Many people asked me how I keep updated with all the new JavaScript stuffs, how I know what to learn and where I find information. I found that this questions are common between people starting to learn how to code, Frontend or JavaScript. People starting in the industry.
That’s why I want to share how you can learn what to learn and where you can find information.
Originally published at https://sdx.im/articles/how-to-keep-updated-with-the-javascript-ecosystem
Find information
There’s a lot of places to find information. I found there are some places I always visit to get more info.
Mozilla Developer Network
Also known as MDN. This site is the documentation of web technologies. If you want to read about a HTML tag, a CSS attribute or a any JS related thing you must go there.
CanIUse
A really nice place to check the support of a feature in multiple browsers. It also gives you information about the usage of that browser (personal recommendation: if a browser doesn’t have more than 5% of usage don’t support it)
Specific documentations
Usually you use only a certain technologies, your personal stack. always check the documentation of that technologies to learn more, usually they have a blog, twitter accounts, a Github organization, etc. you can use to get more knowledge.
Awesome lists
Awesome is an idea started by sindresorhus. They are list of useful links about any technology. The main list (linked in the title) is a list of other awesome lists like awesome-javascript, awesome-react, awesome-redux, and more. This lists are really useful to find libraries, articles, talks, videos, etc. etc. about any specific technology.
Follow developers
Almost every developer have a Twitter account and they share a lot of interesting projects they’re working on or follow. And most important, they share ideas and have discussions you can read to learn a lot.
Because of that I created a Twitter List with many people, and follow them.
☝️ That’s the list, I always have a column in Tweetdeck with that list open. Try following that list of some members. They’re really awesome.
Read a lot
I’m always reading about the technologies I’m interested.
Medium
Medium it’s a great place to read, personally I like to follow tags which let me get articles from many authors and publications. The tags I follow are
- API
- Apollo Client
- Apollostack
- Authentication
- AWS
- Babeljs
- Cloud Computing
- Components
- Css in Js
- Css Modules
- Desktop App
- DevOps
- Django
- Docker
- Electrode
- Electron
- Electronjs
- Elm
- Erlang
- ES6
- Flux
- Functional Programming
- GraphQL
- High Order Component
- Iaas
- Immutablejs
- Isomorphic Applications
- JavaScript
- Json Web Token
- Kubernetes
- Meteor
- Microservices
- Monads
- Nextjs
- Nodejs
- NPM
- Observables
- Orchestation
- Paas
- Progressive Web App
- React
- React Native
- React Router
- Reactjs
- Recompose
- Redux
- Redux Saga
- Relay
- Reselect
- Rest Api
- Rxjs
- SaaS
- Server Rendering
- Serverless
- Service Worker
- Single Page Applications
- Styled Components
- UI
- UX
- Web Apps
- Webpack
- Websocket
I also follow some folks and publications like:
- React Redux (spanish)
- Udacity Eng & Data
- Netflix TechBlog
- Reactive Conf
- Apollo GraphQL
- Zeplin Gazette
- Airbnb Engineering & Data Science
- Several People Are Coding
- GET PUT POST
- Making Meetup
- Code Cartoons
- WalmartLabs
- Serverless Zone
- Aerolab Stories
- Entendiendo JavaScript (spanish)
- webpack
- MeetupJS (spanish)
- JavaScript Scene
- A Cloud Guru
- Slack Platform Blog
- Scale API
Engineering blogs
Many startups have engineering related blogs. In this kind of blogs they tell why they choose their stack or introduce technologies they create. Some of the publications I listed above are engineering blogs like the Slack Platform Blog, WalmartLabs and one of my favorites Netflix TechBlog. Other blogs:
Dev.to
Dev.to is a developer oriented community and blogging platform. It’s similar to Medium but only for development articles. Here you can follow tags or people and read a lot of articles and opinions about technology and development.
Personal blogs
I used to read a lot personal blogs, I still follow and read some blogs like PonyFoo or 2ality. Most of them migrated to Medium or dev.to meaning you can get more articles there.
Development blogs
Aside of Medium and Dev.to there are more blogs with many authors like CSSTricks, Codrops, Treehouse Blog, The npm Blog, The GitHub Blog, SurviveJS, Smashing Magazine, Scotch, React blog or Mozilla Hacks.
EchoJS
EchoJS is a website with the same idea of HackerNews, anyone can post interesting links, the only rules are they need to be JS related and in english. You can follow his Twitter account, access the website or follow the RSS feed to get all the links shared.
