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Bookmarks.
Links I actually use, return to, and recommend. No affiliate links, no sponsored content — just resources I genuinely find valuable.
System Design
Resources for thinking about large-scale distributed systems.
System Design Primer
The most comprehensive free resource on system design. Essential reading for every backend engineer.
High Scalability Blog
Real-world architecture breakdowns from Netflix, Uber, and Twitter. Always eye-opening.
Martin Fowler's Blog
Patterns, microservices, refactoring — foundational thinking from one of the greats.
ByteByteGo Newsletter
System design explained visually. Best newsletter for backend engineers, period.
AWS Architecture Center
Reference architectures for real-world cloud patterns. Bookmark and revisit often.
Backend & Java
Spring Boot, Kafka, and backend engineering depth.
Spring Boot Docs
The official docs. Always the best starting point — never outdated.
Confluent Kafka Docs
The most complete Kafka documentation and tutorials available online.
Baeldung
Spring Boot, Java, and backend tutorials. Quality is consistently high.
Vlad Mihalcea Blog
Deep dives into Hibernate, JPA, and database performance. Unmatched depth.
ClickHouse Docs
Real-time analytics at scale. The docs are excellent and thorough.
Frontend & UI
Next.js, React, and building great interfaces.
Next.js Docs
App Router, RSC, server actions — the docs are excellent and always current.
Tailwind CSS Docs
The utility-first CSS framework I use on every project. Non-negotiable.
ui.shadcn
Beautifully designed, accessible components. Copy-paste and own the code.
Framer Motion
The best animation library for React. Production-grade motion done right.
Lucide Icons
Clean, consistent open-source icon set. Use it on every project.
Vercel Blog
Frontend performance, edge functions, and Next.js updates from the source.
DSA & Interviews
Competitive programming and interview preparation.
LeetCode
Daily practice. Focus on medium difficulty, tagged by topic. Non-negotiable.
NeetCode.io
Curated problem list + video solutions. The best free interview prep resource.
Codeforces
Competitive programming contests to sharpen problem-solving speed.
Tech Interview Handbook
End-to-end guide for software engineering interviews. Practical and honest.
AI & Machine Learning
Staying current with the AI/ML landscape.
Anthropic Research
Papers and insights on frontier AI safety and capabilities.
The Batch by DeepLearning.AI
Weekly AI newsletter. Best signal-to-noise ratio in the entire space.
Papers with Code
ML papers with implementation code. Excellent for understanding SOTA.
Hugging Face Blog
Open-source AI updates. Transformers, datasets, and model releases.
Simon Willison's Weblog
Best independent writing on practical AI tools and LLM developments.
Developer Career
Growing as an engineer and building in public.
Lethain.com (Will Larson)
Staff/principal engineering, management, and career ladders.
The Pragmatic Engineer
Gergely Orosz on software engineering careers. Consistently excellent.
Swyx.io
"Learn in public" philosophy. Best thinking on developer personal branding.
Indie Hackers
Stories from developers who built and monetised their own products.
Design Inspiration
Where I find great design and creative UI ideas.
Awwwards
Best of the web. Raises my design bar every single time I visit.
Dribbble
UI/UX inspiration. Good for component and layout ideas.
Refero Design
Real UI patterns from real products. Incredibly useful for design research.
Page Flows
Recorded user flows from popular products. Great for onboarding inspiration.
Codrops
Creative CSS and JS experiments. Pushes what's possible on the web.
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