programming languages

I Fight For The Users

programming languages

I Fight For The Users

If you haven’t been able to keep up with my blistering pace of one blog post per year, I don’t blame you. There’s a lot going on right now. It’s a busy time. But let’s pause and take a moment to celebrate that Elon Musk

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Updating The Single Most Influential Book of the BASIC Era

programming languages

Updating The Single Most Influential Book of the BASIC Era

In a way, these two books are responsible for my entire professional career. With early computers, you didn’t boot up to a fancy schmancy desktop, or a screen full of apps you could easily poke and prod with your finger. No, those computers booted up to the command line.

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development

What does Stack Overflow want to be when it grows up?

I sometimes get asked by regular people in the actual real world what it is that I do for a living, and here's my 15 second answer: > We built a sort of Wikipedia website for computer programmers to post questions and answers. It's called Stack

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

To Serve Man, with Software

I didn't choose to be a programmer. Somehow, it seemed, the computers chose me [https://blog.codinghorror.com/if-loving-computers-is-wrong-i-dont-want-to-be-right/]. For a long time, that was fine, that was enough; that was all I needed. But along the way I never felt that being a programmer was this unambiguously

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

The Raspberry Pi Has Revolutionized Emulation

Every geek goes through a phase where they discover emulation. It's practically a rite of passage [https://blog.codinghorror.com/rediscovering-arcade-nostalgia/]. > I think I spent most of my childhood – and a large part of my life as a young adult – desperately wishing I was in a video

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Here's The Programming Game You Never Asked For

You know what's universally regarded as un-fun by most programmers? Writing assembly language code [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language]. As Steve McConnell said back in 1994 [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735619670/?tag=codihorr-20]: > Programmers working with high-level languages achieve better productivity and quality than

By Jeff Atwood ·
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swift

The Hugging Will Continue Until Morale Improves

I saw in today's news that Apple open sourced their Swift language [https://t.co/KpC9xID5kU]. One of the most influential companies in the world explicitly adopting an open source model – that's great! I'm a believer. One of the big reasons we founded Discourse

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Doing Terrible Things To Your Code

In 1992, I thought I was the best programmer in the world. In my defense, I had just graduated from college, this was pre-Internet, and I lived in Boulder, Colorado working in small business jobs where I was lucky to even hear about other programmers much less meet them. I

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Our Programs Are Fun To Use

These two imaginary guys [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros] influenced me heavily as a programmer. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros] Instead of guaranteeing fancy features or compatibility or error free operation, Beagle Bros software promised something else altogether: fun. Playing with the Beagle Bros quirky Apple

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

Level One: The Intro Stage

Way back in 2007, before Stack Overflow was a glint in anyone's eye, I called software development a collaborative game [https://blog.codinghorror.com/software-development-as-a-collaborative-game/]. And perhaps Stack Overflow was the natural outcome of that initial thought – recasting online software development discussion into a collaborative game where the

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

The Infinite Space Between Words

Computer performance is a bit of a shell game [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-computer-performance-shell-game/]. You're always waiting for one of four things: * Disk * CPU * Memory * Network But which one? How long will you wait? And what will you do while you're waiting? Did you see the

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

App-pocalypse Now

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

By Jeff Atwood ·
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