Jeff Atwood on Technical Blogging

Coding Horror/Stack Overflow/Discourse creator Jeff Atwood on why blogging still matters

Welcome to our latest attempt to address the “you’re not writing enough” challenge!

Following up on writethat.blog and Writing for Developers: Blogs That Get Read, we’re sharing the perspectives of expert tech bloggers: why they write, how they tackle writing challenges, and their lessons learned. This time, we’re featuring Jeff Atwood.

How do you introduce Jeff Atwood? 😅 If you don’t immediately recognize his name, think tech blogging pioneer, Coding Horror author, Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow co-founder, Discourse co-founder…

And recently, Jeff just used a blog post to communicate an astoundingly generous gesture: his family pledging to donate half their wealth to nonprofit groups working to keep the American Dream alive.

What else can we say? Let’s hear from Jeff!

Why did you start blogging – and why do you continue?

I love blogging – it’s how I got to where I am. Steve McConnell's book Code Complete is what inspired me to start blogging. His voice was just so human. Instead of the traditional chest-thumping about “My algorithm is better than your algorithm,” it was about “Hey, we're all fallible humans writing software for other fallible humans.” I thought, “Oh my God, this is humanistic computing.” I loved it! I knew I had to write like that too. That’s what launched me on my journey.

Now more than ever, I think it's important to realize that we've given everyone a Gutenberg printing press that reaches every other human on the planet. At first blush, that sounds amazing. Wow, everybody can talk to everybody! But then the terror sets in: Oh, my God. Everybody can talk to everybody – this is a nightmare.

I think blogs are important because it’s a structured form of writing. Sadly, chat tends to dominate now. I want people to articulate their thoughts, to really think about what they're saying – structure it, have a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It doesn't have to be super long. However, chat breaks everything up into a million pieces. You have these interleaved conversations where people are just typing whatever pops into their brain, sometimes with 10 people doing that at the same time. How do you create a narrative out of this? How do you create a coherent story out of chat?

I think blogging is a better mental exercise. Tell the story of what happened to you, and maybe we can learn from it. Maybe you can learn from your own story, perhaps from the whole rubber ducking aspect of it. As you’re explaining it to yourself, you’re also creating a public artifact that can benefit others who might have the same problem or a related story. And it's your story – what's unique about you. I want to hear about you as a person – your unique experience and what you've done and what you've seen. That's what makes humanity great. And I think blogs are an excellent medium for that.

There's certainly a place for video, there's a place for chat. These tools all have their uses, but use the appropriate tool for the appropriate job. I think blogs are a very, very versatile tool in terms of median length, telling a story, and sharing it with the public.

If you look at the history of humanity, the things that have really changed the world have been in writing – books, novels, opinion pieces, even blogs. The invention of language was important, but the invention of writing was so much bigger. With writing, you didn't have to depend on one person being alive long enough to tell the story over and over. You could write it down and then it could live on forever.

I encourage everyone to write, even if you write only for yourself. I think it's better if you write in public because you can get feedback that way. You can learn so much from the feedback – learn that others feel the same way, learn about aspects you didn’t think about, etc. But it's scary. I get it – people are afraid of putting themselves out there. Write for just you if you want, but write… just write.

What post was the most difficult to write and how did you tackle it?

Stay Gold, America, without a doubt. I discussed this post with hundreds of Americans from all walks of life, from people living on the streets to billionaires, because it had to reach so many people.

Normally, I shoot from the hip. For better or worse, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I write what I feel. I don't always get it right, but people see that I have a heart and that I care. They respect that even when I mess up (which I frequently do). But on this one, I couldn’t mess up. It had to be right. It mattered so much that I basically had a nervous breakdown writing that post, to be honest with you.

For this one, I got so much feedback – which isn’t normally how I write. Talking to 100+ Americans about a blog post in extreme detail, going back and forth with so many edits and revisions…it’s not how I write at all, normally. Paul Graham writes like that, and that’s fine. It’s not right, it's not wrong. His process is just different than my process.

