Dec 10

Written by:
12/10/2009 1:29 AM 

In college my instructor taught us that it is not always knowing the answer but knowing where to find it. In the mindset, this post is simply a list of other blogs, twitter accounts \ lists and books that I have found helpful in the recent past. Hopefully these will point you to information that you need to build great software, enjoy your work (or at least experience less stress), and keep up on the latest news regarding development.

Admittedly I have been almost 100% focused on Silverlight development, so most of these resources will reflect this. However, there are a few in the list are are more general. Also, for some of the more experienced developers, I realized that a few of these links are may have you wondering why they are including. Like the MSDN site, doesn’t everyone know about that? Well, maybe, but necessarily. So I included them for the new developers or people looking to get started.

(…these resources are in no particular order…)

Favorite Blogs (other than the OpenLight Members of course :) )

• ScottGu’s Blog: Scott is a Corporate VP in the Microsoft Developer Division, and is considered the grandfather of .Net.
• Blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/
• Twitter: @scottgu
• Tim Heuer’s Blog: Tim is a program manager on the Microsoft Silverlight team.
• Blog: http://timheuer.com/blog/
• Twitter: @timheuer
• John Papa’s Blog: John is a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft and former Silverlight MVP.
• Blog: http://johnpapa.net/
• Twitter: @John_Papa
• Brad Abrams’ Blog:
• Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/BradA/
• Twitter: @brada
• Nikhilk Kothari’s Blog: Nikhil is a software architect in the .NET Developer Platform group within the Developer Division at Microsoft.
• Blog: http://www.nikhilk.net
• Twitter: @nikhilk

Twitter

• Silverlight MVPs: http://twitter.com/John_Papa/silverlightmvp
• Microsoft Silverlight Developers: http://twitter.com/John_Papa/msftsilverlight
• Michael Washington: @adefwebserver
• Me: @itlackey
• Devin Rader: @devinrader
• Colin Blair: @SLColinBlair
• Kevin Grossnicklaus: @kvgros
• Bill Evjen: @billevjen

Misc. Developer Sites:

• MSDN: Should be every .Net developers homepage (or at least one of them…). Be sure and checkout the “Learn” section for some great videos.
• URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx
• Silverlight.Net: Everything Silverlight. Videos, Hands-On labs, tutorials and forums.
• http://www.silverlight.net
• Silverlight Cream: Actually an aggregate of many Silverlight focused blogs. Be sure to checkout the “Skim” page to see the most popular posts.
• URL: http://www.silverlightcream.com
• DotNetNuke’s Blogs: A link to the articles posted by the developer’s involved in the DotNetNuke project.
• URL: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/tabid/825/default.aspx
• Channel 9: “Channel 9 is all about the conversation.”  Great videos by some of the heavy hitters
• URL: http://channel9.msdn.com/
• Chopsticks: Growing list of great videos, mainly from conferences.
• URL: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/nl/chopsticks/default.aspx

 

This is just a small list of resource you can find online to stay informed and learn the latest tricks from some great developers. Please feel free to suggest additions to this list in the comments section. I will be updating this post from time to time with new information and your suggestions are appreciated and may be included.

Enjoy!