Programmer and entrepreneur; co-founded GitHub and created Jekyll, Gravatar and the Semantic Versioning spec.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Climate change is the existential crisis of our time

  Their words

  Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. We need more ideas and progress in every sector, including software-based approaches to preventing emissions and sequestering carbon.

  Introducing the Redwood Startup Fundtom.preston-werner.com

Release engineering manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. Keeps a public log at tylercipriani.com of every book he reads, with a rating and notes.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Masters of Doom

  Their words

  Carmack is a legend to anyone who writes software, and the book offers an unflinching portrait.

  tylercipriani.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A plain text file and a basic editor are everything anyone needs in order to think and write well; the extra tools add nothing.

  developer tools

  Their words

  Plain text files and a basic text editor are enough. This is everything you need for great thinking and writing.

  Write plain text filessive.rs

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Free software is meant to be exploited commercially, and the licence’s terms are the whole of what a company owes in return.

  Their words

  Free software is designed to be used commercially, but you have to do it correctly. This is a resource which is made available to companies who want to exploit it, but they must do so according to the terms of the licenses.

  On commercial forks of FOSS projectsdrewdevault.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Open source projects should adopt the commercial software playbook to compete for attention, and that professionalization is unequivocally good for open source.

  open source

  On changing their mind

  I used to think that this was unequivocally a win for open source. That to fight for attention with the commercial alternatives, we had to adopt the commercial playbook. Now I think it’s at the very least a mixed blessing.

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

From one piece log4j: between a rock and a hard place 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The software industry misunderstands backwards compatibility by focusing on narrow legalistic definitions rather than outcomes.

  Their words

  We as a profession misunderstand and misuse the concept of backwards compatibility, both upstream and downstream, by focusing on narrow legalistic definitions instead of outcomes.

  log4j: between a rock and a hard placecrawshaw.io

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software projects should break downstream users as little as possible, and make any breakage they do cause obvious and easy to fix.

  Their words

  a good software project tries to break downstream as little as possible, and when we do break downstream, we should do our best to make the breakage obvious and easy to fix.

  log4j: between a rock and a hard placecrawshaw.io

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software upgrades that invalidate previously learned knowledge make programmers worse at their craft.

  Their words

  When software "upgrades" invalidate my old knowledge, it makes me a worse programmer.

  log4j: between a rock and a hard placecrawshaw.io

Computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity; writes about focus, technology and work at calnewport.com and hosts the Deep Questions podcast.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Future Ethics

  Their words

  Bowles' 2018 book provides a useful survey of the various problems tackled by this nascent field, and the frameworks that have emerged to tackle them.

  calnewport.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Fauna

  Their words

  I typically recommend looking at serverless native databases like DynamoDB or Fauna however they do not work for all preferences or workloads.

  thdxr.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Kysely

  Their words

  To connect to these various databases I am using the incredible library by Sami Koskimäki called Kysely

  thdxr.com

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  DynamoDB

  Their words

  I typically recommend looking at serverless native databases like DynamoDB or Fauna however they do not work for all preferences or workloads.

  thdxr.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  The complexity of a JavaScript bundling and transpiling toolchain is a bargain worth making, and the right default for building web applications.

  JavaScript

  On changing their mind

  Five years later, the facts on the ground have finally changed. I no longer believe that this bargain is worth it for most new applications.

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Mac OS

  Their words

  I have a lot of feelings about macOS: it is astonishingly painful for developers, but makes up for it with a consistent experience for users.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Vim

  Their words

  For writing software I full-screen a terminal and use Vim. Ctrl+Z for a shell.

  usesthis.com

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Debian

  Their words

  Debian is a decent programming environment. It has some of the consistency properties like macOS, but fails unexpectedly.

  usesthis.com

Writer and consultant on formal methods and software correctness; author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers.

From one piece We Are Not Special 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Almost nothing programmers believe is unique to software is actually unique to software.

  Their words

  Almost everything we think is unique about software appears in every other field of engineering.

  We Are Not Specialhillelwayne.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software's real advantage over physical engineering is consistency: a component does what it is specified to do every time, while physical materials only fall within a tolerance.

  Their words

  Software is far more consistent than any other kind of engineering.

  We Are Not Specialhillelwayne.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software is not less rigorous than traditional engineering; its record-keeping and automated verification are better than most of that field's.

