20
votes

A link and a quick explanation why would be very helpful.

General tech news, I mean not like InfoQ which is too technical. Probably much more like P.SE than SO.

EDIT: site should help developers gain general knowledge about the industry, technologies, inventions, etc. Much like when we listen to the news every morning in our car to know what is happening in our world. But target audience must be either programmmers, geeks or any other persons interested in technology.

  • Is there just one? Will it be the same this month as next (or at least this year as next? Bad question. Especially with "every programmer should" - that's an absolute and they tend not to work well in subjective questions (and this is a subjective question). You can ask for suggestions of good sites but "every programmer should" implies that to not read it means one is not a good programmer and frankly that's not going to be true. – Murph Dec 1 '10 at 8:01
  • Pierre 303: I have a cat. I have many pigeons. What should I do? Surely not worth 500? – Gary Rowe Dec 1 '10 at 9:21
  • @Gary: could you elaborate your situation? have you considered external help? – user2567 Dec 1 '10 at 9:22
  • For people who know russian: Habrahabr.ru – Genius Dec 1 '10 at 9:53
  • @Gary, keep the cat away from the pidgeons, that would definitely be a showstopper. – NimChimpsky Dec 1 '10 at 9:55

22 Answers 22

Active Oldest Votes
17
votes
+500

Hacker News

It comes from a broadly tech entrepreneur position so combines interesting tech stories with relevant business and general stories.

Because the stories that make the front page are submitted and voted on by the community they tend to be more relevant and interesting than those which are run by many news sites who aren't necessarily as well placed to judge these things.

The comments/discussions can be entertaining too.

14
votes

Slashdot, of course! Even if stories are often old news by the time they're posted there, the discussions are always quite interesting.

  • 7
    I find there are too many trolls on Slashdot to make mining for nuggest of wisdom not worth the effort. Am I alone in this? – Gary Rowe Dec 1 '10 at 9:23
  • 1
    Gary: no, reading the comments is almost always a waste of time IMO – user281377 Dec 1 '10 at 9:57
  • 8
    Man I can't stand the Slashdot community. Too many FOSStards who predict Microsoft's failure each time Canonical release a new font or patch something that shouldn't have been broken to begin with. – EpsilonVector Dec 1 '10 at 10:49
  • 1
    I understand where you guys are coming from, but there are more rational people on there than you might think. Slashdot was the first tech news site I actively read, and I've learned much about IT from it. – John Straka Dec 1 '10 at 13:39
  • 1
    First and foremost, Slashdot is not programmer specific. It is also highly subjective and biased. For example, just about anything dealing with Microsoft technology or news will be troll bait. There will be strong user and editor bias against anything Microsoft (just check the titles and linked article), and praise for even the most anything FOSS, regardless of relevance or applicability. – Hugo Dec 1 '10 at 20:45
14
votes

Ars Technica

It may not have the sheer breadth of sites like Slashdot or Reddit, but it can't be beat for consistently high quality, in-depth articles.

11
votes

none

general tech news sites (mashable.com, et al) rarely have anything of use to me

EDIT 1: http://reddit.com/r/programming is certainly interesting, but not critical

EDIT 2: note the question is ...that every programmer should read. There is no such site.

  • 2
    Seriously? On the whole internet you can't find a single tech news site (or tech section of a general news site) you think is worthwhile? – Jon Hopkins Nov 24 '10 at 9:07
  • @Jon: the internet is full of shiny things. The question was '...that every programmer should read'. There is no such site. – Steven A. Lowe Nov 24 '10 at 9:10
  • @Steven - Fair enough though I took it as a general recommendation more than a literal should. – Jon Hopkins Nov 24 '10 at 9:17
  • 11
    @Jon: i'm a programmer; i have to take things literally. ;-) – Steven A. Lowe Nov 24 '10 at 9:23
  • 2
    Geeze guys lighten up. Why do you have to take things so literally, everyone else took it as just a question asking for decent links. – NimChimpsky Dec 1 '10 at 9:30
6
votes

I feel like http://reddit.com/r/programming has high quality, interesting and up-to-date content.

