Experienced software developers are highly disciplined when it comes to allocating time to research new technologies, techniques and experimentation. A good software developer/architect will allocate around 10~15 hours each week to research and development activities. However, the reality is that few developers invest enough time into the aforementioned activities, therefore fall behind the curve.
The main challenge is time! Developers are frequently working towards hard deadlines and therefore do not have the time to browse blogs, identify the latest trends, watch podcasts, attend local/virtual events, read books, etc. Quite simply “finding” relevant information is challenging and can take considerable time.
There are many information sources that developers can follow daily to ensure they are up to date with current trends. Some useful sources of information include; Medium.com, TechCrunch, SDTimes, Code Project and Stack Overflow. Even just monitoring these websites for topics of interest can be a time-consuming challenge.
A time-saving tip from Software Development UK is to utilise the daily.dev developer feed aggregator tool. This solution enables developers to specify the technologies they are interested in, then it does the hard work and finds all the relevant information feeds and presents them within a dashboard.
Now you have more time on your hands, time to make a coffee and chill!
