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101
+163  Q: 

What are the best programming and development related Blogs?

There are lots of great resources available on the Internet for learning more about programming and improving your skills. Blogs are one of the best, IMO. There's a wealth of knowledge and experience, much of it covering topics not often found in traditional books, and the increased community aspect helps to bring in multiple viewpoints and ideas.

We're probably all familiar with Coding Horror and Joel on Software (so no need to mention them), but what are the other great ones out there? What are the Blogs that you find yourself following most closely? Where you see the best new ideas, the most interesting or informative ideas, or just the posts that make you sit back and think?

One Blog per answer, and then we'll vote up the best so we can all learn from them.

+89  A: 

The Daily WTF - Helping us learn from our own collective (bone-headed) mistakes.

Christopher Cashell  2008-09-17 01:33:49
the first few posts I read were about hardware! This whole friggin' site should be shut down as "not-programming-related." Perhaps the whole Internet!
Yar  2008-12-28 01:34:39
+20  A: 

Lambda The Ultimate - For the Computer Scientist inside us all ;-)

Christopher Cashell  2008-09-17 01:34:23
+53  A: 

Coding Horror from our own Jeff Attwood :)

NimsDotNet  2008-09-17 01:34:41
Jeff's blog has got to be about the worst for real useful information. Some might find it entertaining, but how can you take him seriously is he has never coded in C and cannot understand what NP Complete means? My lord!
Tim  2008-12-03 20:54:56
Tim, maybe perhaps it does _not_ matter for the things he do?
icelava  2009-02-06 17:56:30
@tim - He has coded in C. Did you miss the post on how he hated "The C Programming Language"?
Lucas Jones  2009-07-01 22:48:28
does it really matter he has never coded in C? does it really matter he didn't get NP complete explanation right? look at stackoverflow, it's one of the best designed pieces of software on the internet right now. he certainly got some things right and those that he didn't... well, hands up who knows everything and has nothing more to learn!
lubos hasko  2009-08-12 13:19:36
@tim With the assumption that you are not joking... why does it matter if someone has never coded in C? I've never coded in C, I've also never coded in Perl, Delphi, Objective-C etc... Hell a lot of developers might even not have written JavaScript!
Kragen  2009-10-08 15:57:15
@tim, I've programmed in C and learned about NP Completeness during my CS degree. However I can't take someone seriously who thinks that these are so essential to being a good developer.
Ash  2010-01-15 10:20:37
Jumping sharks since Fonzi... ;)~
Evan Plaice  2010-06-24 01:50:01
Coding Horror used to be my favorite specifically because Jeff posted a lot and on a lot of esoteric topics. Now we're lucky to see a post once a month. Coding Horror is starting to feel like abandon-ware which is why I searched for a post on other good programming related blogs.
DMKing  2010-08-02 19:04:49
+7  A: 

Tim Bray's Ongoing

Christopher Cashell  2008-09-17 01:35:55
+2  A: 

Mitchel Sellers DNN Blog

Mitchel Sellers  2008-09-17 01:36:15
+2  A: 

Here's a few from my list:
- Coding Horror
- Hackety
- John Resig
- Just Browsing
- Kickin' the Darkness
- Schneier
- The Old New Thing

Lucas Oman  2008-09-17 01:37:24
+36  A: 

Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

David Negron  2008-09-17 01:38:48
+3  A: 

Just one? Hmm... CSS Tricks, for the web devs.

 2008-09-17 01:39:12
Just one per post. If you've got more good ones, post them up, too!
Christopher Cashell  2008-09-17 01:44:55
+9  A: 

Coding4Fun

Howler  2008-09-17 01:40:37
+50  A: 

Steve Yegge's blog

Alvaro Rodriguez  2008-09-17 01:42:18
Frankly, I find it completelly unreadable. This guy spends a thousand words to say what could be expressed in one.
Nemanja Trifunovic  2008-09-19 19:42:57
His verbosity is the stuff of legend. However he does make some very relevant points, if you have the patience to endure his writing.I like Paul Graham better though, but he's been voted less. Go Figure.
Alvaro Rodriguez  2008-09-19 22:31:55
Reading Yegge is like reading Walden. There's a lot in it, and a lot of effort required to get it out.
CAD bloke  2008-10-08 03:05:44
I really like reading Yegge, although I think sometimes he makes the odd leap that is a bit of a stretch.
Quibblesome  2009-01-08 19:32:37
People don't read Yegge for the same reason they don't read anything anymore. They have perpetual ADHD. Why just the other day I was in the bookstOH LOOK A SQUIRREL!
Robert Harvey  2010-01-12 16:39:31
Nemanja: If you could summarize his articles in one word, I'm sure we'd all love to hear those single words.
Ken  2010-08-17 16:31:50
I'm glad to see he's back to blogging. I wouldn't count myself as a fan, but I like to read his entries. There's some stuff in there occasionally that's really good even though most of it makes me wonder if he's ever visited the real world. Whether you agree with him or not, it's worth the time to decode the posts. :-)
Brian Knoblauch  2010-10-05 18:45:03
+3  A: 

