Jeff Atwood
Jeff Atwood (born 1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website Stack Overflow and co-founded Stack Exchange, which extends Stack Overflow's question-and-answer model to subjects other than programming. He is the owner and writer of the computer programming blog Coding Horror, focused on programming and human factors.
Jeff Atwood | |
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![]() Jeff Atwood in 2008 | |
Born | 1970 (age 52–53)[1][2] |
Occupation(s) | Software developer, writer |
Known for | Coding Horror (blog), Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange[3][4] |
As of 2012, Jeff Atwood's most recent project was Discourse, an open source Internet discussion platform.[3]
Career
![](../I/Joel_Spolsky_and_Jeff_Atwood_present_at_MIX09_(3365546017).jpg.webp)
Atwood started a programming blog, Coding Horror, in 2004. As a result, he met Joel Spolsky, among others.
In 2007, Jeff Atwood made the quote that was popularly referred to as Atwood’s Law:[5]
“Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.”
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.[6]
In February 2012, Atwood left Stack Exchange so he could spend more time with his family.[7]
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.[8] Atwood and others developed it out of their frustration with current bulletin board software that hadn't seemed to evolve since 1990.[9] On February 1, 2023, he stepped down as CEO and assumed the role of Executive Chairman.[10]
He also launched a mechanical keyboard called CODE in 2013.[11]
Books
References
- Atwood, Jeff (August 8, 2012). "I Was a Teenage Hacker". Coding Horror. Retrieved May 5, 2016.
- Atwood, Jeff (May 9, 2006). "The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming". Coding Horror. Retrieved May 5, 2016.
- Finley, Klint (July 5, 2012). "Stack Overflow Man Remakes Net One Answer at a Time". Wired. Retrieved May 5, 2016.
- Atwood, Jeff (June 5, 2015). "Programmerchat: I am Jeff Atwood". Reddit. Retrieved May 5, 2016.
- k, jayaprabhakar (January 3, 2018). "Rethinking Atwood's Law". Medium. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
- "Is Writing More Important Than Programming?". Archive of Previous Presentations. CUSEC. 2008. Archived from the original on October 29, 2013. Retrieved October 27, 2013.
- "Jeff Atwood bids adieu to Stack Exchange for the best reason ever". techcrunch.com. AOL. February 7, 2012.
- Ha, Anthony (February 5, 2013). "Stack Exchange Co-Founder Jeff Atwood Launches Forums Startup Discourse, With Funding From First Round, Greylock, And SV Angel". TechCrunch. AOL. Retrieved February 8, 2013.
- Atwood, Jeff (February 5, 2013). "Civilized Discourse Construction Kit". Coding Horror. Retrieved February 8, 2013.
- "Sam Saffron and Sarah Hawk named Discourse Co-CEOs". Discourse. January 31, 2023. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
- Atwood, Jeff (August 27, 2013). "The CODE Keyboard". Coding Horror. Retrieved August 29, 2013.