Since I started working I go to StackOverflow for everything. But as we all know it is good to have many ways to skin a cat. where is your other favorite website to visit for programming Reference?
+1 LOL. I wish F1 in VSxx went to google....I guess I could remap it, but...
kenny
2009-07-17 19:36:21
Nice idea, actually. On some dev-systems pressing F1 in VS (usually just by accident) will result in an extra coffee break.Can't some custom addin hook into this F1-key-down?
Simpzon
2009-07-17 19:56:02
+6
A:
I hit up the documentations of whatever languages I happen to be using.
AlbertoPL
2009-07-17 18:24:04
Agreed! The MSDN is my bible, it's an excellent resource for anything Microsoft.
Zensar
2009-07-17 19:20:02
MSDN can be good but other times it can be horrid; you sometimes look up a property/function and it just has a page with the function in codebox. How useful.
Callum Rogers
2009-07-18 19:00:19
A:
Twitter, I follow a bunch of fellow programmers and muckity-mucks in the programming world.
mgroves
2009-07-17 18:25:03
w3schools is __not__ the W3C, and is not associated with the W3C in any way. It's also home to some truly atrocious "tutorials", its material on JavaScript in particular being shockingly bad. The W3C is at http://www.w3.org/ and publishes the definitive specifications of HTTP, HTML, XML, DOM, CSS, XSLT, etc etc.
NickFitz
2009-07-17 20:55:56
I usually start with the relevant documentation: for example almost anything to do with PHP or mySQL can be worked out from their docs and a bit of experimentation; similarly for W3C specs. For MS stuff, the MSDN library is good, if confusingly arranged. Judicious Googling usually results in a few blog posts about people finding practical solutions to real-world problems, often with interesting and/or innovative techniques (though one has to exercise sensible judgement in assessing their worth). If I really need to get deep into something new, there's almost certainly a good O'Reilly book :-)
NickFitz
2009-07-17 21:53:40
+1
A:
When I start using a framework / library, I always have a look at how their documentation is ; if it's looking fine, it becomes a "reference" I tend to check before anything else. (Well, that's when I'm not one of those who whoose using that framework/library ; else, quality of the documentation generaly is a criteria of choice)
For instance, in PHP, you just have to go to php.net/function_name (like, for instance php.net/in_array) to get documentation of a function -- that's really useful.
(And there are often user-notes at the bottom of the page, which can be quite helpful to help solving common problems)
Then, google is often my friend ^^
Pascal MARTIN
2009-07-17 18:38:25
+2
A:
Google is a great resource obviously. But with google knowing how to ask the right question is half of the battle.
And a lot of times documentation comes with the selected technology you are working with.
Recently I've fallen in love with the Apple Developer Center for all the great guides, and documentation they provide.
Also MSDN for .net.
For Flash the Documentation is good, and actionscript help and tuts gotoandplay. (Game specific-ish)
Bryan Hare
2009-07-17 18:40:09
A:
Not a website, but as a general series of succint reference books, I like the O'Reily "Pocket Reference" books.
Travis Beale
2009-07-17 18:41:17
+2
A:
Duplicate maybe?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/392993/what-are-your-favorite-programming-bookmarks
Troggy
2009-07-17 18:43:16
A:
http://code.google.com/, for everything else there is always Code Complete!
Molex
2009-07-17 19:40:03
A:
Gotapi.com is so important. It's got online documentation for many languages with a slick search system. Try it out.
allesklar
2009-07-18 06:41:49
A:
For technical questions the "official" IRC(Internet Relay Chat) channel of the technology/language I am using. I have learned so much from IRC it is unbelievable.
BernardMarx
2009-07-18 07:15:47
A:
I go to the official programming reference/manual of X. Like PHP -> php.net, jquery -> docs.jquery.com, rails -> api.rubyonrails.org.
incidence
2009-07-18 07:27:42