markdown
In 2009 I lamented the state of Markdown: Right now we have the worst of both worlds. Lack of leadership from the top, and a bunch of fragmented, poorly coordinated community efforts to advance Markdown, none of which are officially canon. This isn’t merely incovenient for anyone trying to
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
open source
I’m a big advocate of learning on the battlefield. And that certainly includes what may be the most epic battle of them all: open source software. Contribute to an open-source project. There are thousands, so pick whatever strikes your fancy. But pick one and really dig in, become an
programming languages
I have the very great honor of speaking at this year’s EclipseCon with one of my heroes, Clay Shirky. The theme of this year’s EclipseCon is collaboration – so all the talks are presented by two speakers. Our talk, The Social Mind: Designing Like Groups Matter, will alternate between
forums
I was struck by the conclusion of Andy Oram’s thoughtful piece on the next generation of online forums. People who want to learn more about computer technology and solve problems they encounter on their systems currently have a wealth of forums to turn to: mailing lists and newsgroups, official
version control
I consider this the golden rule of source control: Check in early, check in often. Developers who work for long periods – and by long I mean more than a day – without checking anything into source control are setting themselves up for some serious integration headaches down the line. Damon Poole
software development concepts
I was browsing around the CouchDb wiki yesterday when I saw Damien Katz’ hilarious description of how technical documentation really gets written. You know, in the real world: Welcome to the world of technical documentation! The situation you are in is no different from any other tech writer. The technical