The idea of reading tech news sites is to keep yourself entertained with latest technologies and discoveries. New interesting programming paradigms, people solving interesting database issues or just simple inspiring blogs by successful entrepreneurs.

Reddit brings all of this.

  • ok this (from reddit) was interesting gist.github.com/710960 – Steven A. Lowe Nov 24 '10 at 9:07
  • @Steven: yes, and the guy knows what he is talking about – user2567 Nov 24 '10 at 9:34
  • 2
    I find the interface of reddit off-putting; it looks like it was designed by programmers who don't see daylight very often – NimChimpsky Dec 1 '10 at 9:06
  • three letters: RSS – Kugel Dec 2 '10 at 7:42
  • Once upon a time, I would've suggested Proggit, too, but I think the quality of content has waned in recent years. It was more interesting and relevant when there were more articles about programming language theory, compilers, etc. The signal-to-noise ratio of Proggit is really bad. – mipadi Dec 2 '10 at 19:01
5
votes

Smashing Magazine One of the best source for web development.

  • I adore this place. Wonderful articles and not just about programming or web. The series about the origin of the world languages was marvelous! – user8685 Dec 1 '10 at 12:36
4
votes

The obscene bounty of 500 reputation makes me think that http://pierre.mengal.eu/ is the right answer ;-)

  • There is nothing interesting there. Believe me. – user2567 Dec 1 '10 at 8:57
3
votes

For the UK El Reg is the main source of news, reviews and even gossip.

And for a slightly different slant on tech : LifeHacker.

  • There is a US version of the Register as well. Ever since they started in the US market, they toned down their Britishness of the humour. Its just not as cutting as it used to be. – Michael Shaw Dec 2 '10 at 2:21
3
votes

I mostly follow these

Ars Technica for good editorial style articles.

Anand Tech for hardware related stuff.

Engadget for technology reviews, live coverage of events, etc.

  • No reputation. Can't post links :( – Pulkit Sinha Dec 1 '10 at 7:51
2
votes

I mostly read Hacker News and Programming Reddit. There is some overlap, while the former leans more towards startups and business.

2
votes

Not a news site as such, but I like the blogs of Joel Spolsky. Joel's Blog

  • Joel's blog is full of great thoughts, however it has been inactive for quite a while. – Kugel Dec 2 '10 at 7:44
2
votes

I think there are two type of sources:

  • Blogs
  • Tech News Sites

Though only tech news sites was mentioned in the question, I have also found blogS to be helpful. Again, Tech News and Programming News, Tips and Ticks are two very different things. And both of them are interesting as well as necessary. But IMHO the main thing is-

Different people have different type of interests and needs. So, it is you who will choose the sources. I felt an RSS reader is the perfect tool for following all the sources by headline and visiting the ones I need. I use Google Reader. It also recommends other sources/websites of same type as you subscribe and visit these sites. So, you can start with the sources stated on other answers(I guess there will be many) of these question. Then after some time, you can realize some sources go with your interest and need while some others don't. Then discard and add sources accordingly.

This Stackoverflow question may help-
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5119/what-are-the-best-rss-feeds-for-programmers-developers

2
votes

Not so much a news site, but I tend to use Twitter to get my news by following some of the big guys in the field I'm intersted in (i.e. Elijah Manor. Scott Guthrie, Jeff Atwood, Joel Spolsky, Jon Skeet, ...).

I find it useful for technical bits and bobs but also for the fact that they're just human and interested in the same field as I am. They tend to post bits and pieces for things they consider to be interesting or else comment on 'in the news' bits.

2
votes

DZone is quite good.

Lots of articles touching a wide variety of matters. Keeps you informed about diverse trends in IT.

Though I don't find the community behavior intelligent. Mostly the articles of a high recreational value are upvoted. Things where you need to take some time to read through and use your brain are generally left without attention.

  • 1
    That's why it makes sense to bookmark the new links queue only. It's not high traffic anyway. And it makes a nice source of programmer blogs to subscribe to eventually. – mario Dec 1 '10 at 11:20
2
votes

Much like when we listen to the news every morning in our car to know what is happening in our world.

