How I Stay Up to Date

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7 min · 1372 words

This was last updated on March 28, 2025. I’ve kept the old post in a collapsed section in case you wanted to see the previous version.

Technology is an industry much like medicine. If you’re not constantly learning, you’re falling behind and potentially causing harm to your customers/patients. As a software engineer, there are a handful of things I do to try and stay up-to-date with tech and trends in the industry.

YouTube

Update: I want to point out that the old list isn’t outdated, per se, but I did want to highlight the channels that have taken more of my time and attention over the past couple of years.

This is probably the biggest and easiest one to do, though, you’ll need to find “your people”. I subscribe to a few channels that are either generic in their software content, or highly focused.

  1. Syntax
    • Level Up Tutorials is now the Syntax podcast and channel. I listen to this podcast weekly to help stay up-to-date on various front-end development trends and other happenings in the tech space. I really enjoy the podcasts where they bring in guests, such as the one with Paulus Schouten of Home Assistant. More recently, they’ve added CJ from Coding Garden to their roster, and he’s been putting out some great videos as well. Scott, from Level Up, has moved his course content over to levelup.video, though, many of his old videos still remain on the new channel. I like that all of the Sketch and React videos I watched back in 2016 are still available.
  2. Jack Herrington
    • Jack, the Blue Collar Coder. What I like about Jack is his ability to simplify new tech and break it down into its most basic components. He does a great job of providing examples and explaining all of the bits and pieces you need to know in order to get started with the latest and greatest in the web dev space. More recently, he’s put out some terrific videos on things like MCP and create-tsrouter-app (of which he is a maintainer/contributor).
  3. CodeTV (formerly Learn With Jason)
    • I first stumbled upon this channel when this video popped up on my YouTube recommended. Our friend Jack Herrington is part of a Web Dev Challenge where 4 web developers have to build an AI-powered app that’s not “another effin’ chatbot”. It was really cool to watch, so, of course, I binged all of the other episodes in the series and then I went on to the 4 Web Devs, 1 App Idea series, and now I’m going through the Leet Heat gameshow. It’s really fun to watch. I highly recommend checking them out.
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  1. Fireship
    • This is by far my favorite dev channel on YouTube. The in 100 Seconds series is fantastic and has personally helped me discover new tech and got me interested in trying new things. They also have a handful of tutorials that are easy to follow. They recently started a new series, The Code Report that I highly recommend. It’s both entertaining and thought-provoking.
  2. Ali Spittel
    • Ali’s channel is a terrific resource if you’re getting started in frontend development. Her tutorials are easy to follow, and I feel like they’re really good “real world” type apps, unlike a lot of tutorial fluff you see out there. She has an accompanying blog post for all of her videos here.
  3. LevelUpTuts
    • This channel is like if Fireship didn’t have any jokes and did more, in-depth looks at different tech. This channel is how I learned how to use Sketch for UI/UX design when I was first starting out. Granted, I 1) No longer have a mac, and 2) Probably couldn’t remember how to use Sketch at this point. At least I still remember the principles of design, and, you know, that’s probably what really matters at the end of the day.
  4. ArjanCodes
    • Arjan was instrumental to me when I was learning Python. I like his style of videos, and he does a great job at explaining various concepts.
  5. Modern Vintage Gamer

Blogs

Update: I’ve more so taken to subscribing to email lists over the past year or so, and I don’t directly check blogs as much these days. I will say, I follow a lot of various developers on BlueSky, so that’s mostly where I see if/when blogs are posted.

Blogs are a bit more difficult to keep up with because no one uses RSS readers anymore. Even still, there’s a handful I check at least weekly to help stay up-to-date on things.

  1. Syntax Snackpack
    • Our friends at the Syntax podcast also put out a newsletter. I like that they include recommendations from each person on the team, as well as some sound bites from their podcast and other videos. They nailed it with the “snack” word because it’s just a, if you’ll pardon the pun, byte of information 😉.
  2. This Week In React
    • I’ve been developing more in React as of late, so I figure getting on this newsletter was a no brainer. It’s chock full of links to other blog posts, BlueSky (and the bad site) posts, videos, and more. I like that they include React Native in there as well. I’m not currently using React Native, nor am I developing apps cross-platform in that way, but I’m happy to see what all is going on in that space these days.
  3. Bytes
    • This one is really nice because 1) its tone is about as casual as mine (which I like), and 2) every post has a fun little bug to solve. They’re usually not too difficult, but I think that’s part of the fun. Just get your brain working a little in the morning, ya know? Also, I really like the design of this site. Its use of color pops, in my eyes, and it’s just all around aesthetically pleasing.
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  1. Scott Hanselmann
    • If you’re in software development for more than a few months, you know about Scott Hanselmann. He’s practically a celebrity in the tech space, and his blog and YouTube channel make it very apparent why. He has posts and videos on a wide variety of topics, and he’s able to distill them down into something that’s both sugar-free and digestible.
  2. Dev.to
    • This is a great place to see trends in the market. Anyone with an account can share anything here, which can be a blessing and a curse, though, I think it’s healthy to have a wide range of thoughts and opinions so that we can discuss and debate them.
  3. Morning Dew/Morning Brew
    • Both of these sites don’t host any posts themselves, rather, they list a ton of other recent blog posts, podcasts, videos, etc. I find it helpful to check both of these out every morning rather than try and hunt down something useful somewhere else. It’s a nice, curated collection of things for me.

GitHub

Last but not least, the GitHub trending page. It makes me sad that this one will be going away soon, because it’s probably my most used resource. (UPDATE: They never removed it 😊) Basically, GitHub tracks how many stars (think “likes”) have been given to a repo, and they show you the most starred repos for the day. I find it extremely helpful to see what other developers in the open source community are gravitating towards in a given week. It lets me know what tech I should try out and experiment with.

Conclusion

These are the resources I use to help stay up-to-date. What about you? How do you stay up-to-date with things as a developer? Anything I should check out that I haven’t listed here? Let me know in the comments below. Hope you all have a terrific day! ✌