As a coder, it’s important to stay hip with the times. The tech landscape is huge. There is new stuff happening all the time. You don’t need to be an expert in everything but it’s important to know what tools are out there so you can pick up the skills you need as you need them.
And on the other hand coding has a solid core of good practices and hard-won lessons you should become expert at. There are certain meta-skills that will make the acquisition and use of other skills way easier. There are some skills that will amplify your abilities forever.
What follows below are a few favorites. This list will change from time to time. So watch this space :)
It’s worth talking about this before we get going. A lot of techies like to do random little tutorials on the Internet then claim they know a skill so they can put it on their CVs. Eg, do the Django tutorial, then put Django on their CV.
Collecting random skills to make your CV look better is a waste of time. It makes you and your peers look bad. A lot of people just dont trust junior devs because their cv’s are mostly bollucks.
Build a meaningful CV by building real things. Eg let’s say you want to learn how to use Apollo.
These cost money but are seriously worth reading! Try get hold of a copy if you can.
Let’s think about carpentry for a moment. There are some people who can barely nail two pieces of wood together, and then there are masters of their craft. These books are about software as a craft, how to know good from bad, how to optimize your own efforts, where to pay attention.
These aren’t about specific technologies, they’re about your craft.
If there is a resource that you find useful for staying up to date and awesome, please feel free to make a pull request ;)