  Their words

  Plenty would kill to get the same kind of automated testing we treat as a given.

  We Are Not Specialhillelwayne.com

Programmer, teacher and speaker; long-time Microsoft developer-community figure, host of the Hanselminutes podcast and author of the hanselman.com blog.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Winget

  Their words

  I use it to setup a machine in an hour from the command line, versus a day before doing it manually.

  hanselman.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Windows Terminal

  Their words

  Windows Terminal - Finally Windows has a modern terminal. You can run shells like Command Prompt, PowerShell, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

  hanselman.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Windows Subsystem for Linux

  Their words

  It really can't be overstated how WSL/WSL2 has put the cherry on top of Windows 10.

  hanselman.com

Designer, illustrator and CSS developer known for single-div CSS illustrations, a yearly portfolio redesign, and a set of single-topic side-project sites.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Netlify

  Their words

  Other software I use to build stuff includes Netlify for hosting, GitHub for version control and collaboration, SVGO and TinyPNG for optimization, Kap for screen recording, GoatCounter for analytics, and Chrome and Firefox dev tools.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  GoatCounter

  Their words

  Other software I use to build stuff includes Netlify for hosting, GitHub for version control and collaboration, SVGO and TinyPNG for optimization, Kap for screen recording, GoatCounter for analytics, and Chrome and Firefox dev tools.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Kap

  Their words

  Other software I use to build stuff includes Netlify for hosting, GitHub for version control and collaboration, SVGO and TinyPNG for optimization, Kap for screen recording, GoatCounter for analytics, and Chrome and Firefox dev tools.

  usesthis.com

Professor at Carnegie Mellon working on self-driving-car safety; writes Safe Autonomy on how autonomous vehicles are and are not shown to be safe.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Nobody can drive the billions of representative miles that would prove a self-driving system safe before deploying it, so deployment always precedes proof.

  self-driving cars

  Their words

  But nobody will ever get to the billions of representative miles necessary to say anything compelling about expected safety until after they actually deploy their fleet.

  safeautonomy.blogspot.com

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

From one piece A few ways to make money in FOSS 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Making a living from your own open source means running it as a business and acquiring business skills, not waiting to be funded.

  open source

  Their words

  And yes, you are building a business. You need to start thinking of your project as a business and of yourself as a business owner.

  A few ways to make money in FOSSdrewdevault.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Venture capital is the wrong money for an open source business, because its constraints make it hard to stay true to the mission.

  open sourcestartups

  Their words

  The fast route — venture capital funded — is going to impose constraints on your business that will ultimately make it difficult to remain true to your open-source mission.

  A few ways to make money in FOSSdrewdevault.com

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

  Their words

  Selling is hard. Building a repeatable model with a team that you attempt to rapidly scale is even harder. Fortunately, Mark Roberge, who was one of the very first employees at HubSpot shares the processes and frameworks he used to build a sales machine. If you like the principles behind Lean Startups, then his data- and experiment-driven approach to sales will be very appealing.

  jasonevanish.com

• Likedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of Salesforce.com

  Their words

  Want to know the story behind how Salesforce was built? This is that story in founder Marc Benioff's own words. At times I found him overly prescriptive without an appreciation for his unfair advantages he had (getting to start it while having a big salary at Oracle, having $6Mn in "bootstrapped funding", etc). However, he also helped pioneer the cloud and SaaS as a business model, so there are many great lessons to glean if you're building a high-growth SaaS business.

  jasonevanish.com

American senior staff engineer working on developer and user experience and open source; writes at adamdehaven.com.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Breville Bambino Plus Espresso Machine

  Their words

  Breville Bambino Plus Espresso Machine and Baratza Encore ESP Pro Coffee Grinder - Developers need coffee, and I like mine HOT. The integrated milk steamer is a must-have, and since this machine takes freshly ground beans, the grinder allows me to tweak the grind size for perfect single dose espresso shots.

  adamdehaven.com

Member of technical staff at Anthropic. He has led ML/AI teams at Amazon, Alibaba and Lazada, and writes about LLMs, recommender systems and engineering at eugeneyan.com.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Adobe Acrobat Reader

  Their words

  To read papers, I use Adobe Acrobat Reader and sync them in the cloud. This lets me read, highlight, and sync my papers across devices (work laptop, personal laptop, iPad). Instapaper does the same for online articles.

