They used to call super new apps “unicorns.” Now, that’s so last year! Any app developer looking to revolutionize the market must stay alert and aware in an industry where everything runs faster than unicorns.
Writing for The New York Times, Brian X. Chen remembered, “When the market started to take off, anyone with a bit of tech-savviness could download some tools, read some books or take some lessons and then whip up an app.”
You have choices.
The web serves people who use it well. The list of top websites for developers is long. Here is a list of 10 of the most useful and popular sites among developers, students and pros.
Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/) is a social community of developers, programmers, and startups. Experts drop in and out offering insights and opinions in terms only understood by their peers. Participants vote submissions up; they cannot vote them down until the user builds up points. Geared to reward positive contributions, Hacker News still struggles to find its own voice.
Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/) carries “news for nerds.” Members submit industry news items, and a team of editors publishes a one paragraph summary with an invitation to continue the thread. A points-based karma system moderates offensive and unqualified participants out of community participation.
Reddit Programming (https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/) remains the community standard. The best of the best stay tuned to Reddit for news and trending. Visitors don’t have to be members to read the front page where stories get placement as a result of positive votes. Note: Programming is only one subject category in the broader Reddit.
DZone (https://dzone.com/) is more visually interesting and engaging than the previous communities. It’s an actual website, not just a number of threads and conversations. They market themselves as the leading publisher of software developer content.
StackExchange (http://stackexchange.com/) follows a Question and Answer format instead of forum threads. Users vote on which questions and which answers move to the top in a gaming points system. Questions are fresh and unusual, and on a recent page, there were 239,000 questions evoking 400,000 plus answers. Askers compete to make list of top questionnaires on the landing page.
A List Apart (https://alistapart.com/) is a clever name for a website dedicated to “people who make websites.” A library of informative articles, it invites writers to contribute (and provides extensive directions on submissions). It’s more about content than programming and development.
SitePoint (https://www.sitepoint.com/) posts articles, ebooks videos, and tutorials for designers, developers, entrepreneurs, and programmers. The variety of material has plenty to offer to the novice too.
MIT OpenCourseWare (https://ocw.mit.edu/) brings MIT’s prestige to students everywhere. MIT made the historical decision to makes it work available at no cost to serve its students better, to share their wealth with the world, and to drive its professors to keep their work fresh. It offers active learning, problem solving, digital tools, design processes, and more.
Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/) offers selected courses from many top universities on a variety of subject majors. Currently, courses are priced by individual course, specialization, or degree. That makes it a for-profit education with your freedom to select from the best educators at the best universities.
Code Academy (https://www.codecademy.com/) markets itself as a solution to old and broken education models, “the first truly net native education.” It offers extensive code learning opportunities for beginners. They also offers live sessions and subscription membership at a cost.
Where do web developers go when they need news? Finding the hottest sites in the web developers’ world presents the same problem facing everything hi-tech: There’s just so much out there.
