100 DZone Refcardz And Counting...

Congratulations to DZone today, as we released the 100th Refcard. The series has gone from strength to strength and having seen some of the cards on the way over the next few months, shows no signs of slowing down. The most impressive things about the Refcardz series, is that with such an aggressive schedule there is a consistent level of quality with relevant developer topics.

My personal favorite of all of the Refcardz that we have published is Design Patterns. It is really useful to have printed out at my desk as a quick reference for the 23 core designs patterns. This card has set the reference standard for any of the refcardz that I've authored.

I asked a few of my colleagues here at DZone what their favorite refcardz were over the past few years. Here's what they had to say.  Please leave a comment at the end of this article and let us know what your favorite refcard has been so far. 

Jay Clark, WebBuilder Zone Leader
"My Refcard of choice at the moment is 'Getting Started with Git' By Matthew McCullough. I've been trying to become more familiar with this Distributed Version Control system for quite sometime now, and this Refcard has been a great help.  I keep it open whenever I am using my Git repository and updating new software builds.  I recommend it to anyone looking to learn the new way of software version control."

Jared Richardson, Agile Zone Leader
My favorite refcard is the Essential Ruby card. I like references that have easy to reference examples that let me quickly "swap a topic back into physical memory" after I've spent a few months away. The ruby refcard does a great job of that. It's a great introduction, as well as a great reminder.

Mitch Pronschinske, Associate Editor:
"I totally dig Refcard #48 "Flex & Spring Integration", which gets you started with BlazeDS, a server-based Java remoting and web messaging technology for connecting back-end distributed data and pushing data in real-time to Adobe Flex and AIR apps.  Everyone knows that Java is a great platform, and let's face it, Flex is still the king of UI development.  Spring, of course, is one of the most popular frameworks for building Java applications, so this Refcard really helps you learn about the technologies that can harness the best of both worlds - the Java platform (w/Spring Framework) and the Flex UI development tooling.  Also check out this introductory tutorial for Blaze DS and find up-to-date info here for integrating with the newly-released Flex 4 framework. Also see "Getting Started with BlazeDS".

Joe Randolph, JavaLobby Contributor:
"My favorite DZone Refcard would have to be "Getting Started with Java GUI Development" by James Sugrue. It gives a great introduction that eased me right into Java GUI Building. I keep the card around to refer back to the helpful java components pictures."

Dennis Delimarsky, .NET Zone Leader
“I really enjoyed going through the Silverlight Refcard. Microsoft Silverlight is a great tool to build Rich Internet Applications, and now with Windows Phone 7 coming up, its importance and popularity is growing exponentially. It is always good to see a reference sheet that could point you to some of the most frequently used code elements and principles. It is great for beginners, as well as for professional developers who want to save their time by keeping some quick snippets and resources at hand.”

Giorgio Sironi, WebBuilder Zone Leader
My favourite Refcard is Getting Started with Git. While transitioning from Subversion to Git I found very useful having a quick summary of the commands available, with examples of them being applied. Source control is something you learn by doing, and a cheat sheet comes handier than a book or user's manual.

Richard L. McCutchen
My Refcard of choice would have to be the Core .Net one written by Jon Skeet. It covers a lot of topics from string formatting to work with threads, and is language independent. Whether you’re a C# developer or VB.NET developer this card gives you what you’re looking for.

 

Nitin Bharti, JavaLobby Zone Leader
My personal favorites include the 'Getting Started with Lean', and 'Scrum' Refcardz, not to mention Amr Elssamadisy's excellent series on 'Agile Adoption Patterns'.   There is a great need for pragmatic information on agile implementation techniques. As organizations look to scale their agile processes from the project level to the organizational level, development managers will need more tactical firepower to ensure success at all levels -- knowledge is the best ammunition for building better software. Every team member should have one of these Refcardz close at hand.