  eugeneyan.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Instapaper

  Their words

  To read papers, I use Adobe Acrobat Reader and sync them in the cloud. This lets me read, highlight, and sync my papers across devices (work laptop, personal laptop, iPad). Instapaper does the same for online articles.

  eugeneyan.com

Front-end developer and writer on Svelte, Vue, CSS and WordPress; blogs at joshcollinsworth.com.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Firefox

  Their words

  Firefox is a great browser with some awesome tools, plus strong privacy. I use Edge when I need to test on Chromium; I don’t even install Chrome on my personal machines.

  joshcollinsworth.com

Front-end web developer at Paravel and co-host of the ShopTalk Show podcast; blogs at daverupert.com.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Streamlabs OBS

  Their words

  Incredible software if you're going to start a Twitch stream.

  daverupert.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  VS Code

  Their words

  It's a code editor. Has plugins and themes. It's nice.

  daverupert.com

Author and clean-energy analyst who writes on solar cost curves.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Every doubling of the solar built worldwide has cut its price by 30 to 40 per cent, and that learning rate is why the price keeps falling.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  The data paint an incredible picture: One that shows the price of solar electricity from utility-scale systems dropping by anywhere from 30-40% with each doubling of cumulative solar deployment.

  Solar's Future is Insanely Cheap (2020)rameznaam.com

Medicinal chemist; has written In the Pipeline, the drug-discovery blog, since 2002, and the “Things I Won’t Work With” posts about chemicals that try to kill you.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Standardised manufacturing and documentation cannot be skipped when a drug is given to human beings, because the noise they remove is the noise that would otherwise swallow the answer.

  documentation

  Their words

  You cannot wing it when you're giving a drug to human beings.

  Why Are Clinical Trials So Complicated?web.archive.org

Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Most of the time spent working on software goes to reading, understanding and editing existing code, not writing new code.

  Their words

  Because arguably the majority of our time working on software is not spent writing it: we're reading code, trying to understand it, slightly tweaking and editing it.

  How much do we bend to the will of our tools?thorstenball.com

British senior engineering manager at Netlify, previously a team lead at the BBC; writes about JavaScript testing, chatbots and serverless at marclittlemore.com.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Rectangle

  Their words

  I've just switched to Rectangle which seems to be an open-source fork of the project.

  marclittlemore.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Chrome

  Their words

  My browser of choice is Chrome, mainly because I use Google's tools (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and so on) on a daily basis.

  marclittlemore.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Visual Studio Code

  Their words

  Visual Studio Code is my code editor of choice. I switched over in September 2016 and absolutely love it.

  marclittlemore.com

Front-end developer and writer; co-founder of CodePen, founder of CSS-Tricks, and co-host of the ShopTalk Show podcast.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Tower

  Their words

  Tower for Git. iTerm for command line work.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Notion

  Their words

  Notion for tons of stuff. Project planning. Meeting notes. Documentation. Public documents.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  TablePlus

  Their words

  TablePlus for dealing with databases. Tower for Git.

  usesthis.com

Canadian full-stack web developer who makes JavaScript and CSS video courses and co-hosts the Syntax podcast.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Better Touch Tool

  Their words

  I use Better Touch Tool for window management, custom keyboard shortcuts (via the Hyper key) and a few other things. Best mac software ever!

  wesbos.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Quokka.js

  Their words

  In my tiktoks, you'll see the JavaScript result inlined beside my code. That is using Quokka.js Pro version.

  wesbos.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Firefox Developer

  Their words

  Firefox Developer has been my main browser since January 2020.

  wesbos.com

Writer and developer; runs Waxy.org, co-organises the XOXO festival, and was the first CTO of Kickstarter.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  SuperDuper

  Their words

  I'm currently running macOS Mojave, backed up with both Time Machine and SuperDuper to an external drive and BackBlaze to the cloud.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Backblaze

  Their words

  I'm currently running macOS Mojave, backed up with both Time Machine and SuperDuper to an external drive and BackBlaze to the cloud. Overkill maybe, but after a major drive crash a few years ago, I'm not taking any chances.

  usesthis.com

Programmer and writer; specified JSON, wrote JavaScript: The Good Parts, JSLint and How JavaScript Works.

