Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me here:
In 2007, I was offered $120,000 to buy this blog outright. I was sorely tempted, because that's a lot of money. I had to think about it for a week. Ultimately I decided that my blog was an integral part of who I was, and who I
I'm getting pretty sick of being nagged to install your damn apps. XKCD helpfully translates: Yeah, there are smart app banners, which are marginally less annoying, but it's amazing how quickly we went from "Cool! Phone apps that finally don't suck!" to
If I haven't blogged much in the last year, it's because we've been busy building that civilized discourse construction kit thing I talked about. (Yes, that's actually the name of the company. This is what happens when you put me in charge
A month after I wrote about John Carmack, he left id Software to become the CTO of Oculus. This was big news for two reasons: 1. Carmack founded id in the early 90s. An id Software without Carmack is like an Apple without Woz and Jobs. You wouldn't
I've become a huge fan of touch computing. I believe that most things we think of as "computers" will be de-facto tablets, either in our pocket, in our hands, possibly even mounted on our wrists or forearms. I can't wait for the iPad 5
Masters of Doom is the story of John Carmack and John Romero creating the seminal games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. It's an amazing work on so many levels – but primarily because of the exhaustive research the author undertook to tell this story. To re-create the story of
I just updated my utility belt. Well, metaphorically speaking – every self-respecting geek has one. Lately I've been trying to minimize what I carry around even further. After having children I've come to appreciate the value of less stuff in my life. So here's my
I no longer own any laptops. Everything in our house is a tablet: multiple Nexus 7s, multiple iPad 4s, and a Surface Pro. In fact, the only traditional computers I own are my triple-monitor desktop home office beast, and the small Home Theater PC (HTPC) that drives all our home
What would you do, if you could do anything? I don't mean in a fantasy superhero way, but in terms of resources. If someone told you that you now had the resources to attempt to make one thing happen in the world, one real thing, what would that
Every programmer ever born thinks whatever idea just popped out of their head into their editor is the most generalized, most flexible, most one-size-fits all solution that has ever been conceived. We think we've built software that is a general purpose solution to some set of problems, but
I get a surprising number of emails from career programmers who have spent some time in the profession and eventually decided it just isn't for them. Most recently this: I finished a computer science degree last year, worked about a year in the Java EE stack. I liked
I've been a Microsoft developer for decades now. I weaned myself on various flavors of home computer Microsoft Basic, and I got my first paid programming gigs in Microsoft FoxPro, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Visual Basic. I have seen the future of programming, my friends, and it is