B.1. Online The online resources are divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into places with content and places that focus more on discussion. For instance, an article on one author's web site may be discussed somewhere else such as on Slashdot or in a weblog. B.1.1. Content The web sites in this section contain original articles with generally useful content and less ranting than some of the discussion sites listed in Section B.1.2, later in this appendix:
IBM Developer Works (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks) -
Lots of good, short articles from a variety of authors.
Advogato (http://www.advogato.org) -
A wide range of articles on all aspects of software, with some thoughtful comments.
Freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/articles) -
Lively editorial articles, some of which cover tools and development environments.
TestingFoundations (http://www.testing.com) -
Contains the work of Brian Marick, author of The Craft of Software Testing (Prentice Hall). A new book, Scripting for Testers (Pragmatic Bookshelf), is apparently in progress.
David A. Wheeler's Personal Home Page (http://dwheeler.com) -
Lots of good articles, especially on security and SCM.
Brad Appleton's Home Page (http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp) -
Many SCM-related articles.
Artima (http://www.artima.com) -
Regularly has wide-ranging software-related articles. Run by Bill Venners.
Jeffreys Copeland & Haemer's "Work" Columns (http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~copeland/work) -
A wonderful series of articles written by two guys named Jeffrey, originally published in the now-defunct magazines RS/Magazine and SunExpert, that cover many different aspects of tools. In my opinion, these well-written articles deserve a far wider audience.
Steve McConnell (http://www.stevemcconnell.com) -
Many articles and presentations from the author of Code Complete and other books about the process of writing software.
Ian SommervilleSoftware Engineering (http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/resources/IanS) -
Articles by the author of the textbook Software Engineering, who has taken a leading role in computer science education.
B.1.2. Discussions The web sites in this section generally contain links to articles and contain discussions about the articles:
Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org) -
Current news of a technical or geeky nature, with links to developer-related articles and lots of comments, some of which are even on-topic. Well-established, widely read and quoted, with plenty of strong opinions. Many of the comments show a bias toward Unix and Linux.
Joel on Software (http://joelonsoftware.com) -
A weblog and also numerous questions each day in the "Business of Software" and "Design of Software" sections. Lots of tools-related discussion, but fewer comments than on Slashdot.
StickyMinds.com (http://www.stickyminds.com) -
Articles related to tools and some recommendations for books. Also publishes the magazine Better Software.
Newsgroups -
comp.software.testing and comp.software.config-mgmt sometimes have interesting discussions on tools for testing and SCM. Their FAQs have some tool lists but tend to feel dated, perhaps due to the general move away from newsgroups.
Tool-specific mailing lists -
One sign of a good tool is the tone of community around it. Every tool is different, but if there is a mailing list for users or developers, subscribe to it. The archives of these mailing lists can be the best place to look for bug fixes, workarounds, and ideas for customizing the tool. Some developers write weblogs that include information about the tool, or they record IM sessions for later use.
B.1.3. Directories Directories are web sites organized by topic into categories. When you want to make sure that you haven't forgotten about some tool or other when considering your options, a directory of available tools is useful.
Open Directory (http://dmoz.org) -
The Open Directory Project claims to be the largest human-edited directory of the Web. Just as Yahoo! created its own categories for the Web, the Open Directory Project has created categories, but in a nonproprietary fashion. Most tools appear in some category or other here.
Google Directory (http://directory.google.com) -
The Google Directory uses the Open Directory hierarchy as the basis for its own directory. The Computers category at http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers is a good place to start when searching for information about development environments. The Programming and Software categories contain many links to different tools.
CM Crossroads (http://www.cmcrossroads.com) -
This is a site focused on configuration management in a broad sense, with numerous SCM-related articles, polls, forums, and job postings.
Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) -
The Wikipedia is a multilingual Wiki with unusually helpful, though brief, articles about everything anyone has bothered to write about, which turns out to include lots of software development tools. Since it is a Wiki, content changes faster than on most other web sites.
Epinions (http://epinions.com) -
Epinions is a shopping comparison web site, but its Programming Tools section has reviews on many software toolsat least, the ones people have paid money for. Some of these reviews are quite insightful.
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