The Berkun Blog

Alvaro Rodriguez  2008-09-17 01:43:10
+27  A: 

The Daily Dilbert Strip

Bryant  2008-09-17 01:43:24
yes! it sheds a light on many perversions we endure without even noticing anymore!
Manrico Corazzi  2008-09-17 09:50:58
says more about the software industry than steve yegge in only a dozen words a day..
Dexter  2008-10-04 06:17:32
+22  A: 

Rands in Repose

Alvaro Rodriguez  2008-09-17 01:44:40
+11  A: 

Misko Hevery's Blog

jtong  2008-09-17 01:45:37
He's a great agile coach at Google. You MUST see his talks ("The Clean Code Talks", search youtube for them).
Igor Popov  2010-06-12 05:45:19
+6  A: 

There is a comprehensive list "Top 100 Blogs for Development Managers" put together by Jurgen Appelo at his blog

He also includes a opml file for easily importing this list into your rss reader.

EDIT: Here's the latest list "Top 100 Blogs for Developers (Q1 2009)" ... and no surprises that Joel and Jeff are at the top there ;-)

brodie  2008-09-17 01:53:49
+1  A: 

http://blogcabin.37signals.com/svn/

ben  2008-09-17 01:54:01
+1  A: 

http://www.cooper.com/journal/

ben  2008-09-17 01:55:03
+41  A: 

Raymond Chen's The Old New Thing

Leonardo  2008-09-17 02:00:10
even though win32 specific (and in the last 2 years most of his posts are "you is n00b, read the error message"), I strongly recommend it for every one
elcuco  2010-05-18 07:53:27
+14  A: 

Oh, and you've been haacked

Leonardo  2008-09-17 02:06:30
+38  A: 

Arguably not a blog, but Paul Graham has a great collection of essays. Of special interest if you are considering to, or already running, a startup.

I'd strongly encourage you to read all essays.

Alvaro Rodriguez  2008-09-17 02:21:12
+12  A: 

Gustavo Duarte for low level topics, close to the hardware.

DGentry  2008-09-17 02:31:39
Nice one, good blog...
Tim Ring  2008-11-11 09:18:53
YES! I have learned so much from this one blog it's ridiculous.
Dinah  2009-06-23 17:40:56
This a good one.
John  2009-10-14 18:13:33
+1  A: 

Landon Dyer, the Dadhacker covers mostly low level topics close to the hardware.

DGentry  2008-09-17 02:33:04
+7  A: 

Joe Armstrong, mostly covering Erlang.

DGentry  2008-09-17 02:34:14
+10  A: 

Nobody's mentioned CodeBetter yet, so I'll add that one to the list.

Bullines  2008-09-17 02:36:38
+4  A: 

Yossi Kreinin, covering mostly low level topics close to the hardware. He has an account on stackoverflow, though he is not very active here.

DGentry  2008-09-17 02:36:42
A: 

Peter Kankowski - who writes smallcode, never ceases to teach me new things.

Christopher Dolan  2008-09-17 02:37:31
+1  A: 

Charles Nutter, about JRuby internals.

DGentry  2008-09-17 02:37:48
+6  A: 

The google testing blog is pretty kickass.

Also, I don't think anyone has yet mentioned Martin Fowler's bliki, but it contains a ton of gems from one of the most well respected minds in the industry.

If you're interested at all in scalability, you should watch highscalability.com

kbaribeau  2008-09-17 02:39:43
+10  A: 

I know most of these were mentioned.. but I check them regularly. Most of them are .NET centric

Scott Guthrie

Scott Hanselman

Coding Horror

Haacked

Carnage4Life

Quintin Robinson  2008-09-17 02:44:37
A: 

Less known I think:

klasbas  2008-09-17 03:02:42
+1  A: 

If your curious about ruby or metaprograming I would suggest http://errtheblog.com/ and http://eigenclass.org/

Aaron Lee  2008-09-17 03:33:24
A: 

For testing subjects, I've enjoyed James Bach's Blog although he must have died because he hasn't posted any new entries in a while.

