What to read to become a better developer

Web development is a fast-changing field. New technologies and advancements appear every day, and web developers need ways to stay apprised of these changes.

Web Development Blogs and News Sites

Keeping up with web development trends while writing code can be a difficult task. Regularly reading blogs and news sites devoted to your areas of interest allows you to keep apprised of which technologies are on the rise and learn how to get up and running with a new one. Many offer an email subscription, which makes it easy to get the latest news directly from your inbox.

• Practical Typography. Web typography in ten minutes or less. By Matthew Butterick.

• Codrops publishes articles and tutorials about the latest web trends, techniques, and new possibilities in web design and development.

• CSS Tricks has guides covering almost every aspect of web development, but it leans more heavily on front-end development.

• Daily Dev Bytes aggregates web development news and articles from multiple sources, including blogs, Reddit, and other aggregators.

• The David Walsh Blog features guides and tutorials on almost every facet of web development and software engineering.

• Front-End Front curates articles from multiple sources, with a decidedly front-end focus.

• Hacker News, a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. Run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. The word hacker in "Hacker News" is used in its original meaning and refers to the hacker culture which consists of people who enjoy tinkering with technology.

• Hongkiat includes a number of useful resources for designers and developers, such as tech how-tos, tutorials, design inspiration, and free design elements.

• HTML for people. A delightful introduction to creating simple web documents. Definitely worth checking out for a nice introduction to web development.

• A List Apart covers web development, design, and the business side of web development.

• Smashing Magazine features news and opinions on website design, web development, and user experience.

• Web Design Ledger provides tutorials and articles on both web development and general design.

• Web Designer News aggregates the latest and most newsworthy web development stories by searching through hundreds of posts on blogs, social media, and news channels.

Developer Personal Blogs

Following respected developers allows you to learn from people with experience in web development. Over time, as you learn more about various topics, you can decide whether you agree or disagree with them.

• Bartosz Ciechanowski— A developer creating beautiful interactive articles on science (e.g. how sound waves work) and technology (e.g. GPS).

• Alvaro Celis—Vice President for World Wide Device Partners Solution Sales and former leader at Microsoft.

• Flavio Copes—Computer engineer, writing tutorials for JavaScript and web developers.

• Flother.is, by Matt Riggott. Software engineer at @GRID-is. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Postgraduate student at Lund University.

• Pamela Fox—Computer Science Lecturer at UC Berkeley and former Senior Content Creator for the Khan Academy.

• Lauren Frazier—Cofounder of Ramen VR and former software engineer at Google.

• Laura I. Gómez—Founder of Proyecto Solace and former CEO of Atipica.

• Scott Moss—Principal engineer at Initialized and contributor to Angular.

• Rachel Nabors—Web animations expert, founder of the Animation at Work Slack and Web Animation Weekly Newsletter, and collaborator with Mozilla.

• Kamilah Taylor—Engineering leader at Gusto and former Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn.

• Laura Thomson—VP of Engineering at Fastly and Senior Director of Engineering at Mozilla.

• Scott Tolinski—Web developer, creator of Level Up Tuts, and co-host of the Syntax podcast.

• Jem Young—Engineering manager at Netflix.