23 must-read software engineering blogs every developer should follow

Whether you’re debugging a stubborn production issue or architecting the next big feature, the right developer blog can be the difference between hours of frustration and an elegant solution. It can also be a good way to keep yourself updated on trending technologies and news.

But here’s the challenge: with thousands of dev blogs competing for your attention, which ones actually deliver value? Which ones consistently provide tried-and-true insights rather than just rehashing documentation?

It’s difficult to skip the fluff and find the good ones, which is why we at Lokalise curated a list of the top 23 dev blogs that consistently deliver practical tips, innovative solutions, and deep technical analysis — just for you.

1. freeCodeCamp
2. DEV Community
3. DZone
4. SD Times
5. SCAND blog
6. bol.com Techlab
7. Phys.org
8. net solutions
9. TSH (The Software House)
10. CodeIT
11. The Daily WTF
12. Toptal
13. Docker blog
14. Apiumhub
15. web.dev
16. SitePoint
17. JavaScript Weekly
18. Hacker Noon
19. Hacker News
20. GitHub Blog
21. Coding Horror
22. Julia Evans
23. Pragmatic Engineer

1. freeCodeCamp

freeCodeCamp is a popular community blog striving to hone your coding skills by supplying loads of how-to guides and tips. This particular dev blog covers a broad range of timely programming-related topics.  It’s admirably active, holding blogs posted by various contributing authors almost daily.

freeCodeCamp platform extends to an active forum with community discussions on subforums. Moreover, these subforums range from languages like Python, JavaScript, to generic subforums like “Project Feedback”, “Career Advice”.

Notably, freeCodeCamp even has a dedicated Chinese forum with its own server in Asia for faster access. And, guess what? the freeCodeCamp platform that provides all this is a 100% free donation-based platform!

2. DEV Community

As evident from the blog’s name itself, DEV Community is about gathering software developers around the world as one global community to share development-related posts.

Led by three developers, Ben Halpern (Co-CEO), Jess Lee (COO), and Peter Frank (Co-CEO), its blog acts as a “constructive and inclusive social network” featuring software development-related posts published by members of the community. Other members can react, comment and subscribe to this content — much like on social media platforms.

DEV Community members are also encouraged to host podcasts on the site. Thanks to its social media-like nature, DEV Community is one of the most active dev blogs, reaching close to a dozen blog posts per hour and close to 300 per day — so you’re basically getting real-time updates on what’s happening in the dev world.

3. DZone

If you’re planning to become a technology professional or you already are one, DZone is a blog you should surely keep in your arsenal of top dev blogs.

This blog lets you discover the “latest technology trends and learn about new technologies, methodologies, and best practices”. You’ll surely never run out of posts to read with DZone being a pretty active blog that posts about 10 to 20 posts per day.

The website hosts more or less a basic interface. Regardless, their posts barely leave anything to your imagination as they use code snippets, images, and videos to get their ideas across.

DZone blog’s most prominent attraction would arguably be their huge collection of cheat sheets—or, in their words, the “refcardz“—that would be a crime not to bookmark on your browser.

And what’s more, they only ask you to get a 100% free membership to access all these goodies.

4. SD Times

SD Times brings an active stream of fresh technology trends neatly packed in a news-like interface and averaging 15 to 20 weekly posts. It doesn’t fall under the category of dev blogs, per se, though.

Instead, it’s the latest news on software development published in SD Times magazine published by D2 Emerge presented to you in reverse chronological order, much like in a blog.

5. SCAND blog

A corporate dev blog that deserved a spot on our list simply due to the valuable and elaborate posts they publish; and speaking of which, they make sure to release once or twice each week.

SCAND blog is all about sharing their knowledge and experience in the custom software development industry, latest trends, and benchmarks. Their blog posts aren’t restricted to just one technology; instead, they cover areas like mobile/web development, technology trends, and much more in long posts accompanied by helpful infographics.

6. bol.com Techlab

An insider’s view of an e-commerce platform’s engineering challenges can be quite an eye-opener for developers. Well, guess what? bol.com Techlab blog and their podcast do exactly that!

They let us in on how bol.com developers overcome those challenges using various designs, architectures, technologies, etc. You could expect one or two quite long dev articles per month from these guys.