I also like a guy named Shrini Kulikarni. And from either of those blogs, their blogrolls will take you to a number of other good sites.

MrBoJangles  2008-09-17 03:38:49
A: 

I usually stop by http://www.phpied.com/ its a mix of PHP and Javascript stuffs.

 2008-09-17 03:48:08
A: 

The Artima Developer Community

hongster  2008-09-17 03:49:11
+1  A: 

I use The Daily WTF, Coding Horror, The Old New Thing, Juixe Techknow, Joel on Software, dilbert and Slashdot.

paxdiablo  2008-09-17 03:53:31
+2  A: 

Moserware - I think I started reading this when it was linked from Coding Horror once. Relatively new blogger but his posts are interesting and well thought out.

James Wulkan  2008-09-17 03:59:01
+2  A: 

Some of the tech blogs I usually follow are

Peter Norvig's --> You can see some great code
Joel's
Steve Yegge's --> programmers love this blog

amadamala  2008-09-17 04:01:54
+3  A: 

I second Artima. I can't vote up yet :)

Gopherkhan  2008-09-17 04:03:24
+19  A: 

The blog of Oren Eini (aka Ayende Rahien)

Yitzchok  2008-09-17 04:08:49
+2  A: 

Google Testing Blog is quite good.

Bleadof  2008-09-17 04:31:53
+1  A: 

Joel on Software : Joel Spolsky

Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

ScottGu's Blog: Scott Guthrie

Glennular  2008-09-17 04:37:02
A: 

Scott Guthrie

Stephen Walther

www.codebetter.com

cvs  2008-09-17 06:48:03
+1  A: 

Peter-Paul Koch's blog on quirksmode.org

remonedo  2008-09-17 07:28:15
A: 

Jurgen Appelo has compiled a great list of blogs: Top 100 Blogs for Development Managers (Q3 2008).

It is supposedly for software development managers, but in my opionion they are just as much for developers that are not managers (such as myself). All of my favourite bloggers (for example Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Steve Yegge, Martin Fowler, Reginald Braithwaite) are on the list.

Henrik Warne  2008-09-17 07:32:40
+6  A: 

http://martinfowler.com/bliki (one item per answer!)

bahadorn  2008-09-17 08:18:18
+1  A: 

Los Techies

Chris Canal  2008-09-17 08:24:40
A: 

devlicio.us

Chris Canal  2008-09-17 08:25:45
+14  A: 

Joel on Software

(I'm really curious to see it's position among other blogs in the vote.)

Linulin  2008-09-17 09:11:42
A: 

Fullasagoog

The Fullasagoog aggregator brings together over 500 hand picked blogs, focused on the Adobe technology platform and related topics. If you are interested in Flash, Flex, AIR or ColdFusion this is a fabulous place to start.

http://www.fullasagoog.com/

modius  2008-09-17 09:18:58
+1  A: 

I also read Raganwald. It looks like he doesn't write any more, but you can read the archives and I like the links, too.

Victor  2008-09-17 09:30:32
A: 

Myke's Weblog

Scott and the Dev Team  2008-09-17 11:27:33
+4  A: 

Ted Dziuba's blog is a very cynical blog about coding and always makes me laugh. He also rants a lot.

Andrew Jahn  2008-09-17 13:35:48
+1. Very funny and very insightful. But not for you if you're prone to taking things a bit too seriously and literally.
David HAust  2009-08-03 06:39:17
There is a Stack Overflow user with the same name: Ted Dziuba, http://stackoverflow.com/users/104/ted-dziuba
Peter Mortensen  2010-05-14 02:34:19
thank you for mentioning this, new for me, very nice reading
Kugel  2010-06-07 23:55:00
+69  A: 

Here's the Top 10 development blogs...

  1. Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)
  2. Coding Horror (Jeff Atwood)
  3. Seth's Blog (Seth Godin)
  4. Paul Graham: Essays (Paul Graham)
  5. blog.pmarca.com (Marc Andreessen)
  6. Rough Type (Nicholas Carr)
  7. Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen (Scott Hanselman)
  8. Martin Fowler's Bliki (Martin Fowler)
  9. Rands in Repose (Michael Lopp)
  10. Stevey's Blog Rants (Steve Yegge)

and you can find the rest of the Top 100 Blogs here.

