There are ways off of this blasted hell-hole. These be them. This a collection of stuff I read regularly, friends, software and anything else I see fit.
Sites I read
Patorjk.com — Pat has run his site for a long time and is a very good programmer. From time to time I get inspiration from reading about what he’s up to. He still has a huge VB code repository and example collection, one of which features crappy code from yours truly. I “borrowed” the terminology for this page after he told me about some SEO stuff.
programming.reddit.com — If you’re a programmer and you don’t read this, then I don’t think you can call yourself a programmer.
Unofficial Planet Python — An aggregator of a bunch of Python related blogs. It seems to die a lot though.
Friends
Angrycoder — Tom’s site. Very bare, but at least he uses vim.
liek.net — No idea what happened to Matt, but this was his site.
Software I use and love
Vim — I used to hate it with a passion, but it grew on me once I stopped trying to fight it and make it like a traditional text editor. I’m a very happy vimmer now.
Python — My current favorite programming language. I write a lot of utility scripts in it.
SQLAlchemy — Not only the best Database abstraction and ORM I’ve used, it’s simply one of the best libraries I have ever used. Well put together, exquisitely documented and simple to use. I can’t say enough good things about it.
jQuery — My favorite Javascript library. It has saved me so much pain and suffering in the last year. Very concise and with great documentation to boot.
ADOdb — Database abstraction for PHP. Also has an ActiveRecord implementation which I’ve been using alot of lately. I don’t know why it’s not part of the standard PHP distribution.
WinSCP — Good S/FTP client for Windows. I use it at work and home.
Qt — My favorite GUI toolkit. Now an LGPL library! Don’t forget to use VIm mode in QtCreator.
Firefox/Firebug — Every Web developer needs Firebug. I have my gripes about these occasionally, but for the most part, we get along pretty well.