Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me:
programming languages
As a guy who spends most of his day typing words on a screen, it's hard for me to take touch computing seriously. I love my iPhone 4, and smartphones are the ultimate utility belt item, but attempting to compose any kind of text on the thing is
networking
Do you remember when a router used to be an exotic bit of network kit? Those days are long gone. A router is one of those salt-of-the-earth items now; anyone who pays for an internet connection needs a router, for: 1. NAT and basic hardware firewall protection from internet evildoers
copyright
In YouTube: The Big Copyright Lie, I described my love-hate relationship with YouTube, at least as it existed in way back in the dark ages of 2007. Now think back through all the videos you've watched on YouTube. How many of them contained any original content? It'
hardware
It's been almost a year since I covered The State of Solid State Hard Drives. Not a heck of a lot has changed, but the topic is still worth revisiting, because if you care at all about how your computer performs, solid state hard drives remain a life
programming languages
When it comes to running Stack Overflow, the company, I take all my business advice from one person, and one person alone: Curtis Armstrong. More specifically, Curtis Armstrong as Charles De Mar from the 1985 absurdist teen comedy classic, Better Off Dead. When asked for advice on how to ski
security
Kyle Brandt, a system administrator, asks Should Developers have Access to Production? A question that comes up again and again in web development companies is: “Should the developers have access to the production environment, and if they do, to what extent?” My view on this is that as a whole
technology
Like any self-respecting geek, I'm mostly an indoor enthusiast. But on those unfortunate occasions when I am compelled -- for reasons entirely beyond my control -- to leave the house, I do so fully armed with my crucial utility belt items. Yes, you heard me, I transform from
movie
On a recent airplane flight, I happened to catch the movie Groundhog Day. Again. If you aren't familiar with this classic film, the premise is simple: Bill Murray, somehow, gets stuck reliving the same day over and over. It's been at least 5 years since I&
speech recognition
Remember that Scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty tried to use a Mac Plus? Using a mouse or keyboard to control a computer? Don't be silly. In the future, clearly there's only one way computers will be controlled: by speaking to them. There's
software development
After we created Stack Overflow, some people were convinced we had built a marginally better mousetrap for asking and answering questions. The inevitable speculation began: can we use your engine to build a Q&A site about {topic}? Our answer was Stack Exchange. Pay us $129 a month (and
remote work
When I first chose my own adventure, I didn't know what working remotely from home was going to be like. I had never done it before. As programmers go, I'm fairly social. Which still means I'm a borderline sociopath by normal standards. All the
css
We're currently in the midst of a CSS Zen Garden type excerise on our family of Q&A websites, which I affectionately refer to as "the Trilogy": * Server Fault * Super User * Stack Overflow * Meta Stack Overflow (In case you were wondering, yes, meta is the