• Usestheir ownrcmnd.app

  JSLint

  Their words

  I improve my JavaScript with JSLint. I test my JavaScript on Firefox, Chrome, and Edge, in that order.

  usesthis.com

Writer and education-technology critic; published Hack Education for a decade and wrote Teaching Machines.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Byword

  Their words

  For writing articles for my website, I compose in Byword, which is a Markdown text editor. (I like it because it syncs between my Apple devices.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Jekyll

  Their words

  I've run all my sites on Jekyll and GitHub Pages for a while now. I have found it easier to manage than WordPress (particularly as I know next to nothing about databases),

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  DuckDuckGo

  Their words

  DuckDuckGo is my default search engine. Firefox is my default browser.

  usesthis.com

Software engineer who writes about low-level and systems programming at nullprogram.com; author of the Elfeed feed reader, the Endlessh SSH tarpit and Enchive.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  NeoMutt

  Their words

  I use NeoMutt as my email client. It lets me comfortably compose all my mail in my favorite text editor, Vim.

  usesthis.com

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Tridactyl

  Their words

  Firefox is my favorite web browser. This is in large part due to Tridactyl, an add-on that makes the interface Vim-like, which makes the interface far more capable.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  tmux

  Their words

  To manage this setup, I'm nearly always using tmux, a terminal multiplexer.

  usesthis.com

Full-stack developer, creator of Tailwind CSS; writes at adamwathan.me and makes courses and screencasts for web developers.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Tuple

  Their words

  Really great tool for remote pair programming. Like Screenhero used to be, but better.

  adamwathan.me

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Figma

  Their words

  Figma is like Sketch but a million times more performant and cross-platform. It's the most impressive web app I've ever used.

  adamwathan.me

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  REAPER

  Their words

  It's basically the Vim of audio editing software, so I wouldn't recommend it if you don't have the time and energy to heavily invest in customizing it for your workflow, but I can move like lightning in this thing.

  adamwathan.me

Artist and developer who makes esoteric software, games and tools aboard a sailboat as part of Hundred Rabbits with Rekka Bellum; creator of the Uxn virtual machine and the Orca livecoding environment.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Blender

  Their words

  nnn file manager. Spreadsheet Calculator. Krita digital painting. Blender 3D editor. surf browser. Cozy audiobook player.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Mini vMac

  Their words

  I run the Elementary GNU/Linux distribution, and Macintosh System 7 via Mini vMac.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Micro

  Their words

  here's some notable software that I use daily. I also maintain an active list here. Fish Shell. Micro text editor. Toot Mastodon client. cmus audio player.

  usesthis.com

Indian software developer and prolific blogger on PHP, Laravel and JavaScript; open-source enthusiast publishing near-daily at amitmerchant.com.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Ulauncher

  Their words

  I use Ulauncher as the application launcher of my preferred choice on Linux.

  amitmerchant.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  HTTPie

  Their words

  I use HTTPie to perform API calls. It’s a great tool and I love it!

  amitmerchant.com

Author of Shape Up; formerly head of strategy at Basecamp, where he worked on product design for seventeen years; now runs Felt Presence.

From one piece Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shaping 2 beliefs · basecamp.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Work that is too fine too early commits everyone to the wrong details; shaped work is rough on purpose so designers and programmers can apply their own judgement.

  Their words

  Work that’s too fine, too early commits everyone to the wrong details. Designers and programmers need room to apply their own judgement and expertise when they roll up their sleeves and discover all the real trade-offs that emerge.

  Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shapingbasecamp.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Shaping is primarily design work: the shaped concept is an interaction design seen from the user's perspective, and it takes technical literacy, not programming.

  Their words

  Shaping is primarily design work. The shaped concept is an interaction design viewed from the user’s perspective. It defines what the feature does, how it works, and where it fits into existing flows.

  Shape Up, chapter 2: Principles of Shapingbasecamp.com

Writer, photographer and software maker based in Japan; publishes long-form essays, walking newsletters and self-made books at craigmod.com.

From one piece Fast Software, the Best Software 4 beliefs · craigmod.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Speed is a good proxy for engineering quality: software that slows down on simple tasks suggests engineers who are not obsessive about detail.

  Their words

  Speed and reliability are often intuited hand-in-hand. Speed can be a good proxy for general engineering quality. If an application slows down on simple tasks, then it can mean the engineers aren’t obsessive detail sticklers.

  Fast Software, the Best Softwarecraigmod.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Fast software is not always good software, but slow software is rarely able to rise to greatness, because not breaking flow is an axiom of great tools.

