technology trends

Geek Transportation Systems

technology trends

Geek Transportation Systems

On my first visit to the Fog Creek Software offices in 2008, I was surprised to see programmers zooming around the office on scooters. I didn’t realize that scooters were something geeks would be into, but it sure looked like fun, albeit borderline dangerous fun, on the 25th floor

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Lived Fast, Died Young, Left a Tired Corpse

web development

Lived Fast, Died Young, Left a Tired Corpse

It’s easy to forget just how crazy things got during the Web 1.0 bubble in 2000. That was over ten years ago. For context, Mark Zuckerberg was all of sixteen when the original web bubble popped. There’s plenty of evidence that we’re entering another tech bubble.

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Trouble In the House of Google

google

Trouble In the House of Google

Let’s look at where stackoverflow.com traffic came from for the year of 2010. When 88.2% of all traffic for your website comes from a single source, criticizing that single source feels… risky. And perhaps a bit churlish, like looking a gift horse in the mouth, or saying

By Jeff Atwood ·
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The Keyboard Cult

programming languages

The Keyboard Cult

As a guy who spends most of his day typing words on a screen, it’s hard for me to take touch computing seriously. I love my iPhone 4, and smartphones are the ultimate utility belt item, but attempting to compose any kind of text on the thing is absolutely

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Revisiting Solid State Hard Drives

hardware

Revisiting Solid State Hard Drives

It’s been almost a year since I covered The State of Solid State Hard Drives. Not a heck of a lot has changed, but the topic is still worth revisiting, because if you care at all about how your computer performs, solid state hard drives remain a life changing

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Go That Way, Really Fast

programming languages

Go That Way, Really Fast

When it comes to running Stack Overflow, the company, I take all my business advice from one person, and one person alone: Curtis Armstrong. More specifically, Curtis Armstrong as Charles De Mar from the 1985 absurdist teen comedy classic, Better Off Dead. When asked for advice on how to ski

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Whatever Happened to Voice Recognition?

speech recognition

Whatever Happened to Voice Recognition?

Remember that Scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty tried to use a Mac Plus? Using a mouse or keyboard to control a computer? Don’t be silly. In the future, clearly there’s only one way computers will be controlled: by speaking to them. There’s only one teeny-tiny

By Jeff Atwood ·
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Welcome Back Comments

programming languages

Welcome Back Comments

I apologize for the scarcity of updates lately. There have been two things in the way: 1. Continuing fallout from International Backup Awareness Day, which meant all updates to Coding Horror from that point onward were hand-edited text files. Which, believe me, isn’t nearly as sexy as it… uh…

By Jeff Atwood ·
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A Democracy of Netbooks

laptops

A Democracy of Netbooks

As a long time reader of Joey DeVilla’s excellent blog, Global Nerdy, I take exception to his post Fast Food, Apple Pies, and Why Netbooks Suck: The end result, to my mind, is a device that occupies an uncomfortable, middle ground between laptops and smartphones that tries to please

By Jeff Atwood ·
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The Xanadu Dream

programming languages

The Xanadu Dream

Xanadu, a global hypertext publishing system, is the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry. It has been in development for more than 30 years. This long gestation period may not put it in the same category as the Great Wall of China, which was under construction

By Jeff Atwood ·
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The Only Truly Failed Project

microsoft bob

The Only Truly Failed Project

Do you remember Microsoft Bob? If you do, you probably remember it as an intensely marketed but laughable failure – what some call the “number one flop” at Microsoft. There’s no question that Microsoft Bob was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster. But that’s the funny thing about failures

By Jeff Atwood ·
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programming languages

COBOL: Everywhere and Nowhere

I’d like to talk to you about ducts. Wait a minute. Strike that. I meant COBOL. The Common Business Oriented Language is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary as the language that is everywhere and nowhere at once: As a result, today COBOL is everywhere, yet is largely unheard of among

By Jeff Atwood ·
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