good blogs

We are talking every day of specialization as a mean of making our work more efficient, still I am always appreciating non-programming skills like GUI design and marketing (just to name a few) in programmers. If you accept this idea, then this post is for you.

If you also accept the idea that the blogs you read are an extremely valuable source of such information, here are a few advices for you to arrive at just that critical mass of blogs in your reading list, realize that the ROI here should be good content in little time.

Set a threshold of how much reading you'll do every day, it might be 20 or 30 minutes. Do not allow blog reading to take up more than that, getting things done is more important.

If there are no blogs on your reading list, you should know at least one name that sounds like making a big difference in the industry. Look up his/her blog and start from there. Other colleagues in the company that have the hacker reputation could help with a few URLs.

Read regularly and yes, make exceptions, you don't have to do it every day.

Find a decent RSS reader to aggregate your blogs. They come in 2 flavors: as a desktop or a web application. You'll only know what suits you after a few months of reading. I switched to Google Reader now for the main reason that it has a centralized database that keeps older posts in the history, no longer available through the current RSS feeds.

Look for blogs that have these characteristics:

They are inspiring. They don't let you forget that you do this job for fun also and not only to make a living.

They make your brain do unthinkable connections between old stuff and the new stuff that you are reading. They are filling in the gaps.

New ideas are born into your brain. It might be a new software you could write or how you could improve the development process of your team.

When you read them, time flies by. You are bothered by that Outlook popup reminder that you have a meeting in 15, 5, oops, you're late.

They contain links to other good blogs, book titles and good software, so your reading list grows.

They just feel smart - no need to comment on this.