Advice to myself 8 years ago
A correspondent asked: If you don’t mind me asking, what advice would you give to a 28 year-old Avdi? My response, for what it’s worth: I think about this kind…
Landing pages are written, not designed
As I’ve been reading up on marketing and copywriting, I realized something: as a programmer, ignorant of marketing and surrounded by countless slick pitches for programmer-oriented products, I had come…
Notes on Writing a Landing Page
I can consume gobs of material on marketing and copywriting, but when it comes time to actually write a landing page my mind suddenly goes blank. I had this happened…
Today I improved… my headline chops
I’ve made a strategic decision to devote the majority of my study time to marketing rather than technical topics for the time being. Here’s an example of what I spend…
Looking for a donor RoR app
Hi, folks. I’m in the market for a hand-me-down app. Specifically: Open-source or public domain Smallish, but real. Not just a “hello world” app. Does something that most people would…
Half-off Exceptional Ruby, Confident Ruby, & more
UPDATE: This sale, along with my birthday, is now over. Thanks to everyone who made my birthday even sweeter by buying books! Hey there! This is just a quick note…
Please help me to not go broke
TL;DR I’m struggling a bit right now, and if you subscribe to my screencasts or buy my book that would really help me out. And if you’re a happy customer,…
Hacker terminology: “Golden”
When I was starting out as a young programmer, I worked on (among other things) an air-traffic control system. A full set of hardware for the system—including multiple rack cabinets…
The real 10x developer
Ask me for a 10x developer, and I’ll show you a hacker who can take a list of 10 tickets, and reject 9 of them because they don’t appreciably advance the project…
Pay no attention to the Dijkstra behind the green curtain
…And so, as we can see, with sufficiently powerful type constraints, the implementation practically writes itself! Neat! I know, right?? …although didn’t you just write the whole function inside the type…