I used to be a developer in Java, PHP, perl and C/C++ (the C++ bit badly - the others not too badly, I hope). This was back in the Java 1.3/1.4 days. We used raw JDBC, swing, servlets, JSP and ant (sometimes even make). Eclipse was new.

Then I joined a deployment team and became a deployment engineer and then after the deployment engineer work became a full time sys admin.You get the idea - my experience is a generation or two old in programming terms - maybe older.

I'm interested in getting back into Java and perhaps Ruby development, but feel I will be waaaaay behind the technological 8 ball.

Can you folks suggest some books (or sites) that would be worth reading to catch up with the last 5-10 years of the development world.

I.e. what should I read to try and catch up with where development is now? I see lots of stuff on the web, but what are people in the fabled "real world" using? (are lots of people being SOA based apps? Are they using XP methodology)

The sorts of things I'm interested in finding out about/catching up on are:

• Methodologies
• Design patterns
• APIs/Frameworks/Technologies
• Other stuff you deem current/interesting/relevant.

So if you have any thoughts or can recommend any books (especially new classics - you know the 's equivalent to K&R C or "The mythical man month").

Thanks for any thoughts you might share.