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Reading this post by Davy Brion raised a few thoughts in my head, and I thought I’d put them here.

Davy talks about who you pay attention to for guidance in becoming a better .NET developer – the Microsoft experts, the Alt .NET and community experts, finding other places – what is the best direction to head.

In the end he comes up with use your own judgement, common sense can guide you.

I agree with that, but I generally do follow blogs, listen to ideas that bubble up over and over, if I hear about patterns or practices that someone recommends then I go and Google it, research it.

Generally, if someone’s willing to pay for a book for it to be made, and if people are willing to buy it, then it’s worth a look at the ideas in there.  I’d pay attention to topics that show up on places like Dot Net Rocks, Hanselminutes, Codebetter, Los Techies, screencasts around the place.

Basically, anyone willing to put ideas forward in a public forum, have the conversation and go through the wringer.

And then, like Davy recommends, I’d choose the parts that make sense to me and try them out – generally you find out pretty quick if you’re headed down the wrong path.

That being said, for me, I’m mostly following my manager   It helps to have a cohesive architecture, and as well, to paraphrase something Robert Scoble once wrote:

“I’m following thousands of people, reading tens of thousands of pieces of information a day and talking to industry leaders, who do you read?”

“You.”

For all the things I read and come across, my manager does as well, and I find if we are generally talking to each other about topics that interest the both of us then it’s generally something that’s worth a bit more research.

I think the best way you can find the right path is to find someone else as interested in learning as you are, get to a .NET User Group, or see what the community leaders are interested in – but do your own research.