  Their words

  Fast software is not always good software, but slow software is rarely able to rise to greatness. Fast software gives the user a chance to “meld” with its toolset. That is, not break flow.

  Fast Software, the Best Softwarecraigmod.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Software should unbloat over time: the longer it is around, the more elegant it should become.

  Their words

  I love software that does this: Software that unbloats over time. This should be the goal of all software. The longer it’s around, the more elegant it should become. Smooth over like a river stone.

  Fast Software, the Best Softwarecraigmod.com

Professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego working on human-computer interaction and programming tools; creator of Python Tutor, the online code visualizer.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  iTerm2

  Their words

  On my laptop and desktop computers, I just have a Chrome web browser and terminal window open most of the time (I like iTerm2 for macOS).

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Dropbox

  Their words

  I'd say the central piece of software I use is Dropbox, which syncs subsets of my entire filesystem across all of my computing devices: iPhone, iPad, laptops, and desktops.

  usesthis.com

Software design writer and chief scientist at Thoughtworks; wrote Refactoring and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

From one piece Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The usual trade-off between quality and cost does not apply to software: high internal quality is the cheaper way to produce it.

  Their words

  With this article I'll explain that this trade-off does not apply to software - that high quality software is actually cheaper to produce.

  Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Poor internal quality begins to slow a team down within a few weeks, so almost no project is short enough for cutting corners to pay off.

  Their words

  Developers find poor quality code significantly slows them down within a few weeks.

  Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Cruft is not carelessness: even the best teams inevitably create it, because the right design is only visible once the software has been built.

  Their words

  even the finest teams will inevitably create some cruft as they work

  Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?martinfowler.com

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Company sponsorships, not individual ones, are where open source funding has to come from.

  open source

  On changing their mind

  I’ve seen recurring comments to the effect of “This is great, but individuals aren’t where the money’s at, it’s companies”, which is a position I’ve also previously taken.

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Individual and corporate sponsorship of open source are two different products: a company buys support and visibility, a person buys a relationship.

  open source

  Their words

  With companies, open source developers are selling a product. With individuals, they’re selling themselves.

  The Twitch argument for GitHub Sponsorsnadia.xyz

German developer; founder and lead developer of Mastodon, the decentralized open-source social network.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Sublime Text 3

  Their words

  Many years ago I bought a license for Sublime Text 3 and have been using it ever since. I don't use any IDEs, just a text editor.

  usesthis.com

Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

From one piece Learn more programming languages, even if you won't use them 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Programming languages shape how programmers think, similar to how spoken languages shape thought.

  Their words

  Languages shape the way we think*, each in their own peculiar way. That's true for programming languages as well.

  thorstenball.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Each programming language embodies a distinct mental model for thinking about computation and writing programs.

  Their words

  Each language contains a different mental model, a different perspective for thinking about computation and how to write programs.

  thorstenball.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A programming language functions as a lens that shapes how a problem is perceived when solving it.

  Their words

  Every programming language is a lens through which we can look at the problem we're trying to solve.

  thorstenball.com

Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance, debugging and understanding computer systems. Previously worked at Anthropic on interpretability, at Stripe on Sorbet, and at Ksplice.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  How Apollo flew to the Moon

  Their words

  This is far and away the best general-audience technical documentation of the Apollo missions I've read.

  blog.nelhage.com

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Sunburst and Luminary

  Their words

  The only reason it isn't higher on this list is that the content is a bit specialized and narrowly focused on the landing and the software and adjacent topics; it's definitely one of my favorite books here.

  blog.nelhage.com

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

From one piece Making money with licenses 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The thing open source can actually sell is not the code but access to its maintainers’ attention and expertise.

  open source

  Their words

  While everyone is focused on putting up tollbooths, opportunities to “price” maintainer attention, and access to maintainers, remain undervalued.

  Making money with licensesnadia.xyz

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Free riding is not open source’s problem: the users who only download the code impose no cost on anyone.

  open source

  Their words

  Most users don’t actually impose costs back to maintainers: they download the code and never interact with the project.

  Making money with licensesnadia.xyz

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  9front

  Their words

  My laptops generally run Alpine Linux or 9front (you can take that as an endorsement), or MINIX or OpenBSD.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Arch Linux

  Their words

  My workstation runs Arch Linux, but don't take that as an endorsement.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  mutt

  Their words

  My text editor is vim. My IRC client is WeeChat and my email client is mutt.

  usesthis.com

Software engineer and founder of Block Party; previously an engineer at Pinterest and Quora, and a co-founder of the non-profit Project Include and the tech diversity data project Where are the Numbers?

