I probably have somewhere between 50 or 100 ideas that I like to work on.
Here is an interesting thing that happens, and I encourage everybody else to do this: Start writing down every idea you get... And then, start embelishing them... think about... How would you price it? How much do you think it would cost? Turn a line into a paragraph, into a page, and it that process, pretty soon, something is gonna talk to you...
Here goes a compilation of the best resources I know for learning programming in the internet. Some of them are free, some of them are not, but they are definitely worth paying for. In no particular order:
Safari Books Online is the biggest library on the internet for technical and business books. They have sort of 20000 books on every technology, discipline, methodology and technique that you can imagine. Not only they have all the classics on stock, they also get a huge number of books in alpha version (what they call rough cuts), so that you can access a book even months before it is published. Isn’t that awesome…
You can read the books on the your computer (html or flash), but they also have a great iPad app, with the option of an offline bookshelf if you are on the run and have no connection. Subscriptions start from something around 12$ dollars and access to 5 books per month, but you have the option of a free 10 day trial.
Pluralsight
Pluralsight is the e-learning reference for .NET in the web. They have courses given by top notch developers on absolutely everything: Windows 8, Windows Phone 7, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET, WCF, Design Patterns, C#, F#, C++, IronRuby, Business Intelligence, WPF, Silverlight, Entity Framework, SQl Server, and the list goes on.
Rob Conery is one of my favorite developers out there, and he is a great, great teacher. It was through him that I learnt IoC, TDD and ASP.NET MVC, and all via TekPub. TekPub feels a little bit more personal than Pluralsight and has courses by awesome developers like John Skeet, Ayende Rahien, Scott Hanselman and Steven Sanderson among others.
Main topics are .NET, Ruby and best practices.
Code School
Code School’s approach to e-learning is absolutely amazing and out-of-the-box. They are the creators of the notorious Rails for Zombies - which by the way you can do for free - with courses with a high degree of interaction and game elements. All their courses are very practical and they always provide small controlled runtime environments so you don’t need to install anything on your machine when going through the courses.
Kudos to these people! Absolutely awesome job indeed.
Team Tree House
Team Tree House is mainly focused in web development, web design and iOS development. Their e-learning model consists mainly in a series of courses that provide both videos and exercises, also with game elements, badges and the like. Particularly interesting are what they call Projects, which are end-to-end tutorials of real world web development projects. Subscription plans start from 25$/month.
Udacity
If you like something that feels more like university classes, then Udacity is the right match for you. It is completely free and truly awesome. You can, for instance, learn the foundations of computer science and how to program in python by building a web crawler, or learn algorithms to analyze relationships between people in social networks. They have a dozen courses or so and growing, on a variety of software development topics, perhaps more from a Computer Science perspective but very practical and fun to follow nonetheles.
[Tuts+ Premium][] is my first stop for technical design knowledge, that is, how to use Photoshop, Illustrator and the like. They also have an ever increasing offer on web development courses.
PeepCode
PeepCode is one of the best resources for Ruby on Rails screencasts and courses on the internet. Instead of having a subscription plan, screencasts and courses are sold individually or in packs.
In Summary
So that is about it. Those are my favorite resources for keeping my programming skills up to date. So, which one are yours? Am I missing any?
Back from vacations! How nice and comforting to be back into my routines once more… Going to the gym, going for a run, working on side-projects, no more dreadful airports nor train stations… (Hmm, I have to remember to write a blog post about how airports are broken from an UX approach xD).
Anyhow, I did not really find the time to be near a keyboard/computer during my vacations and much less for the beautiful art of coding but I did definitely squeeze some time for reading! Three magnificent books that I would love to recommend to you programmers of any background and condition. They are more leaning towards best practices and methodologies, so soft read that I am sure you will be able to devour in no time.
This week was full of anticipation for me. I had been looking forward for a long, long time to the release of Indie Game: The Movie - what looked to be a breathtaking documentary about independent game development - and it was finally released! And it did definitely deliver. It blew my mind, it was so great, raw and personal… there is something magical and contagious about very passionate people talking about that single thing they devote their lives to… a real pleasure to behold ^_^ See the trailer below, and tell me it isn’t appealing…
With the twenty-first century comes a new breed of struggling independent artist: the indie game designer. Refusing to toil for major developers, these innovators independently conceive, design, and program their distinctly personal games in the hope that they, too, may find success.
After two years of painstaking work, designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes await the release of their first major game for Xbox, Super Meat Boy—the adventures of a skinless boy in search of his girlfriend, who is made of bandages. At PAX, a major video-game expo, developer Phil Fish unveils his highly anticipated, four-years-in-the-making FEZ. Jonathan Blow considers beginning a new game after creating Braid, one of the highest-rated games of all time.
P.S. Malin, my non-geek lovely girlfriend, also loved it! xD
After a little more than a week on my homeland in Spain, Malin and I are heading to Luleå to enjoy of my last week of vacation! :) Haven’t had time to touch a keyboard for longer than minutes! Have a nice one everybody!
