Jeff Atwood Explained

Jeff Atwood
Known For:	Coding Horror (blog), Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange
Occupation:	Software developer, writer

Jeff Atwood (born 1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the question-and-answer network Stack Exchange, which contains the Stack Overflow website for computer programming questions. He is the owner and writer of the computer programming blog Coding Horror, focused on programming and human factors. As of 2012, Jeff Atwood's most recent project was Discourse, an open source Internet discussion platform.

He is famous for Atwood's Law, which states:

"Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript"^[1]

Career

Atwood started a programming blog, Coding Horror, in 2004. As a result, he met Joel Spolsky, among others. In 2008, together with Spolsky, Atwood founded Stack Overflow, a programming question-and-answer website. The site quickly became very popular, and was followed by Server Fault for system administrators, and Super User for general computer-related questions, eventually becoming the Stack Exchange network which includes many Q&A websites about topics decided on by the community.

From 2008 to 2014, Atwood and Spolsky published a weekly podcast covering the progress on Stack Exchange and a wide range of software development issues. Jeff Atwood was also a keynote presenter at the 2008 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference.^[2]

In February 2012, Atwood left Stack Exchange so he could spend more time with his family.^[3]

On February 5, 2013, Atwood announced his new company, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. Its flagship product is an open source next-generation discussion platform called Discourse.^[4] Atwood and others developed it out of their frustration with current bulletin board software that hadn't seemed to evolve since 1990.^[5] On February 1, 2023, he stepped down as CEO and assumed the role of Executive Chairman.^[6]

He also launched a mechanical keyboard called CODE in 2013.^[7]

Books

• The ASP.NET 2.0 Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, by Scott Allen, Jeff Atwood, Wyatt Barnett, Jon Galloway and Phil Haack.
• Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code.

External links

• Profile on Coding Horror

Notes and References

1. Web site: Sachs . Shai . 2024-06-30 . Atwood's Law . 2024-08-09 . Laws of Software . en.
2. Web site: Is Writing More Important Than Programming? . Archive of Previous Presentations . CUSEC . October 27, 2013 . 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20131029185918/http://2008.cusec.net/archives.html . October 29, 2013.
3. Web site: Jeff Atwood bids adieu to Stack Exchange for the best reason ever . techcrunch.com . AOL . February 7, 2012.
4. Web site: Stack Exchange Co-Founder Jeff Atwood Launches Forums Startup Discourse, With Funding From First Round, Greylock, And SV Angel . Ha . Anthony . February 5, 2013 . . . February 8, 2013.
5. Web site: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit . Coding Horror . Atwood . Jeff . February 5, 2013 . February 8, 2013.
6. Web site: 2023-01-31 . Sam Saffron and Sarah Hawk named Discourse Co-CEOs . 2023-02-09 . Discourse . en.
7. Web site: The CODE Keyboard . Coding Horror . Atwood . Jeff . August 27, 2013 . August 29, 2013.