Integrating the feedback was a joy. It flipped me. I started with a pretty cynical take, but all this feedback flipped me from pessimism to optimism, which I didn't even think was possible. It was mostly feedback from my fellow Americans and also some outside perspectives (“Hey mate, WTF is going on there?”) My response was: “I don't know, but I'm trying to figure it out.”

It was so much work and so much integration, but I had to do it because I needed that optimism. And not only that, I wanted to share that optimism with others.

Note: There’s an extensive discussion of Stay Gold, America later in this blog post.

What blog post are you most proud of and why?

Stay Gold, America is the one that I put the most work into. We'll see. My hope is that it inspires people to be optimistic, to do both short term things to help the people most immediately in need and also to work towards the larger systemic changes that I think we clearly need in this country.

But I think I'm too close to that blog post right now to really judge it. At this point, it needs time. Maybe it’s like with history: You can't tell what the real impact is until 10 or 20 years later.

Beyond Stay Gold, I would say one of my favorite blog posts is On Parenthood, which is about what it means to be a parent. I can't even really talk about this without bursting into tears – the fact that I wrote about my son and how impactful it is being a parent, how proud I was… It was incredible reading that blog post with my son, who’s now 15 years old – an age where he can really understand it. After we read it together, we then proceeded to play a video game where we were on the same team and we supported each other. And my son carried me. He kicked ass. He played so much better than I did (because I'm getting older now) but I was helping him, he was helping me, and it was like a complete realization of everything that I wrote about.

Any blogs that you particularly enjoy?

I love Susan Fowler's blog post Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber. It’s about what was going on at Uber and it completely transformed the company. She did it in such a civil way. She wasn't espousing, she wasn't angry. She was like, “Look, this is what's happening, and I don't understand.”

Doing something like that takes some bravery, and you also have to have the right voice. You can't be too partisan, too incendiary – not just because you shouldn't be, but because it undermines your purpose. It has to be focused on getting things done. That’s how you make your small corner of the world better.

Her post is amazing. It changed the world in such a brilliant way. It's difficult. As a man, I don't get criticized like women do, so it's even harder for women to put themselves out there like this. I respected that so much, and I kind of used her tone there as a template for my own tone in Stay Gold.

Any blogging lessons learned that you want to share with the community?

Just write. Make a habit of writing. It's like exercise. It's like anything else…mental health. What are the fundamentals of mental health? Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you exercising? Are you having sane interactions with friends and family? These are the fundamentals. And I would add another fundamental to that: Are you writing? Are you formulating a story of why the things that are happening to you are happening to you, and what you can do about that, and what it means? That's an important part of the formula.

A lot of stuff just randomly happens. But a lot of stuff happens because we chose our own adventure, we chose a certain path, we made a choice. And if you write about that – I made this choice, and it was a good choice, or it was a bad choice, and I learned all these things – you're not just helping yourself, you're helping so many other people behind you.

So write regularly, pick a writing schedule that you can live with, and treat it like an exercise regimen. Your blog posts don't all have to be perfect. Don’t worry; don’t think, “Oh, I can't write because it's embarrassing or it'll be bad.” Everybody's bad at some level. But you know how you get better? By doing it regularly – not necessarily every day, but on a schedule. That's how you get better at stuff. That's how you practice and learn – by doing something regularly, ideally, with feedback.

It's a lot like my advice to people who are single. How are you going to get into a relationship if you don’t leave the house (before Tinder, at least)? Step one, leave the house. Go to places where other people are present and meet people. Applying that here, just pick some form of writing that works for you, and do it. But I will say, please go beyond chat. Chat is more of an ideation tool. I'm a true believer in writing. Writing is so core. Pick a writing schedule and stick to it.

Anything else that you'd want to mention that we haven't covered?

I do want to urge people to read my Stay Gold post and see if it resonates with them – bringing optimism and hope and possibility. And I really want to work with everyone on these enormous problems that we're facing. It's going to take all of us.

Secondary to that, Discourse is my product for creating smaller communities with boundaries – none of this “prison rules” stuff – where people come together over love of each other and shared interests and treat each other with empathy and kindness. That's what the software is designed to do.

