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.

Comments

A Programmer's Heaven

[Sivar]

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.

devx.com

[ZxCv]

While not the most comprehensive site I've ever seen, devx.com has great discussion groups on just about every language I've ever used, and then some. I've never failed to get an answer to a question or a suggestion on a new algorithm from any of the groups I've posted to there. I'm sure there are better language-specific sites out there, but I've never seen a better site that covers so many languages.

For news, cafeaulait and cafeconleche

[dolanh]

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.

PHP, go to the source

[__aanonl8035]

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.

Re:msdn

[TeknoDragon]

better yet... use google to search the damned thing instead of their search

google for site:msdn.microsoft.com

My two favorites for web stuff.

[ictatha]

Developer Shed (all about using open source technologies):
http://www.devshed.com

Webmonkey:
http://www.webmonkey.com

Both are VERY good.

Top 3 Java Websites

[Carnage4Life]

The top 3 places that will always stay in my bookmarks are

• the Java tutorial,
• the Java API documentation and
• Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java (most recent version available for download here)

For advanced C++ stuff

[SilentStrike]

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.

For J2EE Tutorials

[dringess]

I like the Shareware Courseware site. There are self-study courses for servlets, JSPs and EJBs.

The best resource for developers

[seldolivaw]

As of about 5 minutes ago, this thread! :-)

IBM DeveloperWorks

[jsse]

http://www.ibm.com/developer

Perlmonks

[legLess]

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.

Here's a site for Objective-C programmers

[Dixie_Flatline]

Now that ObjC is making a minor comeback with OSX, here's a site that might be pertinent to some people:

http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_objective_c.html

And even if you don't know ObjC, it's always a good time to start. Object Oriented! C! Not C++! 3 big wins!

Re:Learn with Code

[realgagnon]

If you are looking for code snippets (Java or Javascript)
then it's good idea to check
my Real's HowTo. Many topics covered.

Bye.

O'Reilly Safari!

[antis0c]

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.

Re:O'Reilly Safari!

[Dr. Awktagon]

Second that... Safari completely rocks, especially for stuff you don't really want the physical book for. For example, a second book on a topic you're learning, or if you know O'Reilly's coming out with a new edition in July but you want to read the old one in June. Also if you want to just skim over a certain topic.

Forinstance, on one of my KDE desktops, I have a couple Safari books on Java sitting in a tabbed Mozilla window, constantly available at my fingertips, along with an open emacs window to cut and paste code.

The price increases as you go above 5 books, and drops again when you go below (they actually have several subscription levels and I think deals for companies, etc.).

It's not all O'Reilly books, they have PLENTY of other books too.

And the pages are just HTML, easy to print, copy source code from, etc. They even work in Lynx. They have a good search engine too, that shows results in context, and you can search all books, not just the ones you've paid for.

Great deal, I wish O'Reilly would push it more... though I could see how they might not want to cannibalize their regular book sales.

Give that a go, they have a free try before you buy offer.

For perl...

[tmark]

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.

Some I like...

[mbrod]

Here are some links I like to keep handy -

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 Programming

C 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 Programming

Open Source

Open Projects -
Sourceforge -
Slashcode -
The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Thinking in Java, 3rd Edition

[pato perez]

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.

zerg

[Lord Omlette]

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

C++ recommendation

[xerofud]

I've been reading Bruce Eckel's

"Thinking in C++" (available online)

Can't recommend it highly enough (if you need to code C++).

For Scheme (and Computer Science in general), the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs is hard to beat, and available online at MIT Press homepage, as is the book "How to Design Programs" (www.htdp.org). I also enjoyed reading Gary Knott's "Interpreting LISP" which can be downloaded off the web. For a nice intro to designing programming languages, check out the lecture notes available at:

http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2001/Lectu re s/

Experts Exchange (Windows Programming)

[JojoLinkyBob]

Experts Exchange is incredible.

It's a great place to post/respond to windows programming questions. It uses a point-based system, so everyone's encouraged to help each other out. I once was stuck in a rut with a complex problem and received a well-detailed response in a matter of minutes! High on my list.

www.devguru.com

[terradyn]

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.

some quickies...

[wrinkledshirt]

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.

The original wiki...

[patSPLAT]

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki

Alphaworks

[Twister002]

The sister (brother?) site of Developerworks is Alphaworks. It's a great place to find cutting edge software and several open source projects.

sites I visit almost every day

[Twister002]

Article Central - a collection of articles related to web development from all over the web. Updated sometimes every day, some times only every other day but always updated. They cover everything from Java to PHP to Macromedia products. Really a must if you are a web developer.

Devshed - I think someone already posted this link, but it's a really good source of tutorials and real world applications.

Freshmeat - Whenever someone tells me that they need a certain functionality, I look here first to save me some time.

Index.html and Index.css at Blooberry.com - no doubt the BEST HTML and CSS references available on the web. Tells you what elements and tags are supported by every browser out there, what version of the browser supports them, and any strange behavior that the browsers might exhibit related to that tag or element.

IBM Alphaworks - Lots of cutting edge software.

Java

[loconet]

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.

Python

[Ellen Spertus]

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

Many good C++ links + a warning or two

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

• You can get generally pretty sound book reviews for thousands of books on these and related subjects at the Association of C and C++ Users web site.
• Herb Sutter's web site has lots of informative and thought-provoking C++ articles by one of the guys who's advanced C++ programming technique a lot in recent years.
• Similarly, Scott Meyers' publications page has many worth-reading articles on C++.
• It would be remiss not to mention Boost, a collection of very good general-purpose C++ libraries. If you can't see how to do something with the standard stuff, the answer -- or a useful idea to find it -- may well be here.

There are a few decent on-line references to the standard library:

• Dinkumware make a standard library implementation, which is shipped with Visual C++ amongst other things, and provide some helpful documentation on-line. (NB: The version that shipped with VC++ 6 was flawed in many horrible ways, but that wasn't really Dinkumware's fault given the compiler limitations at the time when they wrote that library; please don't judge them by that alone.)
• SGI's implementation of the "STL" parts of the C++ standard library is excellent, and well-documented on-line.

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.)