Slashdot Mirror
Best Websites for Developers?
Recently, I've been entertaining the idea of getting into a little Java programming for a side project I'm working on, and I realized that I really don't know where to start. This led to a larger question of what the best books and websites are for pepole new to a language. What about for the experts in a language? So this week, I was wondering what slashdotters thought are the best websites to go to for information on the major languages (like C, C++, PHP, Perl, etc) and the important topics in programming (x, gtk, win32, etc). I obviously have some opinions on some of the better places to visit, but I wanted to see what slashdotters thought. (hence the paucity of links in this story) Where do people find the authorities? My intention is to ask about web sites this weekend, and books next weekend.
Check www.w3tutorials.com out for anything internet
The site w3 has tones of information, including all objects and such for ADO, ASP (VBscript/Jscript) and what not. Even how to make SQL queries in case you forget :)
For PHP stuff checkout PHPBuilder. developer.com sometimes has good stuff too for all languages and technologies.
Programmer's Heaven has tons of information on Assembler, Basic, C / C++, C#, Delphi & Kylix, Java, Java Script, Pascal, ,Perl, PHP, Python, VB, and VB.NET.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
i used to go to phpbuilder.com many times a day and answer all the questions in forums...
after they sold the site, i don't visit as much, but it is still the best place for a newbie PHP developer to go and get some good help.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
For Java news, I turn to http://www.cafeaulait.org/ and for XML news, I go to http://www.cafeconleche.org/. Eliotte Rusty Harold does a really good job on these sites. They tend to be no BS, and keep you updated on what's goin' on in both the open source and payware worlds (with definite props to open source). Highly recommended.
just my blog and pix
I owe my job to the wonderful
online documentation at php.net
php documentation
I have bought a few PHP books,
and nothing compares to having
a bookmark to the online documentation.
I have noticed, that books tend
to write examples in an OO style,
and that is not something that
comes across from reading the
code snippets in the comments
in the online documentation.
If you are new to the language make sure you visit the tutorials page and the api javadoc documentation.
All your favorite sites in one place!
Java, Cocoa, Objective C, Free BSD (Darwin) ......
http://developer.apple.com
Not only does it provide reference guides, but tutorials, examples etc. The quality of the information is as good or better than professional publishing houses. And the developer took kit (i.e., IDE) is free.
You do need to sign up for most of the features, just like it is for New York Times (blah blah blah)...
better yet... use google to search the damned thing instead of their search
google for site:msdn.microsoft.com
Developer Shed (all about using open source technologies):
http://www.devshed.com
Webmonkey:
http://www.webmonkey.com
Both are VERY good.
"... the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy" - Janov Pelorat
The following sites I use daily (I'm a prof. programmer, currently in Java):
http://java.sun.com
- tutorials, reference API's and language spec.
http://www.theserverside.com
- information about server-side programming,
news, general interest
http://otn.oracle.com
- SQL & PL/SQL reference, free account
http://jakarta.apache.org
- tools, toolkits & infrastructure
http://www.w3.org
- RFC's (like HTTP), HTML specs, CSS, etc.
http://www.slashdot.org
- when running tests or building (goofing off)
For technical questions about C++, you really can't beat comp.lang.c++.moderated. I browse it a lot, but rarely post. Despite studying the langauge for 3 years, my knowledge of the langauge is like nothing compared to the better posters there.
Google Groups for the comp.lang.c++.moderated
A lot of very knowlegible people post there, people who have sold quite a few books about C++ and members of the C++ standardization committee.
Another good site for advanced C++ stuff is the C/C++ Users Journal, a lot of the aforementioned C++ authors post articles, often that are chapters from books.
I like the Shareware Courseware site. There are self-study courses for servlets, JSPs and EJBs.
HTML Help
.asp sites out there, but my guess is that's not what slashdotters are looking for....
WASP would be a good place for all newbs to start.
WASP
Find Tutorials is a good general tutorial finder.
PHP
First LAMP tutorial
PHP.net
PHP Help
There are tons of good
But for arcane Win32 API calls you can't beat Google Groups. The Microsoft MVPs hang out in the developer groups and give useful information from time to time. (And wrong information sometimes too.)
The only downside to Usenet is when you find the only post with the same problem as you is from 1996 and received 0 replies.
Random is the New Order.
