Start listening to Podcasts early on to get inspired on a regular basis. Listen while doing your dishes or your laundry, on the commute to work or simply while going for a walk. There are great Apps out there like Pocket Casts, Stitcher or Himalaya. You can also simply use Spotify or Apple Podcasts, but I would highly recommend that you check out Pocket Casts for a great listening experience.
Awesome developer Podcasts
Name
Hosts
Description
Link
Syntax.fm
Wes Bos, Scott Tolinski
Wes and Scott are amazingly entertaining hosts that cover a vast majority of topics not only in development. Their Focus is mainly JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
Kent C. Dodds is a great developer sharing a lot of knowledge through Twitter and YouTube. He is the expert when it comes to JavaScript Testing. On his Podcast he talks with other web experts about various topics.
Jared and Ken are two remarkable and also very unique personalities from the web community. Maybe Ken will be the most American guy you will ever listen to ;) This Podcast has a 2 drink minimum...
Developer Tea exists to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work so that they can positively impact the people they influence. With over 13 million downloads to date, Developer Tea is a short podcast hosted by Jonathan Cutrell (@jcutrell), co-founder of Spec and developer at @Clearbit. We hope you'll take the topics from this podcast and continue the conversation, either online or in person with your peers.
Adam is a great host and co-creator of the book Refactoring UI which teaches developers how to get better a visual design. He is also the creator of Tailwind CSS an amazing CSS utility framework. His Podcast is mostly interview based.
A weekly show covering the latest in browser features, standards, and the tools developers use to build for the Web of today and beyond. Each week, hosts Danny, Amal, Leon, and Justin are joined by a special guest to discuss the latest developments and features that you may just want to use in your next project.
Dive into JavaScript and Web development stories with hosts John Papa, Ward Bell, and Dan Wahlin. Sponsored by Nrwl.io A weekly podcast where we tackle the challenges facing Web developers today and invite expert guests on the show to share their experience solving concrete problems while building real Web applications. Listen for practical insights and honest talk about the topics you are facing today, with Real Talk JavaScript.
Weekly podcast discussion about Javascript on the front and back ends. Also discuss programming practices, coding environments, and the communities related to the technology.
Notion is a note taking app on steroids to organize your work tasks and personal life. You can start free and later decide to pick a premium plan with a higher content limit. There are many great tutorials on YouTube on how to set up your Notion account. Desktop apps and mobile apps are also available. (affiliate link)
Another great password management solution that also has apps for all major platforms. A buy once use forever license is also available if you do not want to host your passwords in the 1Password cloud.
Subscription or Buy once use forever for offline use
Free password management solution that requires more manual setup to get it up and running properly on all platforms. You also have to backup your password database manually. Use KeyPassX app on Android.
Sizzy is a browser targeted at developers. You can view the page you are currently developing in multiple device sizes with the appropriate user agent at the same time. Improvements are constantly added.
A great tool to measure distances and sizes of all items currently on screen. Helps greatly to get your designer's layouts ready in a pixel perfect manner if needed.
Dash is a comprehensive database of all documentation related to programming. It offers plugins for various code editors to directly search Dash's documentations from there. Just mark a line of code, hit a shortcut and see the desired docs for that particular function.
Rectangle helps you organize your windows by using neat little shortcuts. For example you want your editor side by side with your browser on an external monitor: there's a shortcut for that.
Running out of disk space? Don't know why? DaisyDisk will let you know exactly what files are taking up which amount and let you delete theses files in a comfortable manner.
Desktop - Freemium
Windows
Name
Description
Type
Link
Linux
Name
Description
Type
Link
Browser Extensions
Chrome
Name
Description
Link
Firefox
Name
Description
Link
VS Code Extensions
Name
Description
Link
Twitter Profiles
This is an incomplete list of great people from the web community to follow for inspiration. Make sure to open up a Twitter Account if you haven't yet and take your time to give them all a follow.
Here are a few recommendations should you consider buying a new laptop for your development journey in the near future.
You should consider investing more than seams reasonable as this could be your main investment for all of your development work for years.
My personal recommendation would always be a MacBook Pro as most of the web community uses macOS based development workflows and many apps are only available on macOS. But as of right now Apple is converting all their professional hardware to their own CPUs und GPUs away from Intel (Apple Silicon). These new models are performing awesome to far, are less noisy and consume less energy. So whats not to like? The architecture! the new models are ARM CPU based instead of X86 which means that software has to be explicitly written in an ARM version to run with full performance and without issues. Right now many web development tools are not ready yet. and you might buy yourself a lot of problems. The alternative? Maybe buy an "old" intel MacBook which will be supported for years. But you may pay a lot of money that will be outperformed soon by the next generation Apple Silicon hardware.
My recommendation is to wait until fall of 2021 and buy an updated Apple Silicon MacBook Pro should these be released by then and benefit from the ongoing ARM development and the higher performance and better battery life.
If you are ready for an ongoing adventure just buy the new 13 inch MacBook Air/Pro with the M1 processor. If you want stability and don't mind expensive hardware that might be outperformed by cheaper models soon then buy the 16 inch Intel MacBook Pro.
Maybe a Mac is still way beyond what you can afford. Consider a Windows 10 Laptop with at least the following specs:
Component
Recommended Spec
CPU
min. 4-Core/8 threads CPU like AMD Ryzen 5/7 (3000 or 4000 Series) or Intel Core i5, i7, i9 (Core i-11000, Core i-10000, or Core-i-9000 Series)
Memory
min. 8GB (better 16GB or if you intend to edit videos: 32GB)
SSD
min. 512GB (better 1TB+)
GPU
AMD Radeon Vega 8, AMD Radeon Pro 5300M/5600M, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M, Nvidia Cards or also Intel 655 integrated (may be slow on external 4k monitors so better choose one of the dedicated graphics options)
Display
at least 1920x1080 resolution with an IPS Panel (No TN Panel as the image quality is horrible)
Features
Webcam (at least 720p, better 1080p), At least one USB Type-C or Thunderbolt Port for modern peripherals
I would recommend to invest at least 500 Euros to get a configuration that has the following specs:
Component
Hardware
Form Factor
14 Inch or 15 Inch
CPU
AMD Ryzen 3500U/4500U or 3700U/4700U
Memory
8GB DDR4
SSD
512GB
GPU
AMD Radeon Vega 8 or 5600M
Display
1920x1080 IPS
Link to a price comparison with the needed filters for the above configuration set:
Meetups are the best place to meet other developers and to do some networking. Get inspired by awesome talks or give one yourself. Don't be afraid because you think that you don't know enough yet. Leave your comfort zone and maybe your next job opportunity is just around the corner.
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent