How To Keep Up To Date As A C# Developer

As a developer, I bet you have a life long passion for learning and with the technology, there is always something exciting going on right now. Thus, how do you navigate in this world of constant change and keep up to date with news, which matters to a smart C# developer?

Blogs

There are plenty of great blogs about various topics related to C# but you don't have to get too far away from good old MSDN blogs.

The Visual Studio Blog

Most of the C# developers use Visual Studio. It is great to have IDE and the Visual Studio team blogs regularly about new features, plugins and tips, which will make you more productive.

.NET Blog

Wanna see what's new with the core platform? Follow this blog and you won't miss anything related to .NET Framework.

.NET Web Development and Tools Blog

If Web is your main domain, you want to follow ASP.NET team and what they are working on. Recently, they started publishing their weekly standups with the notes, which gives you a sneak peek into how the platform is being developed. Nowadays, following a single blog is not the best strategy to get your news. There are lot of interesting blogs and articles and you need to be subscribed to numerous RSS feeds. Selecting what to read will be time consuming and this brings me to the next section.

Newsletters

Newsletters are a medium, where someone else takes the time to curate the content for you. The traditional ones will land into your inbox on the periodical basis and there are few in a form of a blog.

C# Digest

C# Digest is a weekly newsletter, which sends you only five carefully selected links every Monday. Just five? But they are the top-notch. If you want to follow only one source, this would be it — one article for each working day. There is lot of love and hard work behind the content curation.

The Morning Brew

Every morning Chris Alcock sends an update of what happened in the world of .NET Web development. He is mostly focused on ASP.NET and the world of Javascript.

Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Alvin Ashcraft puts together a daily list of more well-rounded resources than Chris. You can find news on WPF, databases, Powershell, development methodologies and Web programming.

Programming Digest

This is a similar format to C# Digest but the theme is more of a general programming. Thus, if you want to keep an eye on what is happening outside Microsoft world, this one would be a perfect to add to the mix. Again, only five high quality links weekly to your inbox.

Podcasts

I love listening to programming podcasts, as I can do it during my daily commute, exercising or even house chores. The information density is not that high but you can't really read a book while vacuuming, right?

.NET Rocks!

Richard and Carl are not just awesome interviewers but also funny entertainers. .NET Rocks! has been around for ages and not just .NET programmers listen to it. That's how good it is.

Hanselminutes

Scott Hanselman is a big name in the ASP.NET community but his podcasts are often way beyond just that. Every guest is so interesting that you don't want to miss an episode.

Channel 9

For me personally, video doesn't work that well, as other media but Channel 9 has been recommended to me multiple times as a free source of talks and interviews from Microsoft world.

Communities

Don't underestimate the power of conversations. Many times, I found myself talking to a stranger at .NET meetup that pointed me to a few excellent resources and told me what's going on in his field of work. Content curation and digestion in real time is underrated.

Meetup

Meetup is a great site to find a local .NET user group. It is popular in lots of countries and if by any chance, your one is not there, I'm pretty sure there is a local alternative to it. Hence, just use Google and start participating.

I live in Wellington, New Zealand and it has a very active Wellington .NET User Group with regular talks and pizza — Bevan is doing an excellent job of running it.

Reddit

Reddit is a classic in the technology sphere. The /r/csharp is a source of interesting links and interesting questions with answers, ranging from beginners to experts. As it could be an opposite in other subreddits, beginners are treated fair with respect here and moderators are doing a amazing job of keeping the content relevant.

Discord

Discord is quite new to me, but I've heard, it is super popular amongst gamers. It is a Slack on steroids and there is a thriving C# community, which is very helpful and would love to have you as a member.

And what about you? What resources do you follow? What is your preferred way to stay up to date?