Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:
programming concepts
At Stack Exchange, we insist that people who ask questions put some effort into their question, and we’re kind of strict about it. That is, when you set out to ask a question, you should… * Describe what’s happening in sufficient detail that we can follow along. Provide the
programming languages
There’s no magic bullet for hiring programmers. But I can share advice on a few techniques that I’ve seen work, that I’ve written about here and personally tried out over the years. 1. First, pass a few simple “Hello World” online tests. I know it sounds crazy,
security
The prevalence of free, open WiFi has made it rather easy for a WiFi eavesdropper to steal your identity cookie for the websites you visit while you’re connected to that WiFi access point. This is something I talked about in Breaking the Web’s Cookie Jar. It’s difficult
meetings
How many meetings did you have today? This week? This month? Now ask yourself how many of those meetings were worthwhile, versus the work that you could have accomplished in that same time. This might lead one to wonder why we even have meetings at all. At GitHub we don’
programming languages
I am no longer a part of Stack Exchange. I still have much literal and figurative stock in the success of Stack Exchange, of course, but as of March 1st I will no longer be part of the day to day operations of the company, or the Stack Exchange sites,
community engagement
You know how interviewers love asking about your greatest weakness, or the biggest mistake you’ve ever made? These questions may sound formulaic, maybe even borderline cliché, but be careful when you answer: they are more important than they seem. So when people ask me what our biggest mistake was
design
I enjoy my iPhone, but I can’t quite come to terms with one aspect of its design: Apple’s insistence that there can be only ever be one, and only one, button on the front of the device. I also own a completely buttonless Kindle Fire, and you’ll
piracy
SOPA and PIPA are two pieces of proposed legislation designed to “stop” Internet piracy… in the most hamfisted way imaginable. As Mitchell Baker explains: Assume there’s a corner store in your neighborhood that rents movies. But the movie industry believes that some or even all of the videos in
community management
In November, I delivered the keynote presentation at Øredev 2011. It was the second and probably final presentation in the series I call Building Social Software for the Anti-Social. I’ve spent almost four years thinking about the Q&A format, and these two presentations are the culmination of
programming languages
Between founding Stack Overflow (and later, running Stack Exchange) and having a child, I haven’t had much time to blog about the holidays for a few years now. The last Gifts for Geeks I did was in 2008. Those recommendations are still as valid as ever, but I just
graphics
Anti-aliasing has an intimidating name, but what it does for our computer displays is rather fundamental. Think of it this way – a line has infinite resolution, but our digital displays do not. So when we “snap” a line to the pixel grid on our display, we can compensate by imagineering
ergonomics
I’ve talked about computer workstation ergonomics before, but one topic I didn’t address is lighting. We computer geeks like it dark. Really dark. Ideally, we’d be in a cave. A cave… with an internet connection. The one thing that we can’t abide is direct overhead lighting.