A way to catch up to modern programming techniques

Question

I have been programming, non professionally for about 23 years and find I am a little stuck in my ways. I find a tool I like, and it stays that way for year after year. Unfortunately this means that I am behind the times in my programming.

I am not directly planning on programming professionally per se, however, it is very handy to be able to develop client side (and lately a desire to move to cloud) apps for use by my clients, and also for myself in my day to day work (hardware, network and Internet support services).

Unfortunately, I find that I am having great difficulty in understanding recent concepts, and because I am trapped in programming styles of the 80's and 90's I am finding myself slow to understand concepts.

What I am looking for is suggestions for online and printed material offering real 'intro to concepts' and (separate material) technical usage for modern programming concepts and their usage in Java and C# (all three of which I have had only minimal exposure to).

I would be most obliged.

--UPDATE-- I just want to add in a big thank you to everyone who left a reply or comment to this question.

I have found some wonderful resources due to your recommendations, and a return of my enthusiasm for programming. No longer does the way forward feel like an uphill struggle, and for the first time in the last year or so, the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't look like an oncoming lorry.

Answer 1

Read developers blog. Try to keep a fair amount of resources in your feed reader and go through them every day (or so). Just pick up the things you like.

Most coders write their opinions, their view, and so on. You can learn A LOT by just reading what others do and filtering what you like or find interesting and what you don't. Books are helpful to, but, with 23 years of experience and just wanting to be up to date... I'd recommend blogs...

Some blogs I read:

• Coding Horror
• Good Idea
• Kirill Osenkov
• Joel on software
• Jon Skeet
• Joe Duffy
• Byte Bytes

Stackoverflow is a great resource too. Not just for finding answers to your problems but also for reading answers to other problems. Seriously, I've found myself quoting some answer from stackoverflow a lot of times lately... or applying something I've seen here.

For what is worth, being up to date with the current tendencies (like TDD or Aspect Oriented Programming) is like being up to date with the world itself. You get up in the morning, and read the newspaper, maybe just the headlines and then something specific, for about 5 or 10 minutes. Then you read the articles you find interesting but you're somewhat conscious about the most important things that are happening. This is the same, but those blogs (and some others) are your newspaper for the programming world.

Answer 2

Read some newer programming books like The Pragmatic Programmer. This book talks about programming using modern tools, the idioms and techniques, etc.