Sometimes when presented with a newspaper, I like to skip to the funnies. On those days, the clear choice is thedailywtf.com

2
votes

ACM TechNews - "[P]roviding timely information for IT professionals three times a week."

I get TechNews through the email subscription and it is very well edited. Department Chairs read it religiously to stay abreast of all of the recent findings in the various IT and CS fields.

Also related is:

ACM Queue, which has original content (as opposed to links to news stories or press releases). Here's a sample of the stories: "Virtualization: Blessing or Curse?", "Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33!", and "Realtime Garbage Collection". The articles are from researchers, practitioners, and scientists, as opposed to journalists, so you get much more of a straight-from-the-horse's-mouth experience.

2
votes

For the possibility that someone might be helped by this, and even though sometimes he can be a douche, and at the risk of being torn apart by the non-Mac majority...

daringfireball.net by John Gruber

Now let explain why I like it.

  • The news is not overly technical.
  • The amount of news is usually just about right. (I find Slashdot simply too overwhelming).
  • Most of the posts are links to interesting articles around the web, with a small blurb about why it was interesting.
  • The topics are very wide-ranging and usually looked at from a high-level point of view:
    • Phones/tablets (Apple, Google, Blackberry)
    • Mobile apps, iOS/Android/WebOS, App Store philosophies, mobile web
    • Developer stories and philosophies
    • Closed vs. Open
    • Apple/Google/Microsoft/other product and tech strategies
    • Other tech stories (Google TV, Netflix, Wikileaks, to name a few)
    • Big tech acquisitions
    • Internet community philosophies

I think it fits your guidelines really well:

Site should help developers gain general knowledge about the industry √, technologies √, inventions √

Target audience must be either programmmers √, geeks √ or any other persons interested in technology √

  • Those are square root signs not ticks. – Kugel Dec 2 '10 at 8:46
  • @Kugel So what? – Nicole Dec 2 '10 at 18:01
1
vote

I keep up on Groklaw from time to time, patent wars (like it or not) influence how many of us do our jobs.

Beyond that, my news reader is populated with several dozen individual blogs that I've discovered over the years. Like some others who have answered, I really don't care for mash ups, I find them more distracting than useful and informative.

I still subscribe to (and participate in) several newsgroups, such as comp.lang.c, comp.unix.programmer and others.

I know me, and I know how much work I won't get done in the name of 'staying informed', so I do try to limit my subscriptions.

  • I love patent wars – user2567 Nov 24 '10 at 9:11
1
vote

My personal list (as gleaned from the excellent Google Reader) is as follows (in order of how frequently I read them):

  1. Hacker News - good for general stuff and fluff that's interesting across the board (quite a bias to
  2. Ars Technica - deep technical articles with plenty of insight
  3. The Register (El Reg) - for an irreverent look at IT issues (and of course the BOFH)

There are others, but these are the ones that keep my eyeballs.

1
vote

TechCrunch - www.techcrunch.com

TechCrunch will keep you up-to-date on anything having to do with startups, and most things having to do with technology. I've been reading tech news for a while, and it is the clear winner.

The best stories will usually find their way to Hacker News and other aggregators, but if you're interested in reading about most important things going on in the technology world, this is the site to read.

Disclaimer

TechCrunch has a (deserved) reputation of often including lots of sensationalist and unimportant stuff. It's true - you're not going to find every article there interesting. I usually scan the headlines and only read the things that interest me. But I wouldn't dream of giving up TechCrunch as my main source for tech news.

  • For programmers? Seriously? – talonx Dec 1 '10 at 10:53
1
vote

http://www.h-online.com/ - heise open

It's a very broad and general tech related news site, not very programming specific, but security topics come up quite frequently. It's the international variant of http://heise.de/ which is the de-fecto no 1 programmer/IT news source in .de

However, there's no need to subscribe to it directly. It's low traffic and the most interesting stories are usually linked from reddit, slashdot, dzone.

1
vote

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