Change is a tenant of software engineering. Our industry constantly changes to meet the needs of innovation and requirements of our customers; further, we have a difficult responsibility to keep up with these trends. Since anyone can create a new blog and begin writing content, an information diet helps us decide where to start.
I should quickly mention that this doesn’t mean new blogs, new devs, or new content isn’t worth reading, of course, that’s not true, but with a limited amount of time, we should prioritise the content we choose to read. Similar to reading books that have a high rating, we want to read developer blogs that have obtained a reputation of knowledge and experience from many in the industry.
The best software development blogs
Below is a list of software developer blogs on programming and coding that I read to keep up to date with latest as a software engineer.
CSS Tricks
Everything you need to know about CSS in blog and guide form. CSS Tricks is a top resource for developers who need to find out how anything in CSS works. I definitely use their site as a main resource for figuring out the best practices to meet the designs of designers on my products!
Dev.to
An Open Source blogging community with various topics around software engineering. Follow your favourite tags, and authors, and enjoy the journey of learning together. Dev.to also has different events that you can participate in.
Josh W Comeau
Josh has quality articles on understanding CSS from the perspective of a JavaScript engineer. His courses, site, and articles all provide guidance on being a better dev while diving deep and learning how things work.
LogRocket
Log Rocket has an awesome product that lets developers quickly review the sessions of users on their site, helping to debug and fix issues. Their developer blog has content for all-around web dev, managing your career, and for devs looking to upgrade their engineering skills.
Rachel by the bay
Who doesn’t love a good tech war story we can all learn from?Rachel writes unique stories from her experiences as a software engineer. As a web developer, it’s always a joy to learn from different areas of the stack, and Rachel delivers articles from the perspective of a system admin.
Smashing Magazine
A magazine about CSS, Accessibility, UX, and more! I really enjoy their deep technical articles that continually teach and help the community to raise the bar. Additionally, they host conferences, workshops, and print books! I’m a huge fan!
Google’s web.dev
Learn the best practices of web development from one of the industry’s leading companies (Google). The web dev website and developer blog provide practical knowledge on common challenges and implementations across the web!
Netflix TechBlog
I’m a bit biased since I’m a Software Engineer at Netflix, but one of my favourite blogs for a long time has been the Netflix engineering blog. I’m a huge fan of streaming technology, and this developer blog explains how many of these systems work. I think there’s a lot of cutting-edge technology here and so it’s a goldmine for developers in the streaming space.
Extra: for other company programming blogs, check out this git repo.
A List Apart
You’ll find that the articles hosted on this website explore everything from web development practices to cutting edge theory and technology. I’m always encouraged to think further into the future. This site has been around since 1997 and there’s a reason for that — mostly great content moderation.
Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror
Jeff Atwood is the creator of StackOverflow and the StackExchange network. So Jeff’s a big deal and there’s a lot we can learn from him. Thankfully, he openly shares his knowledge and learnings on his coding blog. Jeff is all about learning and growth so you’ll be encouraged along with him, plus he’s a huge advocate for software development — it’s nice to read someone who’s truly passionate about building.
WeAreDevelopers Magazine
The WeAreDevs Magazine is dedicated to everything related to job search, career progression and tech trends. The magazine offers a range of resources for beginner developers breaking into the scene as well as helpful tips and tricks for those more experienced in frontend and backend engineering.
All Things Distributed
What if you could sit down with Amazon’s CTO and learn what it means to build highly scalable distributed systems? All Things Distributed is the tech blog of Wener Vergel, who happens to be the CTO of Amazon. What a great source of information to learn from!
Martin Fowler
Martin Fowler’s blog covers a huge range of topics on software development and technology. He also shares best practices and patterns for designing software and architecting systems, along with thoughts on the future of software development. He’s well known, has many great talks, and provides insightful articles to make us better devs.
Martin Kleppman
The author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications (2016), Martin Kleppman writes about what it takes and what to consider when building applications for the real world. I’m a huge fan of his work and have learned so much from his book, check it out if you got some free time.
Quastor
This software blog does a great job at summarising popular engineering blogs, almost like SparkNotes for engineering. You can quickly read all the latest thoughts in one place. Quastor also sends out a newsletter which is quite similar in that it provides summaries, links, and more info for improving development skills.
Farnam Street
As software engineers, we need to constantly assess our biases and decision-making skills. For me, Farnam street’s software blog has been incredibly helpful when it comes to raising the bar with decisions and approaching critical situations in a thoughtful way. The psychology of decision-making is really fascinating, and I feel like, just from reading Farnam, I’ve elevated my skills in this area.
Paul Graham’s Essays
Paul Graham writes on various topics about life. His essays are thorough and thought-provoking. These are not articles you just read and forget. I’m often thinking about Paul’s essays for weeks — that’s the level of insight he provides.
Rands In Repose
Improving your leadership skills is integral to any software engineer — especially as you level up the IC track. Rand is full of great leadership advice, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to listen when someone like Rand is willing to share his thoughts on the subject. Lots of actionable advice and tidbits you can apply to your workplace.
Will Larson
This is where you can learn all about leading a software organisation from the CTO of the Calm app. Will Larson’s articles are thoughtful, interesting, and educational. He has articles about various topics from leadership, to answering interview questions, to running a software org; all fun to read about!
Staff Eng
Staff roles and responsibilities in tech are… well, let’s just say…not well defined. Each company has differing needs from its IC leaders. So I’ve found a great way to learn about this space has been from the people that worked in those positions — and NOT from company descriptions. Staff Eng interviews staff engineers working throughout the tech industry to hear their challenges and stories. This will give you real and raw insights into IC leadership.
Am I missing any developer blogs?
It’s no easy task to document all of the best programming blogs in the software industry. I’m sure I’ve missed some great blogs out there, these are just some of the more popular ones I’ve found and that I stay up to date with. That being said, if you know of any blogs for developers that you think should be on this list, let me know!