Great technical resources to keep in mind
Tags: productivity, reading, resources, learning
Published: 2023-02-17 19:53:30

---
title: Great technical resources to keep in mind
published: true
description: A set of technical resources you can use to help keep up your skills
tags: 'productivity, reading, resources, learning'
cover_image: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/ales-nesetril-Im7lZjxeLhg-unsplash.jpg'
canonical_url: null
id: 1369844
date: '2023-02-17T19:53:30Z'
---

Over time I've found a bunch of websites and resources I like to use to either help learn or keep on top new industry trends.  This list is going to be fairly general, but I think you can probably figure out I've got some specific interests.

## [GitHub](https://github.com/)

![GitHub trending](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/roman-synkevych-UT8LMo-wlyk-unsplash.png)

If your not sure where to start the trending page, which can be found [here](https://github.com/trending) is always a good place to start as it's full of things that other people have found interesting, and usually it's a pretty good mix of massive projects as well as the incredibly focused.  However, if you're looking for some repositories to check out ion particular:

- Basically all the [awesome lists](https://awesome.digitalbunker.dev/), but in particular:
  - [Awesome](https://github.com/topics/awesome)
  - [Awesome DevOps](https://github.com/wmariuss/awesome-devops)
  - [Awesome Sysadmin](https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin)
  - [Awesome Web Development](https://github.com/mrmartineau/awesome-web-dev-resources)
  - [Awesome-Selfhosted](https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted)
- [Learn X in Y](https://learnxiny.github.io/)
- [Free programming language books](https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books)
- [Professional programming](https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming)

There is a huge amount more than this and frankly most of this list is hosted on there in some capacity, so really all you need to do to find stuff is do a quick search.

Additionally, if you're in the mood for something a little more "old school" there's [SourceForge](https://sourceforge.net/directory/)

## [Stack Overflow Developer Survey](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey)

![survey](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/stackOverflow.png)

The 2022 survey can be found [here](https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/).  I think this is pretty self-explanatory, but I really enjoy the reading the most years as it gives you an insight into what's happening in the industry and also what other people are enjoying working with.  It's helped me in the past to discover and start working with new technology, such as I've recently been working with Svelte, in part because of its high rating in the Loved vs Dreaded graph for web technologies.

## [Humble Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/bundles)

![Humble Bundle](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/humbleBundle.png)

There is nearly always something technical on the humble bundle that catches my interest.  For example, at the time of writing this article there are 2 book bundles available that are related to technical topics and 5 software bundles that go from game design to coding.  It's something I check semi-regularly to see if there's anything I want to pick up.

## [Back Blaze Drive Stats](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2022/)

![back blaze](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/backBlaze.png)

If you've not heard of Back Blaze it's a company based around cloud storage.  As a result, they go through a lot of hard drives, and they tell us about them.  While the blog in general is pretty interesting reading (such as [this](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/) article on how long a hard drive lasts) I'm specifically calling out the quarterly drive failure rates because of the sheer scale this company has running out there.  Also, if you've ever suffered data loss, it's nice to know the replacement isn't a dud.  While for "normal" usage this isn't *that* useful, but if you're data hoarder it's pretty much essential reading.

## [Privacy Tools](https://www.privacytools.io/)

![privacy tools](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/privacyTools.png)

This is a repository of software that's all about software concentrated on privacy and helping you keep it private online. While I don't wear tinfoil hat (and clearly not too bothered as I'm posting this publicly), I don't think we should make it easy for companies to use our data for free.  There's also a multitude of security risks inherent in just leaving your data lying around.

## [Tech news websites](https://arstechnica.com/)

There's a lot of these around, but I tend to find myself reading Ars Technica when I can as the topics are usually what I find interesting.  In general, I like to keep up to date on tech news as I work in the industry and understanding what's going on elsewhere is always good to know.  Also, I like tech and so the reviews are always nice to help figure out if a product is worth buying.  As I said, just find one you generally agree with and read the first few articles.

## [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/)

![YouTube](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/youtube.png)

Talking about YouTube does feel a little bit like teaching grandma to suck eggs, but it's still worth mentioning as there so many great channels out there that whenever I'm finding something new to learn, one of the first things I'll do is go on YouTube and see if there are any reviews or overviews for that software, so I can make a decision whether it's worth my time.

Some of my personal favourite channels are as below:

- [Fireship](https://www.youtube.com/@Fireship)
  - Mainly web dev tutorials and excellent short videos on various frameworks and languages
- [Aarthificial](https://www.youtube.com/@aarthificial/featured)
  - A devlog channel with some seriously impressive content
- [Lawrence Systems](https://www.youtube.com/@LAWRENCESYSTEMS)
  - In depth reviews and discussions mainly around networking and NAS
- [Craft Computing](https://www.youtube.com/@CraftComputing/featured)
  - This channel is mostly based around homelab and self-hosting

## [Stock](https://unsplash.com/) [Images](https://www.pexels.com/)

This section is pretty short, but a fair number images I use in the articles I've written so far come from stock image sites.  Currently, I use a mixture of images from Pexels and Unsplash.  Both of which contain licences for you to freely use the images without attribution.

## [Homelab Wiki](https://thehomelab.wiki/)

It can be a little find things on the website, but there's some excellent tutorials and features on homelab, if you dig a bit.

## [Blogs](https://www.google.com/)

Following a few major blogs is useful for finding high quality content from writers you trust.  DEV.to obviously has a load of these, but I'm more looking outside the platform.

### [LinuxServer.io](https://www.linuxserver.io)

![Linux server](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jlewis92/DevToArticleRepo/main/markdown/assets/dev/coolDevStuff/linuxServerIo.png)

Self-proclaimed "largest collection of Docker images on the web", and definitely feels like it, given they're maintaining over 100 docker images.  Although specifically, I'm calling out their excellent [blog](https://www.linuxserver.io/blog).

### [Netflix tech blog](https://netflixtechblog.com/)

Did you know that [nearly 10% of global internet usage is Netflix?](https://www.sandvine.com/press-releases/sandvines-2022-global-internet-phenomena-report-reveals-explosion-in-heavy-app-usage-and-app-complexity-with-video-everywhere) The Netflix tech blog is pretty famous for providing high quality articles based around the problems and solutions they encounter running one of the world's largest content distribution platforms.

### Cloud Blogs

Pretty much every cloud provider operates a blog containing information about services offered and also case studies into their operations.  These can be really useful to browse occasionally just to see what's happening.  Here's just a short selection of a few of them:

- [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/)
- [GCP](https://cloud.google.com/blog/)
- [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/)
- [Linode](https://www.linode.com/blog/)

## [RegExr](https://regexr.com/)

I use regular expressions all the time in my career, I've gone through several websites, but I keep coming back to RegExr because the simple interface makes it straightforward to see what's going on due to the instant feedback.

## [Pre-Commit](https://pre-commit.com/index.html)

This is the website for the git pre-commits project.  I have mentioned this website previously, but the reason this site is so useful is that it tracks and lists a lot of the pre-commits you can use. When I start a personal project, I like to check and see if there's anything which I can use to help me out.