one to Dzone
Slashdot – Geek news discussion site, not just for developers though you’ll find plenty of them there. If you need to know the meaning of the site name, you are outside the target readership.
Stack Overflow – community question and answer site for developers, mentioned by everyone when I asked about developers’ favourite sites on Twitter.
The Code Project – masses of code samples, mainly .NET but also Java, SQL, Linux
The Daily WTF – where WTF stands for “Worse than failure”, allegedly
The Register – IT news site willing to “Bite the hand that feeds IT”, includes a developer section. Disclaimer: I am a contributor.
TheServerSide which has mainly Java but also a .NET site, both geared to enterprise development. Seems less busy of late.
Other developer haunts I considered:
DaniWeb – IT discussion community with an active software development forum
DeveloperFusion – based in the UK, developer-focused articles, blogs and resources
Dr Dobbs – web site for the best software development magazine, docked several points for ad videos that auto-play when you visit
Rick Strahl’s web log – where you go to discover what really works or does not work in ASP.NET
SDTimes – web site for a family of Software development magazines, some good articles but not really a community
Update: Other sites I probably should have included:
InfoQ – developer-focused articles, Agile/Enterprise focus, sponsor the excellent QCon conferences
The Register? Really? That National Enquirer of computer sites masquerading as a news provider? That treats Orlowski as a journalist?
Or did you mean so you can point and laugh?
I really like your list!
I think codebetter and channel9 are hot spots too.
It seems to me that overall, there’s only a handful of hot spots. I think part of the reason is it’s spliced into so many focused niches, and only a few places are relevant enough for the masses. The rest are micro-niches.