I would encourage people to look at those two things and see if they appeal. And if not, that's fine. You know, pick whatever tool, whatever path works for you, as long as it's a path of love.

Bonus: More on Stay Gold and Jeff’s Commitment to Sharing the American Dream

Beyond blogging, here are some additional insights that Jeff shared during our interview…

The American Dream

We talk about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What do we believe in? What are our core beliefs? Let's get back to first principles here. Let's go back to that – not tribalism, not red versus blue, Cowboys versus Steelers, or any of that. What do we actually believe in? And it was “life, liberty, and the pursuit of shared happiness,” where we're all working together to ensure we all get ahead.

I started writing the Stay Gold blog post on November 11, 2024 and published it on January 7, 2025. During that time, I looked up wealth concentration levels out of curiosity. I kept hearing people talk about how we’re in a new Gilded Age where there's a lot of super-rich people and everybody else just has a pittance. I saw that between the peak of the previous Gilded Age and January 7, we reached a new peak of wealth concentration in the United States. I thought: This is what I’m talking about. This is something we need to address, regardless of party affiliation. Let's talk about policies. Let's talk about how everyone can succeed. Let's talk about how everyone can help each other pursue happiness. The key word is pursue – you can never really get there, but there’s so much joy in the pursuit. We're denying people even the pursuit of happiness, and I cannot abide this.

I'm just one guy, you know. I started some companies, I did some things, and I have wealth. I didn't really know where I was going after that. I was honestly kind of lost, and I found purpose in this idea that I could use what I have to help broadcast this message and help realize that this is the dream. This is a key part of the dream: getting there and then helping others get it too – systemically, long term and short term.

Blogging and Philanthropy

In Stay Gold, I invoke Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem because that captures the distortion of the American dream, distorted because it was ill-specified. The American dream is “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but not sufficiently explained. In my opinion, today it should be “life, liberty, affordable health care, affordable (or even free) education, and the shared pursuit of happiness.” In other words, it's not about my happiness. My happiness is your happiness. We should be happy together. Happiness is best when shared, when we're helping each other pursue that goal.

I think better explaining the few powerful sentences that make up the American Dream is so important – and something you can do in a blog post. That's what I was trying to do with the Stay Gold blog post. It was so difficult to get the word count down, it was excruciating.

I talked to hundreds of Americans from all walks of life, from people who live on the street to billionaires. And in the process of talking to them, I went from being pessimistic and cynical to being optimistic. I think being able to write that blog post and share that optimism is the best move I could make for myself, as well as for everyone else who reads it. I just want people to believe that there's a way forward, an approachable way forward. You can make progress, both short term and long term.

I think a blog was a great way to deliver that message. MacKenzie Scott has done this style of philanthropy – making donations and blogging about it on her own.

Family Not Foundations

A lot of wealthy people set up foundations – and this is a personal peeve for me. They'll put their name on the foundation, so it's about them. It's also a low-key tax dodge. There are many variables involved, of course. I'm not trying to call anyone out, but the process is fraught.

When I do it directly on my blog, it's more personal. It's me and my family. I do want to note that my partner, Betsy, read the Stay Gold blog post extensively and helped me edit it. I said to her, “Betsy, I am not going to publish this blog post without your full approval. I won't do it because it's our money. It's our family's money.”

I also did that with our children, ages 12, 12, and 15. I feel bad for having subjected my son Henry to that early first edit, which was quite cynical – but I got flipped. My daughters read later revisions that were positive, so I was happy about that. And they had feedback! This affects them. This is their legacy. This is our legacy. This is how we approach the world. What are we here to do? What is our purpose? The pursuit of happiness, but also the shared pursuit of happiness. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a place to live, healthcare, and education?

Fundamental Issues

What exactly does “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” mean? We didn't write that stuff down. We just assumed that came later. I mean, the modern income tax system didn't come about until around 1913. Women didn't have the right to vote. We didn't fully write everything down. If you look at the US Constitution's amendments, the last meaningful amendment was 60 years ago. What is really changing? How are we iterating on the code here? And that's a problem.

