blogging

blogging

Maximizing The Value of Your Keystrokes

I met Jon Udell this year at MIX. I was reading through his excellent blog to flesh out some of the topics we talked about, when I was struck by the powerful message of this particular entry: When people tell me they're too busy to blog, I ask

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

programming languages

Five Things You Didn't Know About Me (and my office)

I've been reluctant to respond to the Five Things You Didn't Know About Me meme. I generally take Kathy Sierra's advice when it comes to describing my background: How many talks do you see where the speaker has multiple bullet points and slides just

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

The Day The Trackbacks Died

You might read a post on this blog and decide I'm full of crap. That's fine. I often am full of crap. I encourage you to leave a comment explaining why you feel this way. And, while you're at it, feel free to point

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

Blog Advertising: Yea or Nay

I've recently been approached by several different people to inquire about advertising on my blog. It doesn't cost me anything to run this blog. I used to host it myself on my cable modem, and my employer, Vertigo Software, generously donated hosting when I outgrew the

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

programming languages

Secretly, We're All Geeks

Scott Hanselman was kind enough to sing the praises of my blog [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/RerediscoveringJeffAtwood.aspx] a few months ago, completely unprompted. I finally met Scott in person at TechEd this year, and I can assure you that if you suck, Scott will be the first person

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

A Blog Without Comments Is Not a Blog

James Bach responded to my recent post, Are You Following the Instructions on the Paint Can?, with Studying Jeff Atwood's Paint Can. I didn't realize how many assumptions I made in that post until I read Mr. Bach's pointed response. The most amusing assumption

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

writing

Fear of Writing

When I meet people that have something to say, and an interesting way of saying it, I encourage them to blog. But there's one big hurdle many people simply never get past: the actual writing. I can respect that. Writing is hard. People spend their entire lives learning

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

If You're Reading This, You Are a Low-Value Demographic

Jakob Neilsen may not be today's hip and trendy Web 2.0 fixture, but he's still dispensing solid advice. Check out his Top Ten Blog Design Mistakes: 1. No Author Biographies 2. No Author Photo 3. Nondescript Posting Titles 4. Links Don't Say Where

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

software development

Show, Don't Tell

I picked up a copy of The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590595009/codihorr-20]. It's essentially just a collection of Joel's favorite blog entries from the last few years. But it's Joel,

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

John Dvorak, blogging O.G.

Like Steve Broback [http://blogbusinesssummit.com/2005/05/blogs_and_googl_2.htm] , I spent many of my formative years in computing reading John Dvorak's magazine column. > I started enthusiastically reading John Dvorak's columns back in 1984, at my first job selling IBM PCs and

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

blogging

Blogging about Blogging

I’ve avoided the incestuous nature of blogging about blogging until now, but the topic does come up occasionally. Not everyone is a believer in the utility of blogs; I was a skeptic only two years ago, and Michael Brundage went out of his way late last year to point

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

perl

In the beginning, there was Movable Type

Writing code all day sort of saps my will to come home and... write more code. With that in mind I set out to find existing blog software rather than rolling my own. Life's just too short, and besides, never write what you can steal – right? I experimented

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments