My Favorite Resources for Staying Current on Distributed and Scalable Systems Development

After joining AWS a few years ago, I found myself building and operating the largest distributed and scaled systems of my professional career.   The following news sources that were previously interesting and useful became crucial for my day-to-day life.

• InfoQ - Direct content primarily sourced from hand's on practitioners and reviewed by editors.  Check out the Architecture & Design section. 
• DZone - Articles (70k+), Refcardz (200+), Guides (30+), and Zones (14 categories, nearly all relating to distributed systems at some level).  While the Zones cut across many areas, I find Cloud, Big Data, and Database especially useful.
• High Scalability - Weekly digest in the world of distributed/scalable systems plus some independent and paid content.
• Thoughtworks Technology Radar (Platforms) - Thoughtworks has some great minds in the area of distributed software development, and their overall Technology Radar is updated semi-annually with their opinion of where certain areas in technology are moving.  Bonus points - build a technology radar for your team!
• All Things Distributed (AWS CTO Werner Vogels' Blog) - Recently a great deal of AWS region launches, but occasional and historical distributed/scalable content.   
• The Next Platform (partnered with UK-based The Register) - Enterprise vendor specific news source -  "Offers in-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds."
• ...and finally, company engineering blogs such as Uber, AirBnB, Facebook, and Netflix.

These resources allow me to take others' learnings to enhance my mindset and think and act at 10x in terms of performance, scale, volume, variety, velocity, failures, etc.  However, one doesn't need to be working at AWS to require this level of currency.  Market expectations now demand that we build and operate (or at least think in the case of prototyping/early development) at this scale across every solution to deliver value to customers and stakeholders.

Also, if you're looking for a great resource for learning (more) about Distributed Systems from beginner to expert, check out awesome-distributed-systems repo on GitHub including a link to a good intro video.

While these are mine, what are yours?

~m@

 *Photo by Simon Cockell / CC BY