technology trends

programming languages

Go, Monkey!

There’s an interesting interview with Miguel de Icaza. Miguel is the primary developer behind the open-source port of the .NET runtime known as the Mono Project. This project was recently purchased by Novell, ostensibly to bolster the development tools available on Linux. Miguel seems refreshingly free of the dogma

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments
Virtual PC 2004

virtual machine

Virtual PC 2004

This won’t be news to a lot of you, but I was playing around with Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 today: And it’s very cool. I know, I know, I’m probably the last developer on the planet to get wise to the benefits of virtual machine technology. In

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

software development concepts

Coding Slave

On Rory’s effusive recommendation, I purchased a copy of the book, Coding Slave, by Bob Reselman. I have mixed feelings about Coding Slave. It’s got a great title, it definitely kept my interest, and it’s a quick read. I can also pretty much guarantee you’ve never

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments
Putting the Science Back Into Computer Science

programming languages

Putting the Science Back Into Computer Science

The term “computer science” is a borderline oxymoron. Very little of what we do in software development is science: Many historians suggest that modern science began around 1600 in the time and with the efforts of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Their era punctuated the

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments
Commandos, Infantry, and Police

software development concepts

Commandos, Infantry, and Police

As I was driving home, I found myself thinking about a favorite section of the book Accidental Empires, by longtime computer journalist Robert X. Cringely. Originally published in 1993, it’s getting a little long in the tooth, but it still contains a lot of great insights about the personalities

By Jeff Atwood ·
Comments

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 ·
Comments
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 ·
Comments