Having a blog is the Gutenberg Printing Press for every human being. I want to reach whoever I can reach with this message of optimism. Hey, let's lift each other up. Short term, let's work on these systemic problems. Long term, there is a path forward. Don't give up. Don't give in. Support your neighbors. Let's understand each other. Ideally, love each other – but at least understand each other and approach it at the policy level instead of red versus blue, Cowboys versus Steelers. Let’s get past this whole tribalism mentality– we're so polarized.

I think that's a really important message, and I’m using the Stay Gold blog to get it out there. This is one of those blog posts that's going to be more like a vine growing on a wall. It's going to take time because the nature of the problem is so big. I don't expect things to change overnight. That's not even possible. We can help those most in immediate need – that's very important. But we also have to be thinking long term about how we create systems that are equitable for everyone.

It's always going to be a work in progress, like the pursuit of happiness. It’s about the pursuit. What bugs me is that it just feels like, in the current climate, we've stopped pursuing and we’re going in the opposite direction. That is untenable. I can't have that. We must strive to make things more hopeful or optimistic and progress, make actual, measurable progress – not just pour money on this, pour money on that. Instead, look how many people were lifted out of poverty, look how many people are housed, look at how many people are reading books and learning and sharing that learning with the rest of us – and maybe even blogging about what they're learning. That would be amazing.

I think part of the polarization is how “if it bleeds, it leads.” Conflict generates the most interactions. But is that really the right metric to measure? I don't think it is. If you measure only for interactions, you're going to get combat. Advertising works best when people are visiting a page over and over because they're constantly arguing – then they end up seeing ads over and over. That’s unfortunate, and these are the things I want people to think about.

I'm not calling for socialism – that doesn't work. But I think there are better forms of capitalism we can adopt that are more fair for everyone. There can still be rich people, but I think everyone deserves a chance. Let’s go back to first principles: what do we all actually believe in? Forget the partisanship. What's important here? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or, life, liberty, housing, education, healthcare, and the pursuit of shared happiness?

Online Discourse

How we approach these really, really big problems depends on how we see each other through our screens. When people type things on a screen, they share words that they would never say to a person’s face. There is a person on the other screen who's probably devastated by what you just wrote – but you don't get to see it, so you don't feel the impact of it.

Joel Spolsky (Stack Overflow co-founder) once said to me, “Never write an email that you wouldn't want published on the front page of the New York Times.” And I thought, “Well, that’s a bit ridiculous and hyperbolic”, but I kind of agree with it. But I would extrapolate the idea a little further to “Never write something on a screen that you would not say to that person’s face if they were standing in front of you.” We have to learn this because it's easy to forget.

It has been a bit of a failing that the ad networks (Meta, among others) have been so worried about optimizing for connecting people, no matter what, that they lost sight of the side effects of this. You're creating the ability for a lot of people to really polarize and hurt each other without realizing it.

I'm not trying to promote Discourse here, but the minute you type the first character, we pop up a dialog that says something like “Hey, remember, you're talking to another person here. It's fine to argue, but argue about ideas. Don't attack the person. Try to create something that takes the conversation in a constructive direction.” We show this message only twice. I think more software needs that kind of a message.

The latest announcement that Meta is basically giving up on moderation and turning it over to the community…This is like saying “I'm not going to send my children to school; I'm going to let them learn on the streets.” And I'm thinking that this is not going to work for very obvious reasons. Why not have a cadre of trained moderators that work in tandem with the community?

On Stack Overflow, we even elected moderators using ranked-choice voting. No other site on the internet does that, to my knowledge. You have to submit a post saying, “I would like to be a moderator and here's why.” You have candidates, then there’s a voting process within the community. I haven’t been there since 2012, so I don’t want to speak for them today. But when I was there, it was this democratic system. It worked, or at least I thought it did. And I would like to continue to hope that it does work.

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Stay tuned for more tech blogger spotlights. Coming up: Scott Hanselman, Phil Eaton, Matt Butcher, Glauber Costa, Amos Wenger, Charity Majors, Gunnar Morling, Dan Luu… These will be mixed in with the monthly writethat.blog updates.