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Expo

  Their words

  Depending on what I'm building, I like Chrome for web development and debugging, and the Expo toolchain for hacking on React Native.

  usesthis.com

• Usesrcmnd.app

  IA Writer

  Their words

  For longer-form writing, I switch somewhat randomly between iA Writer, Byword, and Medium (in the browser).

  usesthis.com

Co-founder of Microsoft and of the Gates Foundation. Writes Gates Notes on global health, energy and climate, and on whatever they have been reading.

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  21 Lessons for the 21st Century

  Their words

  In his fascinating new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the historian Yuval Noah Harari creates a useful framework for confronting these fears.

  gatesnotes.com

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A software foundation is little more than a tax status, and gets less public accountability than a company because everyone assumes its motives are good.

  Their words

  There is nothing about a foundation that is inherently good, neutral, or charitable, simply because they have a 501(c) status.

  Governance without foundationsnadia.xyz

Software engineer and educator; creator of Testing Library and of the EpicWeb.dev and EpicReact.dev courses.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Good things happen when you do not test implementation details: tests written with the React and Vue testing libraries look almost identical.

  JavaScript

  Their words

  Did you know, the tests you write with react-testing-library look almost identical to the tests you write with vue-testing-library. Magic things happen when you don't test implementation details. :)

  @kentcdodds on Xx.com

Financial journalist; chief financial correspondent at Axios and host of the Slate Money podcast, previously a blogger at Reuters and author of The Phoenix Economy.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  1Password

  Their words

  There are very few pieces of software I really love, but 1Password comes close.

  usesthis.com

Co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer Company. Created DTrace at Sun Microsystems and was CTO of Joyent; blogs about systems software, open source and engineering culture.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Rust Programming Language

  Their words

  If you were as I was and are contemplating diving into Rust, a couple of pieces of advice, for whatever they're worth: I would recommend getting both The Rust Programming Language and Programming Rust. They are each excellent in their own right, and different enough to merit owning both.

  bcantrill.dtrace.org

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Rust

  Their words

  Let me close by offering a sincere thanks to those in the Rust community who have been working so long to develop such a terrific piece of software – and especially those who have worked so patiently to explain their work to us newcomers.

  bcantrill.dtrace.org

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  Programming Rust

  Their words

  not only did I buy the canonical reference (The Rust Programming Language by Steve Klabnik, Carol Nichols and community contributors), I also bought an O'Reilly book with a bit more narrative (Programming Rust by Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff).

  bcantrill.dtrace.org

Free software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) software forge.

From one piece The Commons Clause will destroy open source 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Maintainers of widely used open source software are not adequately funded, and that is a real and unsolved problem.

  open source

  Their words

  What should we do about open source maintainers not getting the funding they need? It’s a very real problem, and one Kevin has explicitly asked us to talk about before we criticise his solution to it.

  The Commons Clause will destroy open sourcedrewdevault.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The Commons Clause does not solve open source’s funding problem; it is a framework for turning open source software into proprietary software.

  open source

  Their words

  But the Commons Clause doesn’t present a solution for supporting open source software. It presents a framework for turning open source software into proprietary software.

  The Commons Clause will destroy open sourcedrewdevault.com

Statistician and Chief Scientist at Posit (RStudio). Author of the ggplot2, dplyr and tidyverse R packages and of books on R programming and data science.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master

  Their words

  This is about the craft of software development, and thinking about how to produce good code. As the name suggests, it's a very pragmatic and hands-on book. It really helped me on my journey as a software engineer, to be able to write quality code day in and day out, and be confident that it's going to work correctly.

  fivebooks.com

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  Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming

  Their words

  Another similar and also interesting book is Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming, which explains all the models of computer languages and how they fit together.

  fivebooks.com

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  Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

  Their words

  But this book is very useful for somebody like me, with experience in high-level engineering languages, like VBA, PHP and R. They're incredibly useful languages, but ones that computer scientists generally disdain, because they're not theoretically pure or beautiful. This book shows you how languages can be constructed. The most valuable thing it gives you is confidence and knowledge to go and create your own programming language.