I found this site to be one of my biggest sources of links and articles about JS and related technologies. Instead of following a lot of blogs you can have a single curated list of articles.
Particularly the JS subreddit, and other specific subreddit like React, Frontend, React Native, Redux, GraphQL, etc. It’s the same idea as EchoJS, a curated feed of links.
Watch talks
I mentioned talks many times above. Watch talks and conferences about JS, the community is huge and we have many conferences about JS. The JSConf, alongside the country specific JSConf always have amazing talks.
Not only watch the talks in Youtube assist to them! There’re JSConf in many countries like JSConf AR, JSConf UY, JSConf CO, JSConf US, JSConf EU and more! And not only JSConf, NodeConf, NodeSummit, ReactConf, ▲ZEIT Day, etc.
Assist to meetups
Usually conferences are yearly. And only in capital cities. But meetups about any technology can be monthly, assist to meetups. A lot of cities have meetups and if your city doesn’t have one you can start it! Bring other developers and start doing meetups in your city.
Participate in communities
There exists many communities, they usually have a free Slack team you can join. ▲ZEIT community, ElmLang community, Reactiflux (react, RN, redux, GraphQL, Jest, Relay, etc.) community and more. Many development communities have their own Slacks, Discord or Gitter chats you can join.
Start participating can help you talk to the people who created the libraries and frameworks you use and with others in your same position.
Found useful Youtube channels
In Youtube exists a lot of channels, and some of them are related to development. Some cool channels you can follow are FunFunFunction, Facebook Developers, Netflix UI Engineering, Google Developers and node.js.
Many of them upload conferences videos, but other like FunFunFunction or Netflix UI Engineering upload videos specific for Youtube that are useful to learn more or watch different opinions about development.
Follow (and participate) in Github repositories
There’re many Github repositories you can follow and participate, that will let you know about the future of technologies you use daily. You can even participate sending Pull Requests, report or find bugs (and hopefully solutions to bugs) in their issues, they are awesome places to get more insights about frameworks or libraries you use.
Conclusion
There’re many ways to keep updated with technologies. Remember, development (and specially JavaScript and Frontend) is an always learning path. You’ll always be learning more and more and this has no end. So embrace that and keep learning!
Top comments (4)
While this is an impressive list, I wonder how often are you checking these?
I started to check medium less and less, dev.to is daily multiple times per day.
I use RSS for most blogs (personal and engineering) and for EchoJS and I check it usually one time per day, but sometimes I spent a few days without checking it.
The rest is mostly consume as I need, like MDN, caniuse, talks, docs and awesome lists. The most important part is to know there are those resources to use them when I need more information about something.
I also try to go to at least one meetup per month.
Oh and Twitter I use it multiple times per day.
My point was, that with such a long list - it will consume all of your time just to read all the new articles and having no life is bad - my back and neck already hurt from staying too much behind the computer.
Going to a meetup is a good thing - at least you meet people IRL.
Reading "only when you need it" is not really an option to stay updated, because I often land on very interesting stuff, I never thought of initially, so I usually follow a few related links to other articles, when I read something. However this quickly turns into wasting 2-3 hours, then probably another 2 trying things for fun (which is basically half of a working day).
I have a friend, who reads insanely fast (and is really brilliant) - I can barely catch to read half of the quotes he sends me after reading the entire article.
So the real question is - how much effort do you think one should put to keep up to date with all the new stuff.
PS: I'm a developer for over 25 years now and trying to keep up to date is quite challenging, even-though it's easy to understand it, having so much experience as I have. I can hardly imagine, what it is for someone who also has to pause for a moment and think about what he/she just read to understand it.
Ohh I understand now, even if I check some of those resources daily I don't read everything.
I think important to be able to discard something if you don't need it right now, I can still sit and read for many hours when I'm investigation about something and read a lot of articles and docs, but that is unusual.
Most of the time I read the title and that's it, only when a title is interesting or I saw multiple articles about the same thing or multiple people talking and sharing an article I go and read it.
Like if I saw a lot of people in Twitter talking about the library X I read its readme to learn more about it and check if it's interesting to me, then read docs and maybe articles/tutorials.
I don't spent a lot of time trying to be up-to-date.
PS: I'm 26 years old and with a baby, It's hard but not impossible, just learn how to discard, if you know something exists you can go and learn more about it when you really need it.