I’ve been doing a lot of interviews at work lately, and one of the questions I like to ask is what they read to keep current. In my job I am constantly evaluating new technologies and incorporating new things into our work, and it’s essential that I stay up to date with the latest in news, software development practices, gadgets, and just the field in general. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen something in my daily reading and used it in my work or at home. I rarely comment or contribute to the sites; I prefer just to watch and not participate in what’s usually a flame war by people with questionable qualifications. I read some of the sites at work, but most at home after work.
So here is my list of things I read daily in the industry:
- http://slashdot.org – I’ve been reading this for 10 years and have only commented a few times, but I check this many times a day and have used information I’ve found on this site for all kinds of things.
- http://news.yahoo.com – I read this a few times a day to keep up with the news in general. I’ve found this site is the best news aggregation site of the ones I’ve tried.
- http://finance.google.com – I use this to track a few stocks and look at relevant business news and new pay day loans opportunity’s.
- http://digg.com – I usually do this from home as it has interesting stuff in all kinds of categories.
- http://gizmodo.com – This site is useful for the latest in gadget and technology news.
- http://engadget.com – Almost identical to Gizmodo, and they often report on the same things, but sometimes they have a different interpretation.
- http://joelonsoftware.com – Joel Spolsky’s blog. Somewhat diluted with his own advertising for his talks and conferences, but often has good articles on managing a tech company.
- http://www.reddit.com/r/joel/ – This channel of reddit is for articles similar to the ones Joel writes.
- http://thedailywtf.com/ – Every day an article or two about some curious piece of code or business practice.
- http://www.lifehacker.com – Nifty tools and tricks for technology and geek life.
- http://fark.com – Mostly curious or silly news, this is great for keeping up with the strange stories that are likely to come up in conversations.
That’s every day, sometimes a few times during the day. I’d say I spend about 2 hours reading stuff each day, though only about 1/2 an hour to an hour of that is at work, and usually in a few spare moments while I’m in between meetings or tasks.
This list does a pretty good job of keeping me up to date in the world.