Jeff Atwood

Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:

Bay Area, CA
Jeff Atwood

parenting

On Parenthood

Our son was born March 12th, 2009 [https://blog.codinghorror.com/spawned-a-new-process/]. He's a little over two and a half years old. Now, I am the wussiest wuss to ever wuss up the joint, so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt

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graphics cards

Multiple Video Cards

Almost nobody should do what I am about to describe – that is, install and use more than one video card. Nobody really needs that much graphics performance. It's also technically complex and a little expensive. But sometimes you gotta say to hell with rationality and embrace the overkill.

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ios development

Serving at the Pleasure of the King

I enjoy my iPhone tremendously; I think it's the most important product Apple has ever created and one they were born to make. As a consumer who has waited far too long for the phone industry to get the swift kick in the ass it so richly deserved,

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programming languages

The Gamification

When Joel Spolsky and I set out to design the Stack Exchange Q&A engine in 2008 – then known as Stack Overflow – we borrowed liberally and unapologetically from any online system that we felt worked. Some of our notable influences included: * Reddit and Digg voting * Xbox 360 achievements * Wikipedia

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security

Cutting the Gordian Knot of Web Identity

Perhaps you've seen this recent XKCD about password choice? It prompted a spirited debate – even on our very own Security Stack Exchange – about the merits of the argument presented there. Now, to be clear, I'm completely on Randall's side here; I'm all

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self-improvement

Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome

I'm not into self-help. I don't buy self-help books, I don't read productivity blogs, and I certainly don't subscribe to self-proclaimed self-help guru newsletters. Reading someone else's advice on the rather generic concept of helping yourself always struck me as

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pc building

Building a PC, Part VII: Rebooting

I've had more or less the same PC, with various updates, since 2007. I've written about most of it here: * Building a PC, Part I: Minimal boot * Building a PC, Part II: Burn in * Building a PC, Part III: Overclocking * Building a PC, Part IV: Now

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performance

Performance is a Feature

We've always put a heavy emphasis on performance at Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange. Not just because we're performance wonks (guilty!), but because we think speed is a competitive advantage. There's plenty of experimental data proving that the slower your website loads and displays,

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technology trends

Geek Transportation Systems

On my first visit to the Fog Creek Software offices in 2008, I was surprised to see programmers zooming around the office on scooters. I didn't realize that scooters were something geeks would be into, but it sure looked like fun, albeit borderline dangerous fun, on the 25th

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community management

Suspension, Ban or Hellban?

For almost eight months after launching Stack Overflow to the public, we had no concept of banning or blocking users. Like any new frontier town in the wilderness of the internet, I suppose it was inevitable that we'd be obliged to build a jail at some point. But

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chrome

The Infinite Version

One of the things I like most about Google's Chrome web browser is how often it is updated. But now that Chrome has rocketed through eleven versions in two and a half years, the thrill of seeing that version number increment has largely worn off. It seems they&

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hardware

Who Needs a Sound Card, Anyway?

The last sound card I purchased was in 2006, and that's only because I'm (occasionally) a bleeding edge PC gamer. The very same card was still in my current PC until a few days ago. It's perhaps too generous to describe PC sound hardware

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