Staying current with your programming language?

Question

My old source was simply being around lots of other programmers and talking shop but now, I haven't worked on a traditional programming team in over a year and wonder what people in the same boat do to stay current with their language, tools and environment. Blogs? Sites? Newsgroups?

Thanks for the ideas.

Answer 1

Sites like SO go a long way, just reading the questions and answers.

Answer 2

I pick a language, and implement something small but useful with it in my spare time. For example, I'm learning ASP.NET MVC and NHibernate, and so I'm using it on a new website for a local skatepark.

Answer 3

Following on Twitter the people mentioned in this list could be an option.

Answer 4

I think a good book is still the best way. There are tons of blogs, sites like this, etc, but they serve more as a reference... specially when you are learning a new stuff or new version of a tool or language.

Answer 5

Some Similar questions:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/775636/staying-current-on-programming-trends-via-twitter http://stackoverflow.com/questions/647390/how-to-stay-connected-to-the-programming-community http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14490/how-can-i-continue-to-stay-current-on-the-latest-and-maybe-greatest-tools-tech

I'd also say that getting involved with a local (or relatively local) group helps.

Maybe get involved in an OS project that uses a language you like.

Perhaps attend code camps and things like that.

Answer 6

I worked alone for most of my career , at home, and faced the same problem. What I did was the following:

1. I left the first hour of each work day for learning, I would pick a topic, by a book and work for one hour various examples from it. When I was finished I continued on the next topic.
2. I subscribed on my RSS feed reader to the source sites for the technologies I worked on.
3. I frequently visited programming news groups and forms to see what is going on in the dev world.

Answer 7

I listen to podcasts, that keep me up-to-date with recent news in my technology of choice. I highly recommend The Java Posse (for JVM related news) and .NET Rocks (for .Net side of things).