  fivebooks.com

Writer and researcher on how people organise online; wrote Working in Public, on the maintenance of open-source software, and Antimemetics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The right to fork works as a standing threat rather than as an event; in mature open source, political forks are rare.

  open source

  Their words

  The right to fork is still critical as an implied threat to keep the system in check. But major political forks aren’t as common, and certainly not as top-of-mind, anymore.

  nadia.xyz

Australian moral philosopher, Professor of Bioethics emeritus at Princeton University; author of Animal Liberation, Practical Ethics and The Life You Can Save.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  Phenomenology of Spirit

  Their words

  In order to understand Marx, you really do need to know something about Hegel. It's a mistake to think you could read Marx as a scientist or an economist without understanding the Hegelian framework of his thought. That's why I chose to begin with Hegel.

  fivebooks.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  OpenBSD

  Their words

  But if you’re experienced, like to “look under the hood”, and prefer software that does the minimum necessary, OpenBSD is for you.

  sive.rs

London-based front-end architect, web developer evangelist and cloud consultant; Microsoft MVP. Writes at praveen.science and answers on Stack Overflow.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  WinSCP

  Their words

  I haven't seen any other software that's as stable as this one.

  blog.praveen.science

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Google Chrome

  Their words

  Google Chrome: What's a Web Developer without Google Chrome browser? The first thing I do with Safari is to get Google Chrome and install the latest version.

  blog.praveen.science

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  Meld

  Their words

  Meld is a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers. I am more inclined to use Meld than BeyondCompare as this is more stable than that.

  blog.praveen.science

Software engineer and educator; creator of Testing Library and of the EpicWeb.dev and EpicReact.dev courses.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The more your tests resemble the way your software is used, the more confidence they can give you.

  Their words

  The more your tests resemble the way your software is used, the more confidence they can give you.

  @kentcdodds on Xx.com

Creator of the Clojure programming language and of Datomic. His rationale for Clojure is one of the few language design documents that argues its case rather than describing its syntax.

From one piece Clojure - Rationale 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Locking is too hard for programmers to get right over and over again, so the language runtime should do that part.

  Their words

  Locking is too hard to get right over and over again

  Clojure - Rationaleclojure.org

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Pervasive unmoderated mutation has to go if programs are to be concurrent.

  Their words

  It reflects the reality that, for the concurrent programming future, pervasive, unmoderated mutation simply has to go.

  Clojure - Rationaleclojure.org

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

  Their words

  Awesomely creative think-piece. 40 very short fictional stories about what happens when you die. The framework is inspiring for anyone: coming up with 40 different answers to any one question. But they’re also just brilliant ideas and powerful little fables. I just read it a 2nd time and love it even more now.

  sive.rs

Game designer and programmer, co-founder of id Software and co-creator of Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D. Now runs Romero Games in Galway, Ireland.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Unity

  Their words

  I use a ton of software. Here's a list: Xcode, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Sublime Text, Corona SDK, Unity, Final Cut Pro, Versions, Perforce, VMWare Fusion, Messages, REAPER, Transmit, Coda, Dropbox, Skype, Dashlane, Slack, Terminal, Assembla, Airmail, Spark Mail, Google Docs, Pixelmator, Pixen, TexturePacker, Particle Designer, Tiled, iTunes + Music + Match, Screenium, Steam, Twitter, Facebook.

  usesthis.com

Chief Scientist at Google DeepMind and Google Research, at Google since 1999, where he co-created MapReduce, Bigtable, TensorFlow and the TPU.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  HP Z620

  Their words

  At work, I mostly use an HP Z620 Workstation with an NVidia GPU card in it, running Linux, with a single 30" monitor.

  usesthis.com

Working on @ampcode. Writing registerspill.thorstenball.com. Once authored interpreterbook.com and compilerbook.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Building powerful developer tools such as compilers, interpreters, and query languages requires knowledge of parsing.

  developer tools

  Their words

  What I know and what I'm sure about is that without knowledge of parsing you won't be able to build tools like these.

  Higher Value Toolsthorstenball.com

Founder and chief executive of Replit. Previously an engineer at Facebook and Codecademy. Writes essays on programming, philosophy and entrepreneurship at amasad.me.