Books and documentation sites are great for reference, but I like to see code, expand upon and snip it. Planet Source Code has a bunch nicely organized with user ratings.
http://www.ibm.com/developer
Let me plug my favorite developer site: Perlmonks: the online community of Perl developers. Don't come expecting your hand to be held, but a little effort will be repaid several times over. Very many nice, knowledgeable people.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Though it's not (yet =) one of the "major" languages, but it's pretty awesome. Here are some things I've learned and resources I've discovered.
What is OCaml? In a sentence, "fast modern type-inferring functional programming language." But not only does it support the functional programming paradigm, but also imperative and object-oriented models. (These can be mixed in a single program.) OCaml is type-safe and garbage collected. (But even though it's garbage collected, it runs at speeds comparable to C and C++.)
Why use OCaml? Here are some good reasons:
What kind of things have been implemented in OCaml? Check out the Caml Hump.
OCaml was developed in France, so the "bible" of the language (O'Reilly's Développement d'applications avec Objective Caml - the camel book) is written in French, but a translation of the work by volunteers has been created. Check out Developing Applications with Objective Caml.
The language's official page at INRIA in France.
Another good OCaml page
Yay OCaml!
The Online Slang Dictionary
The Python home site is the place to go for any information on the subject. Links and documentation galore. And you Java guys should check out Jython -- a wonderful way to write and work with Java.
If you use Windows (I know, I know - "boo hiss!") and do web development check out HTML-Kit it's a fantastic editor. It as all sorts of plugins for javascript, perl, php etc and can use the online annotated PHP manual for context sensitive help (and probably others too). And it's Free as in Beer!
No, I'm not an O'Reilly employee, I'm just a big fan . O'Reilly has the best technical manuals I have ever seen from one place. But Safari is even better, it's a collection of 100's of good O'Reilly books, put into online format.
Of course something like this isn't free, but its not expensive either. About 10 bucks a month gets you the ability to "subscribe" to about 5 books for 30 days and read them online, or print them! (yes, the terms allow for printing). At the end of the 30 days you can trade in your books and subscribe to new ones. There are other levels of subscription also. It's been one of the best programming resources I've used in a long time. Not just articles and tutorials like you normally find, but real, published, books online, chapters of information. You can even bookmark pages, and add notes to them.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Since for me, anyways, Perl's usefulness is at least 50% about the HUGE body of modules already out there, I'd say the single most valuable Perl resource is CPAN. In fact, there are so many modules there and the numbers are increasing so rapidly that there are almost TOO many modules, creating an embarassment of riches...it's getting difficult to find just what you need because there is often more than a few modules out there to do it.
People
Richard Stallman -
Eric S. Raymond -
Larry Wall
Linux Programming
Linux Programming Resources -Kernel Traffic
Unix
Unix Review -Sys Admin -
Art of Unix Programming
Programming Methodologies
Extreme ProgrammingC Programming
Programming in C -Standard C -
C Library Reference -
GNU C Library
C++ Programming
David Beech's Introduction to C++ -C++ for C Programmers
Perl Programming
Perl Doc -Perl Monks -
Perl.com -
VMS Perl -
Use Perl
Network Programming
Beej's Guide to Network ProgrammingOpen Source
Open Projects -Sourceforge -
Slashcode -
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
A little off topic, but http://www.wotsit.org/ is a good resource for file format documentation.
Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java, now in it's third edition, is in my opinion the best book for learning Java. Thorough, thoughtful and thought-provoking: Available online free at www.bruceeckel.com.
I'm amazed that there is nothing here about Tcl. I use everything from shell to C to Perl, but Tcl is consistenly one of my favorite languages. I don't know why it doesn't get more respect.
Anyway, Activestate is a great place to start, especially the cookbook. The weekly Tcl-URL is published at Dr Dobbs. The Tcl Developer Xchange also has a lot of resources. Most of the major Tcl developers hang out in comp.lang.tcl (probably one of the most civil newsgroups there is). Quick answers to questions are always available there.
I have found it incredibly useful, and searching for functions a breeze. If you need to find out a function to perform a particular task, then do a quick google search or go onto irc.openprojects.net or some other server and join a channel and ask for a function - then look that function up on php.net.
If you don't know programming, then a resource I have found useful for web based programming (mysql & php specifically) is www.devshed.com, with tutorials on a few different topics.
