How do you get aware of new tools?

Posted by Konstantin Petrukhnov on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Konstantin Petrukhnov
Published on 2011-01-08T21:05:31Z Indexed on 2011/01/08 21:58 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 356

Filed under:

self-improvement

|

resources

|

awareness

How do you get aware of new tools (libraries, applications, etc)? This question is only about "getting aware" that some tool exist and could be used. Learning and trying is different issue.

Right now I get most awareness from stackexchange and freshmeat sites. But I wonder if there are more efficient way. E.g. 80% of freshmeat projects are no-use for me, but it reasonable overhead, because tools that I find trough it save me days or even weeks.

Here are some related, but a bit different questions:

How much time do you invest in exploring new technology?

How to become aware of new languages, techniques and methodologies?

What website are you using most to keep you updated on software development?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about self-improvement

A toolset for self improvement and learning [closed]

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Possible Duplicate: I’m having trouble learning I've been working as an IT consultant for 1½ years and I am very passionate about programming. Before that I studied MSc Software Engineering and had both a part time job as a developer for a big telecom company. During that time I also took… >>> More
Time management and self improvement

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Hi, I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several… >>> More
Time management and self improvement

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I hope I can open a discussion on this topic as this is not a specific problem. It's a topic I hope to get some ideas on how people in similar situation as mine manage their time. OK, I'm a single developer on a software project for the last 6-8 months. The project I'm working on uses several technologies… >>> More
Software development books are useful, but when to find the time to read them?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have 5 books in my "read-wish-list". When do I read them? I mean I could force myself to use 1 hour during working hours, but this will last for 2 days then someone will ask me to do more "high priority things". One option can be reading at night, but also this has limits, even because I prefer… >>> More
When returning from a period of not programming, do you find you've improved?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
It seems as though whenever I take an extended break from programming—whether to pursue other interests or simply because I fall out of the habit for a while—I invariably find that when I return to a project and set to coding, I come with an abundance of new ideas, novel approaches, and… >>> More

Related posts about resources

Snow Leopard doesn't repair permissions, despite showing / saying its fixed them?

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Sometime ago, I used carbon copy as I was replacing my hard drive in my Mac Mini running Snow Leopard. Afterwards, on my new drive I had some permission problems. I've tried several times running a repair permissions / repair disk from disk util. It shows that there are problems and I think it says… >>> More
Android: retrieving all Drawable resources from Resources object

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
In my Android project, I want to loop through the entire collection of Drawable resources. Normally, you can only retrieve a specific resource via its ID using something like: InputStream is = Resources.getSystem().openRawResource(resourceId) However, I want to get all Drawable resources where… >>> More
Make Eclipse use src/test/resources instead of src/main/resources

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi! I'm writing a little Maven application in Eclipse. I store some property files and my application context in the directory src/main/resources. I now want to make Eclipse use properties in the directory src/test/resources. So when I run and debug the program in Eclipse, these test properties… >>> More
puppet duplicate resources and virtual resources

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Overview Hi just started using Puppet and have been unable to suss something. Problem Because of normalization when I add 2 classes to a node with packages that have the same dependencies it fails. In simple terms have duplicate resources - in this case the package libssl. Note: packages are… >>> More
CHAT ROOMs 7 by 6

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking for chatroom on one page with 7 loggedin users and 6+rows for say 42 users.these users will keep on adding wthnew users.Need urgent help.A PRETTY UNUSUAL Q FOR MOST OF U.What is MORE REQ new features: Usernames are unique to users currently chatting You can see a "currently chatting"… >>> More