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  Society of Mind

  Their words

  which plausibly breaks down the mind into modules and presents it as if it’s a big piece of software

  amasad.me

Software engineer working on distributed systems and databases; creator of rqlite, the distributed database built on SQLite.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  Writing Solid Code

  Their words

  This book had a big impact on me as young software developer. It was the first time I saw in print the principle "bugs that go away by themselves come back by themselves". It's something that I've often repeated to myself, and my team, if nothing else but to prepare us mentally for when that hard bug does come back. The chapter advising developers to "proactively step through your code during development, don't wait for the bug report" improved my productivity enormously, and I followed the practice for many years.

  philipotoole.com

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  The Unix Programming Environment

  Their words

  The Unix Programming Environment is a book you can't read too soon. It's something I wish I'd come across years before I actually did. An authoritative and comprehensive manual for using Unix as a programmer, it clearly explains concepts such as inodes, hard and soft links, system calls, and the power of joining programs together via stdin and stdout. By the time I came across this book I already knew these concepts, but had never studied them before in one place, and in such a coherent manner.

  philipotoole.com

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  Peopleware

  Their words

  But once you start to do so, it's a great book and probably the best one there is on programming management.

  philipotoole.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Mixed onaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Operating System Concepts

  Their words

  It covers concepts at a high level and hits the major points, but it's lacking in technical depth, details on how things work, advanced topics, and clear exposition.

  danluu.com

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  Higher Order Perl

  Their words

  A gentle introduction to functional programming that happens to use Perl. You could probably work through this book just as easily in Python or Ruby.

  danluu.com

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  Windows Internals

  Their words

  The most comprehensive book about how a modern operating system works. It just happens to be about Windows.

  danluu.com

Cryptographer; created Signal and the Signal Protocol, and writes occasionally about cryptography, web3 and sailing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Encryption people have to switch on protects almost nobody; what protects people is what a service turns on for everyone.

  Their words

  By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update.

  Reflections: The ecosystem is movingsignal.org

Ruby and Rails core committer known online as "tenderlove"; maintains Nokogiri and works on Ruby performance.

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  Safari

  Their words

  I mainly use Safari as my browser since it has the best Keychain integration.

  usesthis.com

Programmer; builds Mac and iOS apps, wrote WatermelonDB, and writes about tools, focus and software craft.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Deep Work

  Their words

  Podcast. Yes, yes, yes! We live very distracted lives and most of our working days are filled with shallow tasks and interruptions. Although programmers get the importance of flow, it’s so hard to achieve. Our environments don’t support it, and shallow work is just easier. The book makes a compelling case for why we should double down on deep work, and offers some practical strategies for achie…

  radex.io

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Normalization of deviance is well studied in healthcare and aviation and almost never discussed in software, although software organisations do it constantly.

  Their words

  It's well studied in a number of other contexts including healthcare, aviation, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, and civil engineering, but we don't see it discussed in the context of software.

  Normalization of deviancedanluu.com

Programmer and writer on computer architecture, performance, and software reliability. He has worked on CPU design at Centaur Technology and on software at Google and Microsoft, and writes long-form technical essays at danluu.com.

From one piece Files are hard 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Writing to files safely is too hard to do with raw syscalls; application code should go through a library or a database.

  Their words

  as an application developer, writing to files safely is hard enough that it should be done via some kind of library and/or database, not by directly making syscalls

  Files are harddanluu.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Almost every software project has cheap testing wins left on the table: basic random testing, static analysis and fault injection pay for themselves the first time they are run.

  Their words

  Almost every software project I've seen has a lot of low hanging testing fruit.

  Files are harddanluu.com

Game developer, formerly at Looking Glass Studios, and author of the stb single-file public-domain C libraries used across the games industry.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Metapad

  Their words

  For editing text in Windows outside of VC6, I use Metapad; when I'm on a Mac or Linux, I use vim.

  usesthis.com

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  Microsoft Visual C++ 6

  Their words

  For programming, I spend most of my time in vintage Microsoft Visual C++ 6, released in 1998, because the workflow is superior to newer Visual Studios for me.

  usesthis.com

Interpretability researcher at Anthropic, which he co-founded; before that at OpenAI and Google Brain, where he wrote the explanations of neural networks most people learned them from.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The connection between representations and types may be fundamentally significant, akin to links among geometry, logic, topology and functional programming.

  Their words

  The known connection between geometry, logic, topology, and functional programming suggests that the connections between representations and types may be of fundamental significance.

  colah.github.io