The most helpful online tools/resources which made me improve as software engineer

Hello ! I’m Xavier Jouvenot and this is my second blog post on Hashnode, and also the second for the Writeathon “4 Articles in 4 Weeks”! And this time, I am even in advance compare to the last article, as this time, I still have 3 days before the deadline, instead of 3 hours 😆

Since it’s been 7 years since I left the university, in this article, I am going to talk about the tools that I have been using during the latest years, as they are going to be more useful than the one I could have used when I was a student. There are 3 reasons for this choice:

• First of all, I mainly used the material courses the teachers gave me during my years in university,
• The second reason is that I don’t remember a lot about the online resources and tools I was using 7 years ago
• And the last but not the least, the majority of the tools I used back then are around anymore 😝

The basics — Technical resources

Whatever the technology you are using, it is always important to know where the documentation of this technology is, as you will need to refer to it a lot! But the documentation is not the only thing you must have in your toolbox when working with a specific technology: following the work of some people, which are known for there work on/with this technology is as important. Indeed, the documentation can be really dry and hard to understand, and you can’t read all the ISO norms of a language, for example, and expect to understand and remember it all, but is really useful when you encounter some elements you don’t understand in a code base, for example. While having resources where some other people explain to you some concepts related to the technology you are using can be easier to understand, and can offer a continuous stream of resources, refreshing your mind on a regular basis.

Let’s take the language C++ that I use daily for my professional work (and sometimes for some more personal projects). The online documentation can be found on cppreference website and is really useful to understand every element of the language. But I also use some other resources to improve my understanding of the language, the concept that revolves around it, and keep my skill sharp. Those online resources can take various forms like theYoutube channel C++ Weekly, some blogs like fluentcpp, foonathan and Simplify C++…