Noop  2008-09-17 17:25:41
Update: http://www.noop.nl/2009/03/top-100-blogs-for-developers-q1-2009.html
Daniel Daranas  2009-06-16 10:20:37
+1 for Coding Horror
bedwyr  2009-12-10 03:14:57
This answer is worth a bookmark (and I very very very rarely use bookmarks, just use them for very important websites) ! :)
frunsi  2009-12-10 06:01:41
Separate answers would be better – that way the voting system would more accurately show what the community considers the best ones.
Jonik  2010-05-04 19:36:19
My blog didn't make this list! ;-(
Frank V  2010-08-17 16:00:11
A: 

Ian Bicking's

Pau  2008-09-18 14:35:41
+1  A: 

Cathy Sierra's 'Creating Passionate Users' was/is my favourite.

Vivek Kodira  2008-09-18 16:20:12
A: 

Ryan's Scraps

Keeps me up to date on the bleeding edge of Ruby on Rails.

epochwolf  2008-09-19 00:51:42
+2  A: 

The object mentor developers web blog. Robert C. Martin & co.

Phil Bennett  2008-09-19 19:37:31
A: 

I didn't see Ode To Code in this list yet.

Hamish Smith  2008-09-20 00:38:41
A: 

Even though I don't write any Ruby, I am really missing raganwald because of the thought provoking posts, the fact that I ended up learning things that would never have come up just reading .NET blogs, and because the links he posted were always worth a read.

Thankfully it looks like he's thinking about starting up a new blog.

Hamish Smith  2008-09-20 00:42:55
A: 

Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

benPearce  2008-09-20 00:44:33
+1  A: 

Ajaxian.com

Mads Hansen  2008-09-20 20:27:44
A: 

I rather enjoy:

  • Joel's (obviously)
  • 'coding horror'

and I've gotten some helpful code from Software Evolved.

 2008-10-01 17:50:59
+1  A: 

Software Engineering Radio

 2008-10-04 06:08:19
this is probably one of the only useful bits of programming podcasts on the internets... Perhaps I have just not found the next useful one though.
Tim  2008-11-03 22:14:33
A: 

I'll add my own: Coding Relic. Feel free to vote it down, I'm used to it.

DGentry  2008-10-25 04:26:04
A: 

Eric Lippert's Fabulous Adventures In Coding and Wesdyer's Yet Another Language Geek.

yapiskan  2008-11-03 13:29:55
A: 

Here's a horrible one.

http://www.stackoverthrow.com/ some rants about development and things.

Disclaimer: I'm the author. Feel free to downvote for shameless plug.

Tim  2008-12-31 17:30:50
A: 

BTW, what happened to Mr. Ed's hacknot.info? It just shows a generic site since months.

 2009-01-08 19:24:36
+1  A: 

The Contrarian Software Blog

"Because so much conventional wisdom in the software industry is just plain wrong."

 2009-01-08 19:26:15
A: 

I like the realtime collision detection blog.

Despite its name it covers way more than collision detection and has a lot of interesting and sometimes provocative ideas on programming in general.

Laserallan  2009-01-08 19:31:45
A: 

DevelopDotStar: The Independent Magazine for Software Developers.

Comptrol  2009-01-19 09:07:16
A: 

I'm rather surprised that no one has mentioned

New Adventures in Software by Dan Dyer (who also happens to be a Stack Overflow user)

I don't follow that many blogs, but this one has caught my attention because of the many delightfully well written posts, like this introduction to evolutionary computation - surprisingly interesting, for me, for such a theoretical subject. I (and my team) also owe it to this blog that I found out about Hudson a while back; it has later replaced CruiseControl in our use due to its superior ease of configuration.

Personally I consider it a plus that most of the blog's concrete coding related posts are Java specific (along with some Haskell stuff). Even if you disagree with that, you may be interested in the insightful articles on software development in general, such as this one about the importance of sleep, or witty social commentary about online phenomena like the ongoing Twitter experiment.

Jonik  2009-02-16 23:03:35
A: 

If you happen to know some Spanish language (and perhaps enjoy learning more of it) and are into web development, and Linux / open source stuff, check out the blog maintained by

Gregorio Espadas (a Mexican web developer)
Subheading: Desarrollo y Diseño Web : Software Libre : Linux : Web 2.0

Aside from web development and design content, notable (mainly open-source) software releases and sometimes major hardware or tech business news are covered. This is high-quality stuff; I may not know a comparable general tech blog (for my tastes, anyway) in any language.

