So you are interested in Drupal 8, right? I know I am, but with all these fundamental changes, many developers out there (including myself) need to do some serious work adapting their skillset to be able to work with it. Aside from the many good features a regular site admin will see in the new Drupal version, there are a number of changes happening under the hood.

If you are a developer you should already know about Symfony and the components D8 will make use of, as well as the new templating engine called Twig that looks like it will replace the good ‘ol PHPTemplate way of doing things. And not to mention the API changes and the proper paradigm shift towards Object Oriented Programing (OOP).

Even if Drupal 8 has not been yet released, it’s time to start learning how it will work (more or less) and even begin porting your Drupal 7 modules to the new version. Below you will find a number of great resources I found on understanding the changes and learning how to work with Drupal 8.

For instance, Mediacurrent recently recorded a webcast with Derek DeRaps who in a half an hour gives an introduction to Drupal 8 vocabulary (Drupal 8 speak, that is - not taxonomy). He looks at a few of the biggest new terms you will hear when dealing with D8. Dependency Injection (what the hell is this you may ask) is one such concept you’ll have to understand and apply. There was a great talk at DrupalCon Portland about it from Kat Bailey so check that out if you want to learn even more.

So let’s see what else is out there.

Change records for Drupal core

If you want to follow the API changes, there is a great resource on Drupal.org. You have a cool search and filter functionality to find what you are looking for and explanations about the changes. So if you are working already on your Drupal 8 module, make sure you are aware of this page.

Drupalize.me blog posts on exploring Drupal 8

The guys over at Lullabot have started with a couple of great posts on exploring Drupal 8 as they learn it themselves. If you are into module development, make sure you check out Joe Schindelar’s screencast on creating a simple Hello World module for Drupal 8. If you like that, also do check out the first blog post written by Acquia’s very own Alex Bronstein on the new OOP approach in Drupal 8.

LevelTen Interactive posts on Drupal 8

The nice guys over at LevelTen also started exploring Drupal 8. Ian Whitcomb began a series on module development in Drupal 8 that you can check out and follow as it becomes bigger. Additionally, you’ll also find a nice post from Mark Carver on Twig templates and transitions. And feel free to follow these guys for more to come as well.

PreviousNext posts on Drupal 8

Kim Pepper of PreviousNext also started a useful series on development under the new Drupal 8 framework. So far you can read about the new route controllers that replace the traditional page callbacks and about controlling access to these routes. I am confident that more good stuff will follow so do stay tuned.

Realize.be Drupal 8 Field API series

Kristof De Jaeger of realize.be wrote so far a couple of good posts on the new Field API in Drupal 8. It is also intended as a series so make sure you stay tuned for new articles coming up.

Gábor Hojtsy's series on multilingual features

Gábor Hojtsy, the lead of the Multilingual Initiative for Drupal 8, also has a series on new features and improvements in this area of Drupal 8 core. So do check it out and stay tuned with his work on D8.

Drunken Monkey's posts on the Search API

There are a couple of good posts from Thomas Seidl on updating the Search API module to D8 that you can also check out.

Conclusion

The links above are a good start to understand a bit better what Drupal 8 will be about for module development. Of course there may be other useful links that I left out and there will definitely be more. So feel free to drop a line in the comments if you find some good article out there that helps developers learn about Drupal 8.