software development concepts

software development concepts

What if software was never free?

Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free. – Bill Gates We’ve all been reaping the benefits of Moore’s Law for the last 20 years, but there is one unintended consequence of this rule: as hardware becomes cheaper, software

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Revenge of Notepad

text editors

Revenge of Notepad

I use notepad.exe dozens of time a day. Given the severely limited functionality of Notepad, it’s incredible that it has taken me this long to find a suitable replacement for what is, evidently, a core part of my developer toolkit. Check out Notepad2: The original Notepad shipped with

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development concepts

We Are Morons: a quick look at the Win2k source

Thanks to my friend, Geoff Dalgas, for pointing out an interesting article at kuro5hin.org, which analyzes the comments inside the recently leaked Microsoft Windows NT/2k code. Very amusing, with some surprising insights into the mindset of the coders working at Microsoft: In the struggle to meet deadlines, I

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Recommended Reading for Developers

programming languages

Recommended Reading for Developers

This list was last updated February 2025. Why are updates to my reading list so rare? Because computers change a lot in 10 years, but people don’t. To make better software, you need to understand how people work, and that is what the books I recommend tend to focus

By Jeff Atwood ·
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