Jeff Atwood (1970) is an American

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website

Stack Overflow In software, a stack overflow occurs if the call stack pointer exceeds the stack bound. The call stack may consist of a limited amount of address space, often determined at the start of the program. The size of the call stack depends on many fac ...

and co-founded

Stack Exchange Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The reputation system allows th ...

, which extends Stack Overflow's question-and-answer model to subjects other than programming. He is the owner and writer of the

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...

blog ''Coding Horror'', focused on programming and

human factors Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...

. Atwood's most recent project as of 2012 is the development of

Discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

, an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Internet discussion platform.

Career

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood present at MIX09 (3365546017)

Atwood started a programming

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

, Coding Horror, in 2004. As a result, he met

Joel Spolsky Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of ''Joel on Software'', a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software Trello. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Exce ...

, among others. In 2007, Jeff Atwood made the quote that was popularly referred to as Atwood’s Law:

“Any application that ''can'' be written in JavaScript, ''will'' eventually be written in JavaScript.”

In 2008, together with Spolsky, Atwood founded

, a programming question-and-answer website. The site quickly became very popular, and was followed by

Server Fault Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The reputation system allows th ...

for

system administrator A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...

s, and

Super User Stack Exchange is a network of question-and-answer (Q&A) websites on topics in diverse fields, each site covering a specific topic, where questions, answers, and users are subject to a reputation award process. The reputation system allows th ...

for general computer-related questions, eventually becoming the

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 A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

covering the progress on Stack Exchange and a wide range of

software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...

issues. Jeff Atwood was also a keynote presenter at the 2008 Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. In February 2012, Atwood left Stack Exchange so he could spend more time with his family. On February 5, 2013, Atwood announced his new company, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc. Its flagship product is an

next-generation discussion platform called

. Atwood and others developed it out of their frustration with current

bulletin board A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. B ...

software that hadn't seemed to evolve since 1990. He also launched a

mechanical keyboard The technology of computer keyboards includes many elements. Among the more important of these is the switch technology that they use. Computer alphanumeric keyboards typically have 80 to 110 durable switches, generally one for each key. The ch ...

called ''CODE'' in 2013.

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''.

References

External links

Profile on ''Coding Horror''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atwood, Jeff 1970 births Living people Web developers American male bloggers American bloggers American computer programmers