For game related programming and a number of topics related to that (opengl, directx, ai, etc) then www.gamedev.net is excellent. For opengl you can't go past NeHe Productions.
Since one of the major things in C++ is it's libraries, I find the two best references for that are:
1. SGI's STL Reference
2. Reference for iostreams and standard C library
And don't forget man pages in unices and msdn in windows.
I think www.ibm.com/developerworks is a wonderful place. I thoroughly enjoyed articles by Gentoo Robins especially the ones on threads on Linux. And the security section is fabulous. I think it is a must read
If you're going for windows programming at all, of course you need a few sites:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/.
http://www.codeproject.com/
http://www.codeguru.com/
I recently discovered another site which has saved me alot of trouble, though I doubt a linuxweenie would ever need it: WinForms FAQ
[o]_O
http://geocities.com/tablizer/oopbad.htm
(Back, evil moderator, back! Sit!)
Table-ized A.I.
This place is a very good reference for practically any web language you want to work in.
ADO, ASP, CSS2, HTML, JavaScript, Jet SQL, VBScript, WML, WMLScript, WSH, XHTML, XML DOM, XSLT are all covered.
PHP: PHP.net
Comments: If you've got a programming background, this website is all you need. If you don't have a programming background, an introductory book and this website is all you need.
HTML, Javascript, DHTML, XML, DTD, etc.: W3Schools.com
Comments: Good introductions to a ton of topics on the left-hand side.
SQL: SQLCourse.com
Comments: The first place I ever pointed my students to for SQL and probably the perfect quick source for anything up until the level of stored procedures, transactions, etc., which vary depending on the DB implementation anyway.
C++/C/Java textbooks: ACCU.org
Comments: Lots of book reviews on a bunch of topics. To be honest, I still haven't seen a website that covers these three languages as well as good books do.
After all this, hone your google and google.groups skills and you should be able to solve any problem.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki
The sister (brother?) site of Developerworks is Alphaworks. It's a great place to find cutting edge software and several open source projects.
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
For a new topic, I usually go to www.cetus-links.org, which is a very comprehensive collection of links,books, articles,... for almost any language, buzzword, and technique...
And well-maintained, too.
C-C
The best resource from java, besides the sun's various documentations is http://www.jguru.com, not only do they provide tutorials for basic things like Java Exceptions, but also allow you to post questions regarding different issues like various configurations of servers like Apache tomcat, Weblogic, etc. Jguru is an excellent way to see what the real life problems are, and what solutions are there.
[alk]
Dive Into Python, a free online book for advanced programmers
Python FAQT, user-expandable knowledge base with great questions and answers
Python Library Reference, ed. by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. [need I say more?]
Python Tutorial, ed. by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr.
The Whole Python FAQ
Since I cannot see them, my .02:
http://www.theserverside.com -> J2EE news, great level. Also J2EE patterns and book drafts. Great community.
http://www.jguru.com -> great faqs (quite in-depth content) and introductory texts also. Not any news, though
http://java.sun.com -> search for the blueprints, and the javaOne slides each year to follow the state-of-the-art on java technology, resumed. The community sucks, though.
http://c2.com -> not java, but great pattern repository, great community, and take years to read *part* of it.
The problem with on-line C++ is that many people who claim to write about it don't know their subject, and consequently write superficially correct code that actually sucks. I'm sorry to name names, but the much-recommended-here CPlusPlus.com is one such site; their "Hello, world!" program at the start of their isn't even correct. I'd give sites like that a miss if you're seriously interested in learning C++.
One good source of information about C++ (and many other programming-related subjects) on-line is the related Usenet newsgroups, particularly the group specifically for learners if you're just starting out, or the moderated C++ group for more advanced subjects.
Many of these groups also have helpful FAQs, available (as usual) via the Internet FAQ Consortium. Again, for those just starting out, I'd particularly recommend the alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ FAQ, which has links to helpful on-line resources, free compilers, etc.
There are a few web sites of which anyone in the C++ field should be aware.
There are a few decent on-line references to the standard library:
About the only decent on-line C++ tutorial I know of the electronic version of Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in C++" books. You can find a complete copy of these, and several of his other books, at his books web site. (He also has books on Java, C#, Python amongst other things, and all of his work I've read has been reasonably good.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.