Jeff Atwood

Atwood has said he grew up poor in America; his parents came from rural West Virginia and rural North Carolina, and his mother divorced his father when he was 16. He said his parents “unconditionally loved me.”⁠[1]

He recalled learning to program on various implementations of Microsoft BASIC in the 1980s, later working for years as a Windows web software developer.⁠[2]

In February 2004 he started the blog Coding Horror with a reading list and a New Year’s resolution to post every weekday; in 2007 he was offered $120,000 for the blog and declined after a week of consideration.⁠[3]

The blog’s name and logo come from the “Coding Horror” icon in Steve McConnell’s Code Complete; McConnell gave him the original vector file and permission to sell merchandise based on it.⁠[4]

On May 2, 2005, he announced that he had accepted a position at Vertigo Software and was moving from North Carolina to California, starting work on May 26.⁠[5]

In April 2007 he appeared on .NET Rocks!, an internet radio show for software developers, in an interview of about an hour on themes from his blog.⁠[6]

On April 16, 2008, he announced that his next project was stackoverflow.com, “a small company Joel Spolsky and I are founding together,” whose goal was “Better programming.”⁠[7]

After a five-week private beta, Stack Overflow opened to the public on September 15, 2008; Spolsky said the site was built mostly by Atwood and his friends Geoff Dalgas and Jarrod Dixon.⁠[8]

The day after launch Atwood wrote that the site “is by programmers, for programmers.”⁠[9]

On March 12, 2009, a son was born to him and his partner Betsy.⁠[10]

On May 4, 2010, Stack Overflow announced that it had raised $6 million from investors led by Union Square Ventures, including Ron Conway and Chris DixonChris DixonChris Dixon is a programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, and the founder and managing partner of a16z crypto. He co-founded SiteAdvisor and Hunch, helped create Founder Collective, and later joined Andreessen Horowitz, investing in technology companies such as Coinbase. He is also the author of Read Write Own and has long written about blockchains, network ownership, the open internet, and the combination of AI and crypto.Open the full entry, to expand its network of Q&A sites.⁠[11]

In October 2011 he wrote about raising children, saying “choosing to become a parent is the hardest thing I have ever done.”⁠[12]

On February 6, 2012, he announced that from March 1 he would no longer be part of Stack Exchange’s day-to-day operations, in order to focus on his wife and children, writing that “success at the cost of my children is not success.”⁠[13]

On February 5, 2013, he announced Discourse, a “100% open source” discussion platform from a company named Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., aiming to raise the standard of civil discussion online with better software.⁠[14]

Discourse was co-founded in 2013 by Atwood, Robin Ward and Sam Saffron and is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2.⁠[15]

In April 2014 he wrote that programming is male-dominated and that “There is no mythical men’s club where it is OK to be a jerk to women.”; he mentioned that he and his partner, a scientist, have children including twin girls.⁠[16]

In October 2018 he wrote that Stack Overflow “has much more in common with WikipediaWikipediaWikipedia is a free, multilingual online encyclopedia launched on January 15, 2001, written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation; it is one of the most visited websites in the world.Open the full entry than a discussion forum,” adding, “Stack Overflow is you.”⁠[17]

On November 29, 2018, he appeared in an early episode of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast titled “Stack Overflow and Coding Horror,” whose description also mentions Discourse, which he founded.⁠[18]

On June 2, 2021, Prosus announced its intention to acquire Stack Overflow for $1.8 billion, with the company continuing to operate independently; Stack Overflow said its public platform had helped developers over 50 billion times since 2008.⁠[19]

In January 2023 he stepped down from Discourse’s day-to-day operations while remaining on its board; he lives in Alameda, California, with his partner and three children.⁠[2]

In January 2025 he published “Stay Gold, America,” pledging half of his family’s remaining wealth to long-term causes and listing eight $1 million donations to organizations including Team Rubicon, PEN America and The Trevor Project.⁠[1]

In March 2025 he announced that his family would commit $50 million, working with GiveDirectly and OpenResearch, to guaranteed minimum income studies in rural America, starting with Mercer County, West Virginia, his father’s birthplace, and Beaufort County, North Carolina, his mother’s birthplace.⁠[20]

In February 2026 he announced that the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative had funded programs in Mercer County, West Virginia; Beaufort County, North Carolina; and Warren County, Mississippi, each running for 16 months and already under way.⁠[21]

The initiative says participating families receive $1,500 per month for 16 months, that it has provided about $50 million in funding so far, and that it aims to fund rural county studies in all 50 states.⁠[22]

In April 2026 he wrote about his last visit with his dying father and thanked the Stack Overflow community, arguing that large language models depend on its Q&A data and urging AI companies to “Just treat the community with the respect they deserve.”⁠[23]

As of October 2026 his GitHub profile describes him as co-founder of stackoverflow.com, discourse.org and rgmii.org and a blogger, based in Alameda, California.⁠[24]

Personal website: Public link: https://blog.codinghorror.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[24]

MastodonMastodonMastodon is free and open-source decentralized social networking software created by Eugen Rochko in 2016; based on the ActivityPub protocol, it forms a federated network of independently run servers. Its user base grew sharply in 2022, and Rochko stepped down as CEO in November 2025.Open the full entry: Public account: https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

Stack Overflow: Official website: https://stackoverflow.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

Discourse: Official website: https://www.discourse.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative: Official website: https://rgmii.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[22]