Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 258 | Jeff Atwood - Sharing the House
Guest:
Jeff Atwood talks with Dave Rael about the human side of software development, blogging, connections, tackling problems, empathy, and shared experience
Jeff Atwood is an Indoor enthusiast. He's a legendary blogger and co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. He considers himself a reasonably experienced software developer with a particular interest in the human side of software development, as represented in his recommended developer reading list. Computers are fascinating machines, but they're mostly a reflection of the people using them. In the art of software development, studying code isn't enough; you have to study the people behind the software, too.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Jeff Atwood
- - Work, life, blogging, and deep interest
- - The Coding Horror brand
- - Daily Blogging and the Genesis of Stack Overflow
- - The approach to creating Stack Overflow
- - The Discourse Setup Experience
- - Jeff's reasons for tackling the problems handled by Discourse
- - Asking your community
- - The futility of trying to change minds and the impact of telling stories
- - Humility, self-doubt, and putting in the work
- - The impact of Jeff's work
- - Jeff's Book Recommendations
- - Jeff's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Jeff
Resources:
- Coding Horror - Jeff's Famous Blog
- Discourse
- Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Second Edition - Steve McConnell
- Dave's Blog Post on Being a Professional - Inlucing Work-Life Integration
- Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime-show controversy ("Wardrobe Malfunction")
- Kalzumeus Software - Patrick McKenzie's Blog (patio11)
- Patrick McKenzie on Hacker News
- Patrick McKenzie on Twitter
- Code Project
- Jeff's Post - Has Joel Spolsky Jumped the Shark?
- Paul Graham
- About Jeff, Including the Meaning of Coding Horror
- Experts Exchange
- Lord Kelvin on Expressing Your Understanding in numbers
- Discourse Source
- Basecamp
- Installing Discourse
- Server Fault
- Super User
- Area 51 for Stack Exchange Sites
- What is the best comment in source code you have ever - Stack Overflow
- Why I'm The Best Programmer In The World* - Jeff's Post about Humility
- Matt Wynne on Developer On Fire
- Ward Cunningham on Developer On Fire
- 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute - Richard Wiseman
- Steve Yegge
- Steve Yegge Emphasizing Marketing on the Stack Overflow Podcast
- Meta Stack Exchange
- Meta Discourse
Jeff's book recommendation:
Jeff's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- Measure performance all the time - Know how long every unit of work in your app is taking
- Have user friendly error handling for both the end user and the developer built into your application
- Have a place where people can go to discuss your software
