Staying current on programming trends via Twitter

Question

I have rarely used my Twitter account since I created it a few years ago. However, I recently read an article about people using Twitter to follow professionals in their fields to stay current on the latest trends. This inspired me to search for respected programmers to follow. Unfortunately, I know the names of very few well-known modern programmers. So I ask you: which programmers do you follow on Twitter and have you learned the most from?

Answer 1

I follow Shawn Wildermuth (@ShawnWildermuth), Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) and there are others, Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror), Joel Spolsky (@spolsky) etc They usually post links or write about recent product releases.

However, the signal to noise ratio is quite low; I'm not sure whether it's a good mechanism - most of their quality tweets (or information) is covered by other media, like blog entries or podcasts.

Almost forgot - you can also follow some of the product teams via their twitter accounts, e.g. @WindowsAzure which (typically) has better information & links.

Answer 2

usually on twitter you don't get "the latest trends" you watch the "professionals" argue amongst themselves (like bellware, always in a fight w/ someone). useful stuff does come from twitter every now and then though.

Answer 3

i think start following @shanselman by him u can connect to many people around , i found him one of the best connector in the development world.

Answer 4

I use Twitter searches to find people talking about things I'm interested in (like search for python). I used to use the jabber tracking feature to track keywords which was a great way to stay informed (my mac exploded with growl notifications covering the entire screen when app engine first came out), but since they've disabled it I haven't done this.

I have found that following specific individuals such as @diveintomark or @phiggins (dojo developer) is ok, but you also get many non programming related tweets such as what they ate for dinner and what movie they liked or their progress on quitting smoking which isn't really useful to me. I think realtime keyword searches are where it's at. TweetDeck has sort of re-implemented the missing jabber feature, but that AIR app will eat all your computer's memory eventually, which defeats the purpose of real time twitter searches.

Answer 5

I found it difficult to use Twitter for such purposes because like Rob said the "noise ratio" gets in the way of actually learning anything or being updated on their current events and such. However, there are some interesting people like Shawn Wildermuth (also mentioned above) who have great pages. Hope I helped

Answer 6

Twitter is good but when you follow more people the its hard to keep track of nice tweets. I follow some of those mentioned by Rob.

I follow Eli Jahmanor (http://webdevdotnet.blogspot.com) . He sends tonnes of Programming tips and links.

You can folow me too ;-)

You can get some nice Twitter users (Programming) here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/190921/good-programming-twitters

Answer 7

What, I'm the first to mention @jonskeet?!

Also, @stackalert isn't a person, but it's a good way to keep posted on latest questions on StackOverflow.

(Having said all this, I would agree with other answerers here. Twitter is lots of noise.)

Another tip, you don't have to follow a person, you can follow a topic. Either with a downloadable app (like TweetDeck, which allows you to do searches on keywords), or with twitterfall.com (which I like a lot). That's when you start to see interesting things come out

Answer 8

I frequently ask small questions on twitter and I can get an answer pretty fast normally. It's also good because the marketing side of my company can use it to keep in contact with other marketers who all use twitter.

There is a fair bit of noise but you can reduce it in two ways.

1) Only follow people you think will be interesting, not just because they follow you
2) Goto settings and set it so you only see normal tweets and tweets @ you. I have 12k updates and tweet often but if you set number 2 on the noise vanishes and you only see tweets from me relevant to you.
3) Get a good client

That said, I follow lots of people @ben_sim is a good one but I'm only suggesting one. Simply adding 40 different people right away is a great way to get the noise you're all worried about.

I use twitterific (Mac only sorry) as my client, having a good client for twitter is a lot like have syntax colouring for programming, it sounds rubbish until you use it and then you wonder how anybody can program without it.

Answer 9

This might be an unpopular answer but: don't use Twitter for that. It's designed to handle status updates which in reality are full of everyday tripe and pretty low on actual content. Other than see the occasional cool event unfold at a tradeshow or whatever, you don't get much actual information this way.

If you want to "follow" current programming trends and interesting developments, use an RSS reader to subscribe to blogs of interest such as Coding Horror and other stuff you care about.