Jonik  2009-02-25 21:36:34
+1  A: 

Good look at general software best practices. Object Mentor

zodeus  2009-03-03 05:04:58
A: 

The Fast Dilbert Strip

Josh  2009-03-26 12:52:31
A: 

This guy seems to know his Perl stuff, yet makes his blog entries interesting and readable to non-geeks:

http://dave.org.uk/

DBMarcos99  2009-06-16 10:04:15
A: 

Jorge Dunkelman's blog may be of interest to Spanish speakers, especially those needing help with Excel.

DBMarcos99  2009-06-16 10:10:04
A: 

Lastly, here's a useful source on MySQL admin and performance stuff (lots more blogs via Planet MySQL.)

MySQL Performance Blog

I hope these links are of use to someone out there!

DBMarcos99  2009-06-16 10:15:07
+1  A: 

John Resig's blog (JavaScript Evangelist and creator of jQuery)

Paul Dixon  2009-06-23 17:42:46
A: 

If broken it is, fix it you should - Tess Ferrandez, ASP.NET debugging, performance, etc.

Faculty of the mind - Fredrik Kalseth, Test Driven Development, Best Practices, etc.

Nick  2009-06-23 19:36:25
A: 

Kent Beck's blog (Programming guru extraordinaire - among other things, creator of Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development)

Ola Eldøy  2009-08-08 10:12:17
+4  A: 

Bruce Schneier Has an excellent blog on IT security.

Dimitri C.  2009-08-20 10:35:19
I was unimpressed with his early work, but nowadays he's putting out excellent information!
Brian Knoblauch  2010-10-05 18:48:49
+1  A: 

Scott Rosenberg'a blog. I recently read it and found some good posts. Scott Rosenberg is the author of Dreaming in Code.

Jahanzeb Farooq  2009-09-13 01:26:17
A: 

Perhaps it's not a "blog", but it never hurts to watch the original (c2) wiki. The link is to the quick changes screen so you can see all the recent edits.

Sean McMillan  2009-10-28 15:58:57
A: 

If you code in Perl, following the "journals" at use.perl.org is nice. The front page is OK, but I find it much more useful to follow the personal journal pages of the developers whose modules I use.

Sean McMillan  2009-10-28 16:02:45
A: 

Shameless plug: FettesPS

Psilokan  2009-10-28 16:03:36
+11  A: 

Fabulous Adventures In Coding

Dave  2009-12-07 17:24:43
+2  A: 

.NET Rocks podcast

Guy Starbuck  2009-12-07 17:25:01
Wish I could vote this one up more than once.
Cylon Cat  2009-12-07 17:38:06
A: 

ASP.NET: 4GuysFromRolla.

monksy  2009-12-07 17:26:05
+1  A: 

Dot Net Perls.

mkurek  2009-12-07 17:26:31
+3  A: 

MSDN Documentation

monksy  2009-12-07 17:26:45
is this a blog?
jeshan  2010-03-16 10:46:25
They have the MSDN blogs on there.
monksy  2010-03-16 18:39:06
+2  A: 

Stack Overflow - just browsing through the latest questions always opens up new ideas for me.

Scott Ivey  2009-12-07 17:26:48
+2  A: 

Hanselminutes podcast

Sam Meldrum  2009-12-07 17:27:28
A: 

Occasionally you can find gold bits in the MSDN Blogs

monksy  2009-12-07 17:28:00
A: 

DotNetKicks.com

DotNetShoutout

Two community news/vote sites.

Matt Brunell  2009-12-07 17:28:09
A: 

The Morning Dew (although as I'm in the UK it tends to be the Lunchtime Dew for me!)

PhilPursglove  2009-12-07 17:31:10
A: 

DNRTV.com ... .NET Rocks vcast

Chris Nicol  2009-12-07 17:34:15
+1  A: 

ScottGu and Rick Strahl are my favorite .NET blogs. Tons of useful content.

Josh Stodola  2009-12-07 18:21:41
A: 

For all you Erlang'ers out there (it's what the cool kids are doing.)

blog.beerriot.com -- Bryan Fink (one of the guys behind Riak.)

yariv's blog is also a good one.

magical liopleurodon  2009-12-10 03:11:49
+1  A: 

Programming Languages Comparison blog...

Tutkiun

Mayur  2009-12-25 04:48:46
A: 

www.hanselman.com

ydobonmai  2010-03-16 08:58:25
A: 

For .NET:

  1. Eric Lippert Blog
  2. Jon Skeet Blog
Bhaskar  2010-03-16 09:02:57

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