General Hacker Stuff

Writings of Eric Raymond
Eric Raymond is one of the more interesting writers of the Open Source community.

IBM DeveloperWorks - A great resource for developers, with articles, tutorials and links to software.

Dr. Dobbs Journal - the Web site for the best general-interest programming magazines around.  In addition to posted articles, opinion pieces and essays, they also have a collecition of links to software tools, techniques, tutorials and other programmer resources.

Object-Orientation Tips - A neat page with a ton of information about OOP

TopCoder.com - If you're feeling particularly cocky about your coding skills, here's a site that offers programming contests where you can participate online and win prizes.

Doug Engelbart Demo - If you want a glimpse of the time when the future was born, this is it.  Doug Engelbart was the inventor of a lot of stuff modern computer users take for granted, like the mouse, cut-and-paste and groupware.  This is a series of short films taken from the original demonstration of these tools at Xerox PARC.  A fascinating glimpse into the birth of a technological generation.

TechInterview.org - Kind of a nifty site where folks post questions (mostly puzzles) that they've gotten in technical interviews.  I know that prospective programmers get asked these kinds of questions a lot.  Not so much to test their coding ability but to see how they approach a problem.

More Tech Interview Riddles - Just what it says.

How to Write Unmaintainable Code - In the great hacker tradition of "ha-ha, only serious", this Java-centric essay takes a humorous look at bad coding practice and points to ways we can improve the quality of our code.

RoboCode - Build a robotic battle tank in Java and then pit it against other competitors online in this fun and educational project sponsored by IBM.  

Joel on Software - An online journal by Joel Spolsky, owner of Fog Creek Software.  I don't agree with everything he says, but occasionally I find something interesting.

Problem-Solving Strategies - An excellent discussion of a variety of good ways to approach solving a technical problem whether it's figuring out why Windows won't connect on the network to debugging your code.

Java Game Programming Tutorial - A tutorial on coding little online games using Java applets

How To Be A Programmer - This links to a very good essay (40 pgs. in PDF format) about some of the stuff that the author wishes they had told him about in college.

Course-Related Links

The Object-Oriented Page - Another ton of links, not specific to C++ but about OOP

Java for C++ Programmers - A really nice little tutorial for folks already familiar with C++ who want to pick up Java.  Includes code examples.

Objective Viewpoint - An online magazine put out by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) with a lot of good articles on
OOP.

Free Java Books - Part of an online project offering free books for a variety of technical subjects.  The books are downloadable in plain text, PDF or HTML format.  They're adding new books all the time so this is a good place to start building your reference library on the cheap.

Java Home Page - The mothership, Sun Microsystems Java home.

Jgoodies.com - A source for Java-based tools

IBM Java Tutorials - A series of Java tutorials hosted by IBM's DeveloperWorks site.

Java Tutorials and FAQs - Just what it says.

Java Tutorial home page - Straight from Sun Microsystems

An Introduction to Swing - A nice introductory look at Swing, the Java GUI toolkit.

Design Patterns Tutorial  - A quick look at design patterns in programming.

More Patterns Tutorials - Some additional pages about design patterns.

Patterns, Hype and Snobbery - An O'Reilly Network article discussing design patterns.

UML home page - Hosted by the OMG (Object Management Group), this is the mothership for UML info.

UML Stuff - A ton of tutorials, examples, FAQs, what-have-you about UML.

ArgoUML - A very powerful UML diagram editor and CASE tool.  Written in Java and freely available so you can use it on any machine with Java 2 support.

Poseidon - A commercial, somewhat slicker CASE tool derived from ArgoUML, from a company called Gentleware.  There is a free community edition available for download but they ask you to register on their development mailing list.

Eclipse - The homepage for the Eclipse platform project.  You can find lots good stuff here -- Code samples, tutorials, plug-ins, etc.

Eclipse Plug-ins - As the name indicates, this site tracks the 200+ plug-ins available for the Eclipse platform.  Some cool stuff here!

Java Certification - Sun Microsystem's Java certification page -- Everything you want to know about getting Java-certified.  Well, with Sun, anyway.

Organizations/Projects

General Resources

CPUniverse - If you were thinking of going into contracting or consulting, this is a great site. Affiliated with Contract Professional magazine (not a free subscription but well worth the cost) this site has tips on the hottest skill areas, what it's like to work in different parts of the country and even how to negotiate a contract and handle your tax situation. There's even a free weekly e-mail newsletter.

SoftPro Books - This is an excellent source for computer and networking books. You can order online or go to one of their local stores. (They have one at Yosemite and Arapahoe in Englewood and another in Boulder.) You can usually get 10-20% off the list price and if you join their 'frequent shoppers' club (it's free) you can get additional savings. 

GoCertify - A nice site that has information on just about every technical certification you can get -- who offers it, what you need to get it, where you can get training and where/how you can take the test.

BrainBench - Another certification site, but this one does their own online certification exams in a wide variety of technical subjects.

Yahoo! Briefcase - 30 megabytes of free online storage.  Floppies are awkward and obsolete! (Requires free Yahoo! account)

Samizdat Press - A site "devoted to the free distribution of books, lecture notes and software." Mostly techy stuff but definitely worth browsing.

Online References

Google - THE best search engine out there for the technically inclined. 

FAQs Online - Here's the one-stop shop for looking up Internet FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) and RFCs (Requests For Comments). 

How to Provide Reliable NT Desktop Services by Avoiding NT Server - A white paper from Bell Labs documenting exactly how one department replaced all of their NT servers with UNIX. This has some excellent tips for internetworking UNIX and Windows.

Just for Fun

User Friendly - Yet another comic strip that looks at the funny side of computing.

Computer Stupidities - This site collects actual dialogues between real users and real tech support folk. The range of misunderstandings and confusion is frequently hilarious.

Peter's Evil Overlord List - Thinking about a career as an Evil Overlord? Think you have what it takes to be the next Darth Vader? Check out this site for a collection of SuperVillain Do's and Don'ts including 'My ventilation shafts will be too small to crawl through'.

The Voice Actor Page - Want to know who does the voice of Larry 3000 on Time Squad?  Find the answer to this and many more questions about the men and women who do the talking for your favorite cartoon characters.  Search alphabetically by show title or actor name.  (By the way, Larry is voiced by none other than Mark Hamill.) 

Villian Supplies - Planning an evil scheme to take over the world, but need parts for your death ray?  This hilarious site has entries for everything from henchman to hidden volcano lairs.

Stupid Plot Tricks - Expanding on the Evil Overlord lists, this contains lists of rules for henchman, good guys/gals, bad guys/gals and even sidekicks.  Very funny read.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics - This site examines many popular movies to see if the action is in line with real physical laws.  An interesting, entertaining and even educational read.

Luke, come to the dark side.

No.

Your goodness has redeemed me. Die, emperor scum.

You can e-mail me here .