I was humbled at a job interview yesterday almost to the point of a beat-down and realized that although I know what I know, my skills are getting old and I'm getting to where I don't know what I don't know, which for a tech guy is a bad thing.
I was wondering if there were any sorts of "top 100" book lists for programming, development, architecture, or really just technical stuff. I don't know if I can keep current just doing my day to day job, so I need to make sure I at least know what's out there.
And/or, are there well known blogs I should be keeping up with for software development? How about conferences? I am going to try to hit No Fluff this year, but is that something I need to be investing in every year? Java One? Anything else? I don't mind spending the time/money, but I want to know it's worth it.
Years ago, you might have been able to remember every parameter to your favourite 20 shell or windows commands. Probably even the difference between the differing version of that operating system. However, if you're anything like me, one of your browser pages is permanently on stackoverflow or j2se docs or pydocs etc etc, as I just can't remember the fluff (heh).
But here's the good news. You don't have to keep up. You don't need to know the 200+ different ways of sorting a list. You just need to know that different ways exist. Then .. JFGI ! You don't need to know what version of java or python feature xyz was added or deprecated... JFGI !
My answer to any interview that has the question "what is the output of the following program?" is always "Well let's ask the computer - that's far better at this kind of thing than me and it will take a lot less time!". I remember someone asking me about self-modifying C-code and what the output would be. I said "one dead programmer - because if I ever met someone who wrote code like that I would shoot them dead for leaving such a mess".
Don't learn the fluff, the parameters, the options, the function names, the versions. Learn how to find them.