Fuck articles which are nothing more than tweets wrapped in ads and paragraphs which repeat the content of the tweets.

Yeah I know that software version x was released, I just read the fucking tweet! — I googled for more details, which points me at 10 mainstream tech news blogs, which are all in the business of fluffing up three sentences into 6 paragraphs without adding any value.

I wish Twitter just charged royalty fees to embed on for-profit websites.

Tech blogs be like:

"Hello world"

"Why i havent posted for 3 months"

Best way to learn dev tech is to choose the thickest book on the field and start reading it. Don't lose your time on blogs comparing what is the best framework If you do not know any of them... Select one and full blast!!!

what do you guys use to keep track of all the rapid tech changes, esp. in web development (javascript, react blabla).

any suggestions? news sites? blogs?

Does anyone writes any kind of tech blogs in their free time? If Yes, can you share it.

For some reason I find reading tech books a repelling activity. I'd rather spend longer hours googling SO issues, GH/GL tickets, reading blogs than reading a well recommended book on the topic.

But then again.. What is the difference between a series of blog posts and a book...? Not much of it. At least I cannot come up with how blog posts would be superior to a structured and many times reviewed book :) Many posts are lame or just skim through the topic. The same holds true with books too. So maybe it's worth getting that 200pages thin book instead..

I start reading about it, from their website, forums, blogs, etc.
Next thing I usually do is to take a look at stuff made of that tech and mess around to see what it looks like.
Then I pick a book about the subject, set up the basics and start from the very beginning, even if the prologue starts with "programming is..."
At some point I start to connect concepts previously seen in the first step with the chapter I'm in, or even identify elements discovered in the second step.
Works for me.

This is a part rant-part question.
So a little backstory first:
I work in a small company (5 including me) which is mostly into consultation (we have many tech partners where we either resell their products or if there is a requirement from one of our clients, we get our partners to develop it for them and fulfill the client requirements) so as you can see there is a lot of external dependencies. I act as a one-hat-fits-all tech guy, handling the company websites, social media channels, technical documentation, tech support, quicks POCs (so anything to do with anything technical, I handle them). I am a bit fed up now, since the CEO expects me to do some absurd shit (and sometimes micro manages me, like WTF I am the only one who works there with 100% commitment) and expects me to deliver them by yesterday.

So anyway long story short, our CEO finally had the brains to understand that we should start having our own product (which i had been subtly suggesting him to do for a while now!).

Now he came up with a fairly workable concept that would have good market reach (i atleast give him credits for that) and he wanted me to suggest the best way to move forward (from a both business and technical point of view). The concept is to have an auction-based platform for users to buy everyday products.

I suggested we build a web app as opposed to a mobile one (which is obvious, since i didnt want to develop a seperate website and a mobile app, and anyway just because we can doesnt mean we have to make a mobile app for everything), and recommended the Node/react based JS tech stack to build it.

At first he wanted me to single handedly build the whole platform within a month, I almost flipped (but me being me) then somehow calmed down and finally was able to explain him how complicated it was to single-handedly build a platform of such complexity (especially given my limited experience; did I mention that this is my first job and I am still in college, yeah!!) and convinced him to get an experienced back-end dev and another dev to help me with it.

Now comes the problem, I was to prepare a scope document outlining all the business and technical requirements of the project along with a tentative cost, which was fairly straightforward. I am currently stuck at deciding the server requirements and the system architecture for the proposed solution (I am thinking of either going with AWS - which looks a bit complicated to setup - or go with either Digital Ocean or Heroku):

I have assumed that at peak times we would have around 500-1000 users concurrently

And a daily userbase of 1000 users (atleast for the first few months of the platform running)

What would be the best way forward guys?

I did some extensive (i mean i read through some medium blogs! and aws documentation) research and put together the following specs (if we are going through AWS):

One AWS t3.medium ec2 instance for the node server (two if we want High Availability by coupling with the AWS load balancer and Elastic Beanstalk)

The db.t3.small postgres database

The S3 Storage bucket (100gb) for the React Front end hosting

AWS SNS for email/sms OTP and notification

And AWS CloudMonitor for logging amd monitoring.

Am I speculating the requirements properly, where have I missed??

Can u guys suggest what is the best specification for such a requirement (how do you guys decide what plan to go with)?

Any suggestions, corrections, advices are welcome

Do people know of good resources (books, blogs, YouTube channels, whatever) regarding advancing to the higher levels of the tech industry?

I can find lots of resources for how to get started in your career but as I've advanced it gets harder and harder to find guidance (this is not surprising, but still lamentable). I am currently one promotion away from Senior at my company and I have no idea what to expect beyond that.

Any suggestions?

I’ve become so indecisive in terms of knowing what I want from my career.
All I know is what I don’t want (to end up a in management)

I’m definitely getting a new job and right now it looks like I’ve got 3 offers on the table

Option 1, a previous company I worked for. Still the same problems with the company there as before but the work was interesting and unusual. and my line manager was a good guy.
They have practically no legacy code.
Not much in the way of company benefits but they’re local and it would be nice to see friends again.
So feels like the pull to this is strong.

Option 2, a fully remote company that I’ve been referred to by an ex-workmate.
They’ve not even tech tested me because they’ve read my blogs and GitHub repos instead and said they’re impress. So just had a conversation with them. I feel honoured that they took the time to look at what I’ve done in my own time and use that in their decision.
Benefits are slightly better than option 1 (more hols)
But they’re using .net 6 and get a lot of heavy use on their system and have some big customers. I think the work is integrations to start with and moving services into docker and azure.

Option 3, even though I’ve got an offer from this one but they can’t actually explain the work until We can arrange a call next week (they recruit and then work out what team your in, but Christmas got in the way of me having a call with them straight away)
It’s working on government systems and .net is their least used stack so probably end up switching to Java. Maybe other tech stacks too.
This place has much better benefits than option 1 and 2 (more hols and more pension), but 2 days a week in office.

All of the above pay the same salary.

Having choice feels almost as bad as having no choice.
It’s doing my head in thinking about it , (even tho I might as well not think about it at all until the call with option 3 happens).

On the one hand with option 3, using a tech stack that’s new to me might be refreshing, as I’ve done .net for 10 years.

On the other hand I really like c# and I’m very good at it. So it feels a bit like I should be capitalising on that and using my experience to shape how the dev is done. Not sure I and I can do that with option 3, at least for a while.
C# feels like it’s moving forward nicely and I’m not sure I can say the same for Java or other languages.

I love programming and learning new stuff but so unable to let things go. It’s like I have a fear that c# will move on without me and I’ll end up turning into one of those devs whose skills are a decade out of date.

Maybe the early years of my career formed me in this way.
Early on I worked at a company where there was a high number of Cobol devs who thought they had a job for life.
But then redundancies came and many left. Of those who stayed they had to cross train to Java and they just couldn’t do it.

I don’t think the tech was hard for them, I think they were just so used to not learning that they could no longer adapt.
Think most of them ended up retiring after trying to learn Java for a few years.

How do you learn new tech things---large things like framework, language, etc? Books, online courses, instructor-led course, blogs, randomly poking around?

I buy way too many tech books and spend way too many weekends reading them.

Watch an "Introduction" video about it, or read the docs/blogs on why and where to use this particular tech. If you find it useful, then get your head down and work. Watch every YouTube video, read company docs, read random blogs, read FAQs. Honestly, any source you can get your hands on.
And never forget to write more code than you read.
Consistency and hard work is the only key.
I still remember when I was first getting introduced to front end, I didn't sleep for 3 straight days and was studying all that I could.

There are blogs and chrome extensions for Designers, is there any web development blog/extension to update me daily on new tech/info/tricks 🤔

How do you guys keep up with new concepts and tech? Or what is your preferred source for this activity?

Conferences(in person or youtube)
ACM journals/SIGs
Research papers
Blogs/hackernews or the like
Books
Something else
?

Not sure if reading tech blogs in bed while falling half asleep is a sign of brilliance or insanity.

You know how the machine learning systems are in the news (and Ted talks, tech blogs, etc.) lately over how they're becoming blackbox logic machines, creating feedback loops that amply things like racism on YouTube, for example. Well, what might the ML/AI systems be doing with our code repositories? Maybe not so much yet, I don't know. But let's imagine. Do you think it's probably less worrisome? At first I didn't see as much harm potential, there's not really racist code, terrorist code, or code that makes people violence prone (okay, not entirely true...), but if you imagine the possibility that someone might use code repositories to create applications that modify code, or is capable of making new programs, or just finding and squishing bugs in code algorithmically, well then you have a system that could arguably start to get a little out of control! What if in squashing code bugs it decides the most prevalent bugs are from code that takes user input (just one of potentially infinite examples). Remember though, it's a blackbox of sorts and this is just one of possibly millions of code patterns it's finding troublesome, and most importantly it's happening slowly (at first). Just like how these ML forces are changing Google and YouTube algorithms so slowly that many don't notice the changes; this would presumably be similar and so it may not be as obvious as one would think. So anyways, 'it' starts refactoring code that takes user input into something 'safer'. Great! But what does this mean? Not for this specific example really, but this concept of blackbox ML/AI solutions to problems we didn't realize we had, what does a future with this stuff look like (Matrix jokes aside)? Well, I could go on all day with imaginative ideas... But talking to myself isn't so productive, let's start a fun community discussion here! Join in if you find this topic as interesting as I do! :)

Note: if you decide to post something like "SNN have made this problem...", or other technical jargan please explain it as clearly as possible. As the great Richard Feynman once said, the best way to show you understand a thing is to be able to explain it clearly to others who don't understand it... Or something like that ;)

Gonna start a tech blog next month. My problem is that I can't think of an interesting subject that can get me followers in the middle of this huge number of tech blogs. Any ideas would be very very appreciated. Thank you